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Website Performance Improvements after a Site Launch

Introduction

Website performance can be improved even at the launching phase through strategies like implementing caching strategies through plugins, offloading media from the server, removing unused plugins, and more. Read further to dive deep into the strategies that helped us improve the website performance thereby boosting the GooglePageSpeed score considerably.

Website Performance Improvements after a Site Launch

Our project management methodology at Exemplifi is designed to prioritize the performance of websites, even during the launch phase. During our work on the ACERail project, we witnessed the tangible outcomes of this approach. Initially, the website's performance, as measured by Google Pagespeed, scored 20 on Mobile and 60 on Desktop. However, after the launch of the new site, we were able to significantly improve these numbers to 50 on Mobile and 80 on Desktop. Despite this progress, we remained committed to surpassing our own stringent performance standards.

In this section, we will delve into the specific techniques we employed to achieve a higher level of performance.

Major strategies we followed to implement the performance are below

Implementing caching strategies using best wordpress cache plugins
Offloaded all the media from the server
Removed unwanted plugins
Optimized theme code
Cleared all console and application errors
Database optimization
Adjusted cache techniques based on status cake report

Let’s elaborate the strategies one by one

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Implementing caching strategies using best wordpress cache plugins

When it comes to wordpress we have a wide range of plugins available for cache but we have to choose the plugin based on the server. For example If you take a WPEngine, It won’t allow a few caching plugins.

In our case we hosted site in AWS so we choosed 2 cache plugins

Autoptimize:

Settings we used in this plugin are

Aggregating files such as css, Js so It reduced number of requests to the server
Image lazy loading option very well so It loads bigger size images after page loads
We have to select available settings very carefully otherwise site will break

Aggregate Settings:

Image Lazy Load Settings:

WP Fastest Cache:

Settings we used in this plugin are

Gzip compression: It reduces the size of the file with compression of regular data transfer
Browser Caching; It will reduces the page loads with temporary storage of resources in web browsers
Disable Emojis: This removes emoji inline css and js files
Minify HTML: This reduces the size of a page

Offloaded all the media from the server

Images loading from the server is not a good thing when it comes to performance because It will increase the page size and loading time will be more so we selected WP Offload Media plugin to serve images from the Amazon S3 bucket.

Few more suggestions:

Try to use cdn for clean url for better performance
Try to install this plugin during development so we no need to re upload the images
Premium version will be good coz It provides CDN url facility and bulk offload

Removed unwanted plugins

This is most important for wordpress sites to minimize the plugins usage. We removed unused plugins and managed a few of them with custom hooks like creating custom post type with hook instead of CPT UI plugin.

We reduced our plugins count from 42 to 28 which is a big change in this site.

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Optimized theme code

When it comes to performance improvements we also took a step to optimize the code in the theme. As we are already using the child theme, It didn’t affect much when we updated the parent theme.

We did Query optimization so It loads data from DB very fast
Custom hooks and filters to implement functionality in faster way
We removed unnecessary code

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Cleared all console and application errors

Nowadays there is a common problem with console errors. Most of the time everyone thinks this won’t affect performance issues but because of these errors the page will break and sometimes it delays the javascript execution so you understand the indirect effect on performance.

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Database optimization

Mostly we won’t do this but If your admin page loads very slowly then you have to concentrate on this. Few db optimization tips are as follows:

DB optimization references from WPEngine article.

Optimizing Tables:

Login into PHPmyadmin
Click on the database you want to optimize
Select all the tables
Click on drop down menu and you should see “Optimize Table”

Table Storage Engines and Memory

When it comes to storage engines, For better performance we should use InnoDB instead of MYiSAM. If any table has a MYiSAM engine then change to InnoDB. To change check the below screenshot.

Query: ALTER TABLE table_name ENGINE=InnoDB;

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	//Database Cleanup Options

	//Check if your site has any orphaned postmeta

	SELECT COUNT(pm.meta_id) as row_count FROM wp_postmeta pm LEFT JOIN wp_posts wp ON wp.ID = pm.post_id WHERE wp.ID IS NULL;

	//Delete any orphaned postmeta

	DELETE pm FROM wp_postmeta pm LEFT JOIN wp_posts wp ON wp.ID = pm.post_id WHERE wp.ID IS NULL;

	//Check if your site has any orphaned commentmeta

	SELECT COUNT(*) as row_count FROM wp_commentmeta WHERE comment_id NOT IN (SELECT comment_id FROM wp_comments);

	//Delete any orphaned commentmeta

	DELETE FROM wp_commentmeta WHERE comment_id NOT IN (SELECT comment_id FROM wp_comments);

	//By default WP Engine disables revisions due to database bloat, but your site may have had revisions from a previous host. Delete any revisions:

	DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision";

	//Check for wp_session data

	SELECT * FROM `wp_options` WHERE `option_name` LIKE '_wp_session_%'

	//Remove wp_session data:

	DELETE FROM `wp_options` WHERE `option_name` LIKE '_wp_session_%'

	//Delete expired transients

	DELETE FROM `wp_options` WHERE `option_name` LIKE ('%_transient_%')

	//Delete tags that aren’t associated with any posts

	DELETE FROM wp_terms WHERE term_id IN (SELECT term_id FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE count = 0 );

	DELETE FROM wp_term_taxonomy WHERE term_id not IN (SELECT term_id FROM wp_terms);

	DELETE FROM wp_term_relationships WHERE term_taxonomy_id not IN (SELECT term_taxonomy_id FROM wp_term_taxonomy);

	//Delete pingbacks and trackbacks

	DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = 'pingback';
	DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_type = 'trackback';

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Autoloaded Data

This will be available in WP_options table with option values are Yes/No
Every time when request comes this will loads
keep your total autoloaded data below 800,000 bytes (0.8Mb) for optimal performance.

	//Calculate the total amount of autoloaded data in bytes:

	SELECT SUM(LENGTH(option_value)) FROM wp_options WHERE autoload = 'yes';

	//Find and sort the top 20 largest autoload value rows:

	SELECT LENGTH(option_value),option_name FROM wp_options WHERE autoload='yes' ORDER BY length(option_value) DESC LIMIT 20;

	//Disable autoload on a specific option. Replace option_name with the actual option name found using the previous command:

	UPDATE wp_options SET autoload='no' WHERE option_name='option_name';

	//EX: UPDATE wp_options SET autoload='no' WHERE option_name='really_large_row';

	//After you’ve reduced your total autoload data below 800k bytes, ensure your options table is indexed. This helps your site serve your freshly cleaned autoloaded data more quickly.

	CREATE INDEX autoloadindex ON wp_options(autoload, option_name);

view raw gistfile1.txt hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Adjusted cache techniques based on status cake report

These days we also track sites using status cake so It provides all the results about the site. We can also get which files are affecting the performance.

Final Results:

In the project's initial phase, the focus was on enhancing website performance. Google Page Insights initially scored the desktop version at 70-75 and the mobile version at 28-30. After implementing comprehensive performance updates, the scores improved significantly. Presently, the desktop scores range between 85-90, and mobile scores range from 70-75. These results underscore the effectiveness of our efforts in markedly advancing the website's performance.

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Venkat reddy

Website Performance Improvements after a Site Launch

Introduction

Website Performance Improvements after a Site Launch

Implementing caching strategies using best wordpress cache plugins

Offloaded all the media from the server

Removed unwanted plugins

Optimized theme code

Cleared all console and application errors

Database optimization

Adjusted cache techniques based on status cake report

Final Results:

Venkat reddy

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