WordPress Speed Tutorials By Tom D.
Optimize WordPress for core web vitals with no BS reviews/tutorials. I don’t give 5 stars just for affiliate commissions and try to be transparent.
Hosting
Rocket.net
Fastest host I’ve found whose specs + Cloudflare Enterprise beat mainstream hosts (they average a <100ms global TTFB).
Cloudways
Vultr High Frequency is also solid between cloud hosting, NVMe SSDs, Redis Object Cache Pro, and Cloudflare Enterprise.
NameHero
Good for small sites with LiteSpeed, more CPU/RAM than other shared hosts, NVMe SSDs, cPanel, but only US/EU servers.
SiteGround
Went downhill since 2019 with many issues, then covers them up by censoring/threatening people who write bad reviews.
Hostinger
Writes fake reviews and only cheap because you get less resources like cores/RAM, bad downtimes, 4-year price traps.
Kinsta
Overpriced with low limits on PHP workers, monthly visits, and charges $100/mo Redis on SATA SSDs. Better off at Rocket.
Cache Plugins
FlyingPress
Cache plugin I use by Gijo Varghese. Great job addressing core web vitals and optimizing for real-world browsing speed.
LiteSpeed Cache
Cache plugin for LiteSpeed servers. Fast server-leveling caching, great job with web vitals, QUIC.cloud is also solid.
WP Rocket
Got too big which slowed innovation. Now lacks many optimizations in FlyingPress/ LSC. Not the #1 cache plugin.
CDNs
Cloudflare
Going through the plethora of Cloudflare settings in a quest to improve speed/TTFB, security, while also reducing CPU usage.
BunnyCDN
Powerful CDN with consistent performance & reliability on cdnperf.com, geo-replication, image optimization, 80+ Tbps.
QUIC.cloud
CDN built specifically for LiteSpeed, why the standard plan is significantly better, and HTML caching to improve TTFB.
Web Vitals
Largest Content Paint
LCP is divided into 4 sub-parts (TTFB is 40%) and can also be improved by optimizing above the fold content and load times.
Layout Shifts
Prevent things from shifting on your website which is usually related to fonts, CSS, specifying dimensions, and cache settings.
Total Blocking Time
Find elements causing blocking time in PSI + GTmetrix Waterfall and learn how to reduce long tasks blocking the main-thread.
Themes
GeneratePress
Why I used GeneratePress + GenerateBlocks to redesign my blog and how it fixed design & speed issues I’ve been having.
Kadence
Lightweight theme with starter templates (like GeneratePress) but much more expensive with a few other key differences.
Astra
Speed tests on Gutenberg vs Elementor vs Beaver, starter templates, Ultimate Add-ons, and hints of Astra’s shadiness.
Speed Up Elementor
Specific optimizations for Elementor like Experiments, preloading local fonts, and coding header/footer in CSS.
Speed Up Divi
One of the worst builders for performance but can be optimized with performance settings and minimizing code.
Fastest Themes
Testing how much CSS, JavaScript, and fonts popular themes add to your website when using starter templates.
Plugins
Speed Plugins
An overkilled list of WordPress speed plugins which should be more accurate/detailed than the typical plugin lists you see.
Slow Plugins To Avoid
75 slow plugins to avoid which increase memory usage or add CSS/JS to the frontend (list was made with the help of WP Hive).
Perfmatters
Remove bloat, unused CSS/JS, preload critical images, and finish “the last 10% of speed” most cache plugins don’t.
The “Best”
WordPress Hosting
A quick summary of my personal opinions about popular WordPress hosts, categorized as good or bad.
Cache Plugins
FlyingPress and LiteSpeed Cache are faster than WP Rocket as well as SiteGround Optimizer (which is horrible).
CDNs
It’s hard to beat Cloudflare Enterprise, otherwise QUIC and BunnyCDN are good too. Not RocketCDN or SiteGround CDN.
More Guides
Speed Up WordPress
A-Zs of speed optimization. I tried fitting everything in this guide and it’s probably the most in-depth one I’ve written.
Reduce TTFB
How to reduce global TTFB to <100ms almost anywhere in the world (hosting, CDN, full page caching are the biggest factors).
Reduce CPU Usage
CPU limits are common on shared hosting. Learn how to block unwanted requests to the server and offload bandwidth.
tom dupuis
Why I Started OMM
Money, obviously.
Even though I make a living through this blog, I try to tell it how it is.
If I can help people optimize their WordPress site and get paid doing it, I’ll take this job any day. Aff links pay the bills but I won’t refer you to crap for commissions; there’s too much BS out there already. And If you want to creep, my story has plenty of travel/cat pics to go around.
