net - UK (2020-05)

(Antfer) #1

PROJECTS
WordPress


WORDPRESS


much anything a new user might want, however,
these plugins are all of varying quality and it is not
always obvious at first that installing a plugin has
actually caused problems.
To give us a live example for the basis of this
tutorial a target website is needed – we’ve have put
together a brochure-style site as a demonstration.

HOW TO FIND OUT IF YOU HAVE A
PROBLEM
Many page speed tests are available for free online,
with favourites such as Google PageSpeed Insights
and GTmetrix. For this tutorial, Google PageSpeed
Insights will be used.
Go to Google PageSpeed Insights at https://
developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights. Enter
the URL of the page to test and press Analyze to

OPTIMISE AND SPEED UP


WORDPRESS WEBSITES


WordPress isn’t known for its breakneck speed but in this tutorial, Joe


Ford shows how to bring it up to scratch with a few changes and tweaks


WordPress has become a staple name in the
web design world, boasting user friendliness
and customisation to all who want to try it. But with
this ease of use comes a great window for undetected
errors or problems. As Google tightens emphasis on
page speed as a ranking factor, budding webmasters
are increasingly getting caught out by not being able
to get what they’ve built to run quickly.
So why does WordPress have a reputation for being
so clunky? Out of the box the WordPress CMS is
relatively fast, enabling users to apply a theme and
write a large number of blog posts without running
into performance issues. Problems arise as a side
effect of WordPress’s popularity. There is a massive
selection of third-party plugins, themes and even
hosting providers aimed at the amateur starting out
with little to no budget. There are plugins for pretty

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOE FORD
w: tillison.co.uk
t: @JoeFordTheNerd
job: Senior developer -
Tillison Consulting
areas of expertise:
PHP, WordPress, Laravel
Free download pdf