Hello,
Noticed my site has been running slow and decided to test it. I ran several test to get a trend and cache static content & compress images always resulting as F. Its wordpress blog and everything is updated. I am using W3TC plugin. Thanks for any suggestions.
C
should have included more info:
Here is link to test results: Test Results
Link to our site: Our Site
*using Hostgator for hosting.
For the compressed images ‘F’ you can use the wordpress plugin smush.it, to optimize them. I myself optimize images manually using kraken.io, which I think givens even a bit better image optimization.
For the static content part, I tend to use disk:enhanced for Pagecache, but this is not causing the static content problem. You should check W3TC Browser Cache settings, especially the Media & Other files, and make sure you have a decent expiration time there.
Also, I suggest you also try to combine your CSS and JS files. Some Themes have this option included, but otherwise you should experiment with W3TC or other plugins on this. Combining CSS & JS is the most tricky optimization part from experience, using several plugins and kits on Wordpress, but it will make your website even faster.
thanks. I switched to WP Super Cache because Hostgator said they are better configured with it. I noticed there is Expiry Time & Garbage Collection section and I set that to 3600 seconds. But that does not help with existing files that don’t have expiration times set. I read that I can adjust these in .htaccess file but I am leary messing with that file as I don’t want to create problems down road.
For images - smosh.it is currently not working correctly but new developers are redoing that app so maybe in few months I can use it. I will look into kraken.io.
Thanks for your input.
The settings you are referring to are in the Pagecache section. You need to set browsercache for static files in the Browser Cache part of W3TC. Navigate the menu for browser cache, and set those expire values there at least a week or so (in seconds). W3TC will handle the .htaccess for you.
While SuperCache also works great, remember it’s not a complete as W3TC, so you need additional plugins for minifying and other options that are default present in W3TC, but that’s just up to you how much you want to optimize your website.
There are other ways to optimize your static files cache, like external with CloudFlare, but that is another story, and also depending on your hoster how well they support those options for full optimization, speed and failover.
vovone,
I did as you said and went back to W3TC.
I only enabled:
everything else I left unchecked and I got results I was looking for. Page load time went from 3.43 sec to 1.90 sec. Below are result test. Thanks so much for your help.
1.90 test - http://gtmetrix.com/reports/nfldraftrage.com/OBTBUhnF
3.43 test - http://gtmetrix.com/reports/nfldraftrage.com/HMe53EJX