Redesigned. Rewritten. Better.
WordPress Speed Tutorials By Tom D.
Hosting
Rocket.net
Look at their specs and I bet you’ll switch (I did). Ben Gabler, Cloudflare Enterprise + full page caching = <100ms global TTFB.
Cloudways
Still have love for Cloudways Vultr Frequency + NVMe/Redis, but needs to work on catching up to Rocket.net’s performance.
NameHero
LiteSpeed servers with more CPU/RAM compared to similar hosts, user-friendly cPanel, but servers are only in the US + EU.
SiteGround
Why I left because of a slow TTFB, CPU limits, increased prices, and censoring people from writing negative reviews.
Hostinger
Unethical host who grew from fake reviews. They only look cheap because you get less CPU/RAM and other resources.
Bluehost
Mainly promoted by “how to start a blog” affiliates and not actually a good choice. They’re also owned by Newfold Digital.
Cache Plugins
FlyingPress
Better job of addressing core web vitals and optimizing for real-world browsing compared to WP Rocket and SG Optimizer.
LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed server + LSC + QUIC is arguably the fastest setup on the cheap with server caching + HTML caching and true HTTP/3.
WP Rocket
Emphasizes scores and web vitals but doesn’t optimize for real-world browsing as much as FlyingPress + LiteSpeed Cache.
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
How to load main content faster by optimizing the LCP element, fonts, CSS/JS, images, and other elements that impact LCP.
Layout Shifts
Use Google’s Debugger Test and fix layout shifts caused by fonts, CSS, and dynamic content without specified dimensions.
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.
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.
