Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › What is fast for site speed?
Tagged: site speed, Sixteen Nine
- This topic has 12 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 11 months ago by Tony @ AlphaBlossom.
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April 16, 2014 at 11:46 pm #100901matt kleinMember
I just moved from Thesis to Genesis. I am fairly green with this stuff. So far extremely impressed with Genesis and the theme, Sixteen Nine. However, I was consistently getting above 90 in Pingdom tests before, now around 88 with less than two-second load (faster than 79% of sites out there). Should I be happy with that? I read many reports on the forums of Genesis sites loading faster than a second, and with Google giving fast sites the nod apparently, is it worth it to try and speed it up? The perfectionist in me wants at least a 90 again, LOL.
Also, my pages with the Google Maps are loading exceptionally slow, and I've read that the latest version of their maps are problematic. My question here; does Google evaluate speed on all the pages and does the problem with their maps cause your site to be slow in their eyes? Overall question is, how fast does a site have to be?
http://karate-kids.com.au/April 20, 2014 at 11:20 am #101468AnitaKeymasterApril 20, 2014 at 7:31 pm #101564matt kleinMemberThanks Jennifer for your kind assistance. The Google speed test, which gives my site a an 86 on the desktop and only a 75 on the mobile, is giving me this advice as the highest priority. I will look into correcting it if it is possible:
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Your page has 12 blocking script resources and 8 blocking CSS resources. This causes a delay in rendering your page.
I am already using Total Cache, but wondering how much the Pro version will improve speed. Also, wondering how you can test the impact your web host sharing has on site speed.
The article was very helpful and I will try to implement as many of their recommendations at possible. Thanks again.
April 20, 2014 at 9:05 pm #101572AnitaKeymasterHi Matt, this is Anita. I provided you with "Jennifer's" blog link so Jennifer is not on the forum to receive your communication.
Love coffee, chocolate and my Bella!
April 21, 2014 at 5:10 am #101605Gary JonesMemberIn the grand scheme of things, Genesis and the child theme are just the tip of the iceberg - there are more gains to be had at server levels than just the theme. However, you can add:
add_filter( 'genesis_load_deprecated', '__return_false' );
to your child theme for a tiny speed improvement, as it avoids loading in a file with 73 deprecated (and therefore unused by Genesis and most child themes) functions.
WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ
April 21, 2014 at 7:21 am #101631emasaiParticipantVery interesting, I was wondering how to eliminate loading the render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content and put in in the footer on a Genesis site? These are usually scripts automatically added by plugins are they not?
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Lynne emasai.comApril 21, 2014 at 7:54 am #101637TomParticipant(Just posting to subscribe to this thread.)
Choose your next site design from over 350 Genesis themes.
[ Follow me: Twitter ] [ Follow Themes: Twitter ] [ My Favourite Webhost ]April 21, 2014 at 8:33 am #101643Gary JonesMemberAssuming we're talking about http://karate-kids.com.au/, most of the JS and some CSS is coming from the NextGen gallery. You may find that switching to http://gmj.to/envira gives you more features, and a better performance impact compared to NextGen.
The three JavaScript files from Sixteen Nine could definitely be pushed to the footer by adding true as an extra last argument when enqueueing in functions.php
Gzip doesn't look to be enabled at the .htaccess level for .css and .js. Doing so will minimize the number of bytes being transferred.
Once you've finished customising the site, then the style.css and .js files can be minified, manually, or with a plugin.
Optimising images is another win - if you're only showing at 200x200, then use a 200x200 size image, not 224x224.
WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ
April 21, 2014 at 3:56 pm #101725matt kleinMemberSorry Anita, did not read your post clearly. Appreciate the link. It is very helpful.
Thanks a lot Gary. I will try many of your suggestions. Can you enable Gzip within the theme? A am assuming you place add_filter( 'genesis_load_deprecated', '__return_false' ); in the head. Is that correct? Does the Total Cache plugin minimize the style.css and js files?
I really like the NextGen but there are a few things I don't like about it, performance included. Might give envira a look.
Overall, Gary, most of the changes are above me as I am kinda green, but I will try to implement them one way or another.
April 21, 2014 at 4:11 pm #101728Gary JonesMemberYou place the line of code I gave within your theme functions file, before the Start the Engine call if you have it.
Gzip is enabled in .htaccess, not the theme, as is Expires headers. https://gist.github.com/GaryJones/cc1f634027b5be6b533c is how W3 Total Cache handles it by adding it to your .htaccess file. You're probably not going to need to cover all of those file extensions, so it could be cut down. In your case though, your site already looks to be running gzip and expires headers, so there's nothing for you to change here.
You can see a report with linked recommendations at http://gtmetrix.com/reports/karate-kids.com.au/4Abi0PDu
One thing you might like to try is run https://gist.github.com/GaryJones/7dd2ab721f4d97ff6502 as a plugin, and amend the .htaccess file as per the documentation. That will fix up the "Remove query strings from static resources" by changing references of style.css?ver=1.0.0 to style.1.0.0.css and tell the server how to map to the original file.
WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ
April 22, 2014 at 8:09 pm #101985Tony @ AlphaBlossomMemberHi Gary,
Thanks for the great tip:
add_filter( 'genesis_load_deprecated', '__return_false' );
Is there any reason you woudn't use this? I guess there's a possibility that someone is using deprecated code and it would break the theme?
Thank you!
Tony
Tony Eppright | http://www.AlphaBlossom.com | Follow me on twitter @_alphablossom
April 22, 2014 at 8:31 pm #101988Gary JonesMemberYou're correct, but for new themes, they aren't going to be using deprecated code, and for Genesis plugins, they shouldn't be using deprecated code either!
Basically, add it to the functions file, save and check - if the site has blown up, then undo what you did. If you can spot an error message referencing theme or plugin code, then note it - may need WP_DEBUG on (which should highlight some calls to deprecated functions anyway as Genesis already officially marks them as such). If the site looks normal, then it's all worked fine and you're now loading 70+ functions fewer into memory on each request.
On a very quick un-scientific test using the non-minimal site I already had the Debug Bar set up on, the memory usage saved by not loading the deprecated file was consistently ~125,000 bytes less for admin, and ~136,000 bytes for front-end. Out of 30-40MB per request, 0.13MB is not a lot, but it's still a saving.
Looks like I created a plugin to do the same functionality: https://github.com/GaryJones/genesis-ignore-deprecated
WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ
April 22, 2014 at 8:35 pm #101989Tony @ AlphaBlossomMemberGreat, so far no problems on two sites 🙂
I really appreciate it...yes, every bit does help and it doesn't make sense to load those if not needed.
Thanks again, Gary!
Tony Eppright | http://www.AlphaBlossom.com | Follow me on twitter @_alphablossom
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