Where I find help to customize Genesis for speed?

[iondoaga]

Hello,

I'm using a Genesis Sample Theme and I want to improve the loading speed of my pages. According to GTmetrix.com I receive C for Page Speed Score and B for YSlow score, which means there is room for improvement.

Can someone point me to a guide ?

Thanks!

http://wellnessowners.com

[Victor Font]

The GTMetrix report provides a lot of details on what you need to do to speed up your site. Most of the time, all you have to do is add a caching plugin. What other guide are you seeking?

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Regards,

Victor
https://victorfont.com/
Call us toll free: 844-VIC-FONT (842-3668)
Have you requested your free website audit yet?

[MoodyRiviera]

A quick look at your web site shows me one big problem related to speed...and that is the size of your graphics.

For example, the graphic of the backpacker weighs in at 778kb, which is *way* too big. If I had the original graphic you were working with, there's no doubt that I could optimize that graphic to a file weight only 10 percent of that and come out with a graphic that looks at least as good as the hugely bloated file you have on your page there.

Considering that the other graphics I checked...they all weighed in at huge file sizes, that all adds up to many extra megabytes...and that all adds up to very slow download times.

Do some googling for terms such as "optimizing graphics for the web" and you will find an endless amount of advice on how to optimize your graphics.

Optimizing your graphics isn't just a good thing to do...it's an essential thing to do.

*MoodyRiviera*

[iondoaga]

Hi @Victor and @MoodyRiviera, thanks for your replys.

It is probably an easy task to do, but I never did that before and this is why I'm feeling confured when I see in the GTmetrix report that my top 3 issues are "Serve scaled images", "Defer parsing of JavaScript" and "Minify CSS". First thing what comes to my mind is that I need coding knowledge to do that properly, and I'm weak in coding.

@MoodyRiviera I will have a look for tips on google on how to scale the images on my site.

Thanks for your patience and helpful guidance.

[MoodyRiviera]

Hi again,

From what I know (not much really), it's not easy and not always a good idea to "defer parsing of JavaScript"...but I could be wrong.

And for the "Minify CSS" part...that's something you can do with a plugin...just do a google search to find out more information.

Keep in mind that these reports that purport to analyze web sites for speed problems, etc. aren't always accurate and don't always give great advice.

You would make *huge* improvements in your page speed if you just optimized your images.

*MoodyRiviera*

[frobn]

It good to someone taking performance seriously.

Resize your images to 500x275. Look up snippets for genesis for the code you could put in your functions file to resize your images. This is likely to give you your biggest improvement.

I see you are using W3 total cache but apparently it is not setup correctly to set the cache period appropriately.

Here is tutorial:

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-w3-total-cache-for-beginners/

You site makes 73 requests, I would look for ones that could be eliminated or combined.

[iondoaga]

@MoodyRiviera I followed your suggestion and reduced the size of all my images. This improved the speed performance in GTmetrix. I now have a page speed of rank A (92%) and YSlow B(82%). Can you have a look if I optimized my pictures correctly? Maybe there is still room for improvement?

Hi @frobn, why do you recommend me to resize my pictures to 500x275? I assume that the body is 700 in width and I need pictures of the same width to cover the entire space.

I've optimized the W3 total cache following the tutorial you recommended, but I'm not quite sure if everything is set up correctly.

How do you combine or eliminate http requests? I have never done this, though I understand this is an important thing do.

[MoodyRiviera]

@iondoaga

Congratulations...it looks like you did a great job of optimizing. Your images are *way* smaller now...right about the right size, I would say...and they still look good.

Of course there can always disagreement about optimizing...just keep in mind that the smaller you make the images the less "good" they might look...so it's always a compromise...but I'd say you did a great job there.

*MoodyRiviera*

[frobn]

From GTMatrix:

(Notice that your images are being reduced to width 500px and height ~270px; resizing them will give you a 39% reduction.)

The following images are resized in HTML or CSS. Serving scaled images could save 130.1KiB (39% reduction).

http://wellnessowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/over-eating-holiday-season.jpg?8c649f is resized in HTML or CSS from 665x350 to 500x263. Serving a scaled image could save 28.1KiB (44% reduction).
http://wellnessowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/forest23.jpg?8c649f is resized in HTML or CSS from 700x379 to 500x271. Serving a scaled image could save 26.7KiB (49% reduction).
http://wellnessowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/busy.jpg?8c649f is resized in HTML or CSS from 640x352 to 500x275. Serving a scaled image could save 15.5KiB (39% reduction).
http://wellnessowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/walk2.jpg?8c649f is resized in HTML or CSS from 631x350 to 500x277. Serving a scaled image could save 15.0KiB (38% reduction).
http://wellnessowners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/last2.jpg?8c649f is resized in HTML or CSS from 657x350 to 500x266. Serving a scaled image could save 14.9KiB (43% reduction). ...

Goto: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/5lO8H/http://wellnessowners.com

It gives you a better readout of all the requests being made. I would first look to see if any of the requests could be eliminated. For example most sites do not use wp-emoji-release.min.js, if you are not using it eliminate it. Second you may be able to combine separate css files into one file and js files in fewer files. Use http://jscompress.com/ to compress and combines css and js files.

One other thing you can do is to defer your js, I looked it up and found that W3 Total cache does not defer js. You can use a plugin like WP Deferred JavaScripts that will defer your js.

According to http://tools.pingdom.com/ your site loads in in 1.34 seconds from NY which is acceptable but I think loading under one second is doable.

Frank

[iondoaga]

Thanks @MoodyReviera for your guidance. I appreciate it!

[iondoaga]

Hi @frobn, I appreciate your suggestions but they are a bit over the top of my understanding.

For example, how should I use the http://jscompress.com/ tool which combines css files and js file? Do you simply go into your css file, copy the code and paste it into this tool?

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