WordPress Optimization Services
Is your Google page speed score getting you down?
Is Yahoo Yslow telling you WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW.
Don’t worry, It’s Fixd.
Here is a dirty secret about website optimization...
Optimizing a website to give the best experience for your end users and customers, is an extremely complicated, time consuming and technical process to do it correctly!
Many optimization services install a plugin or two and then call it a day.
This is both wrong and unethical.
Optimization of a website is a many layered procedure, starting first with the hardware s on the hosting service, then in the operating system (or hosting package) of your web server, and continues all the way up to each individual page of the site, even on each individual image on the website!
Additionally, one of the missing discussions in website optimization, is that often time, to reach the full potential of your website, it must by nature, become FRAGILE!
What do we possibly mean by FRAGILE?
Buckle up, cause this is gonna get complicated…
Lets start somewhere in the middle, in the specific case for WordPress sites.
Searching for performance plugins, or speed up plugins on the WordPress plugin repository brings up HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of plugins that promise to speed up your site. The easiest of these plugins, are a set it and forget it situation, that may or may not speed up your website.
The best of these plugins, have literally hundreds of settings that require deep knowledge of both the hardware and software used in your website. This knowledge comes at a great investment of time and experimentation.
And here comes the fragility, one wrong selection, can completely break your site! Hopefully you are familiar with repairing and fixing your website when it goes down.
So, lets say you found the best plugin, and found the best working settings for your site and everything seems like its working a lot better.
You decide everything is fine and you continue working on your site, perhaps add a plugin or two, but then start noticing things are not working as they should. You end up having to undo all the speed optimizations you worked for many hours on, just to get the site working properly again.
This is very common when optimizing a site.
Often, further features, additions and components to your website can easily
- reduce the speed boost,
- not function as intended,
- or worse, crash the site completely.
Running your website at its best.. is an entire philosophy and set of procedures and documentation that require strict adherence when working with your optimized website.
So, what is the Fixd process for optimizing my website?
Analysis
The first steps are analyzing the many aspects of the website. Research and evaluate all of the following…
- Hosting provider
- Network speed, region
- Hosting Plan & Server Hardware (Memory, CPU, Disk)
- Disk file system
- Server Operating System
- Software Configuration
- Webserver, ex. Apache, IIS, Nginx
- PHP Version and modules
- Database Server & Settings
and then..
2 - 4 Hours
Comparison
Then taking all of these into account and doing a comparison based on traffic statistics and website and customer needs. This will require long term reports from statistics software, analyzing Apache / Nginx logs and/or Google analytics.
If it is found that based on the traffic and needs of the website and the current hosting setup is sufficient, then we move on to the details of the optimization.
1 - 2 Hours
Research
Obtaining baseline figures.
Baseline figures are obtained, during various times over the course of several days for the following:
- Overall Website Performance
- We take several reports from different sources, during various time-frames to evaluate the baseline performance of the website. This is to account for both the hosting providers traffic density problems, (especially for shared hosting) and server performance generally
- Data Transfer Size
- We also evaluate the total size of the website that is transferred and look for baseline figures for database performance between plugins and other apps.
- Disk Performance
- Network Performance
- Database Performance
- Image and other media evaluations
- Plugin Usage & Performance
Once baseline figures are established, we move on to compatibility.
Additionally we start documenting the availiable techniques that can be implemented in this particular hosting setup. In the example of a shared hosting package, many forms of optimization will not be availiable to us, and the impact of having or not having this functionality will be established reported on.
1 - 2 Hours
Compatibility Testing & Optimization Evaluation
- Simply put, this involves replicating the website into a similar environment, and testing out the many techniques, plugins and server configurations availiable to optimize a website.
- Also, significant problems will be evaluated for solvability such as theme issues (some themes are just too broken to be optimized) and plugin issues. (Some plugins are slow no matter what, decisions on their requirement should be evaluated.)
- Each technique is evaluated for compatibility, performance, and ease of maintenance.
- This is where compatibility issues will come up and be solved, BEFORE the site is replaced on the live environment.
1 - 2 Hours
Documentation
- Documentation really takes place during every step of the process.
- Documentation consists of the test & compatibility results of availiable techniques that can be or are implemented in this particular setup.
- In the example of a shared hosting package, many forms of optimization will not be availiable to us, and the impact of having or not having this functionality will be established & reported on.
- Additionally, up to every individual page may be optimized individually based on the needs of the client, which will require specific instructions to maintain the system.
- Also, specialized instructions and procedures for working with the optimized site will be created and provided if required.
1 - 2 Hours
Further Evaluation & Testing
- At this point, the final set of optimizations should be implemented on the testing site.
- Documentation should be reviewed to ensure it matches the current set of implemented optimizations.
- Final testing, both by the client and It’s Fixd services for any missing compatibility issues should be undertaken before the optimized site is published to the live environment..
1 - 2 Hours
Test Environment Reports & Further Suggestions
- Initial report and improvement results while using the test environment will be provided. This will be compared to the test environment baseline, not the live site.
- This will give an idea of the overall improvements, but will differ from the results when it is live.
1 - 2 Hours
Implementation & Final Results
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1 - 2 Hours
Education
Finalized documentation regarding what has been done, and procedures in how to maintain the optimized website will be written and discussed here.
Client will be given hands on explanation and experience in using the new website.
1 - 2 Hours
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