Hi all. I am building a wp website. I have my own cloud-based server. It is configured already, and the website is running live while I design practice (first time using wp).
My big aim is to have the fastest website possible. I have read a lot about this and have some questions. Hopefully, some of you will be able to help. Pardon if things aren’t in order.
My server is running apache + nginx.
I know about plugins such as wp rocket, perfmattersm, breeze. I know there is also a LiteSpeed plugin. I also read that having a CDN can help.
Now the big questions is what should one combine to have the best performance?
For example can I have apache + nginx + wp rocket? Will it perform best when compared to having a LiteSpeed server + LiteSpeed plugin?
Can we have the LiteSpeed plugin without LiteSpeed server?
Which combination will perform best?
If my server is LiteSpeed based (I can install this on my server if it is worth it) do I need the LiteSpeed plugin? What does it do, having the plugin? Do we need it, since we have a LiteSpeed server which is native, there is no need for plugins to do any translations between wp and server?
If we put CDN in the mix, if we have a LiteSpeed server + LiteSpeed plugin (assuming we need the plugin) adding a CDN (side note I will just be serving one country) will help things to speed up? For example a CDN like flyingpress cdn that was recommended to me. Does it make sense?
The same for if you use an apache + nginx system using wp rocket and adding this flyingpress cdn for example will help speed up things even more?
I read that breeze can work well with nginx but th questions is, is it better that a LiteSpeed based server?
Can just someone also explain me how do these stuff operate between them? Like what having a LiteSpeed server will do to the wp site, what’s its function. Then if we need the LiteSpeed wp plugin what will its function be? Then adding to the mix a CDN how does it fit in the ecosystem?
Side question, where in all of this, a webp image conversion happens? Do I need short pixel or similar? I believe so, then how does it fits in the whole ecosystem?
Going back to the plugins, I read that wp rocket and Perfmatters ha different purposes, for example Perfmatters doesn’t do cache. So whatever the combination one goes with, is it worth using Perfmatters to its extra functionalities?
Thanks in advance and hope to understand this to decide what’s the best way to go.
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There’s no right / single answer – if there was, everyone would use the exact same stack.
You should test everything – use tools like PageSpeed Insights, [https://speedvitals.com/](https://speedvitals.com/), [https://gtmetrix.com/](https://gtmetrix.com/)
*”For example can I have apache + nginx + wp rocket?” -* Yes – that is the stack I use (via RunCloud.io). I will sometimes use a CDN if the website’s audience is global. There’s no need for a CDN if your website is for local users and the server is located near them. I use BunnyCDN when needed.
Yes, you can use the LS plugin on a non LS server. A lot of people like that plugin, it has a lot of good features, and is free.
What you are asking help with, people spend years learning how to optimize things.
It is trial and error to get things going and done well.
Do you have MemCaching or object caching enabled ?
Are you sticking with Nginx or LiteSpeed ?
It is one or the other.
Also a lot of the well know WordPress hosting companies offer an optimization plugin where you can do caching and minification of html JavaScript, etc
Everyone pretty much uses the CLOUDFLARE CDN and Firewall it is the gold standard.
Also for 25 dollars a months, CLOUDFLARE offers their Pro plan which allows you further optimizations, on top of the CDN.
Use GTMetrix for understanding where your website slows down. It is free up to a certain amount of tests.
Try not to use a page builder, but in my case even with 3 Elementor plugins, my site loads in 250 milliseconds.
Honestly these days, as long as your site loads in 1.5 seconds or less you don’t need to do any work at all. You could spend months trying to optimize to take it down further and further. But anything less than 1 second. The human eye will not notice it.
As a matter of fact, at the 2 second mark and above, humans will notice it and might punish you, but anything. Less than 1.5 seconds, you are good to go.
All else being equal, I find litespeed to always be faster out of the box. That doesn’t mean you can’t squeeze similar performance out of apache or nginx, but out of the gate litespeed has always been faster in my experience.
As far as the litespeed plugin…strictly speaking no, you don’t *need* it. But you’d have to do all of your config manually on the server and WP would have no way to trigger a purge. Inversely, the plugin won’t do jack without a litespeed server.
For image conversions, your best bet is to upload optimized webp images from the start. There’s no reason to do the conversion upstream when you could just optimize them on your desktop before uploading in the first place.
The primary use of a CDN is to serve your resources from a location closer to your users. You’ll have limited benefits if you have a local audience. But if you have users all over the world or you serve just a metric fuckton of media, a CDN helps distribute the load from optimized locations.
Another caveat.
Lots of people like dynamic CMS tools like WordPress for their authoring ease. But also, they often are building mostly static sites.
Consider using a static site plugin, or maybe a Cloudflare or similar CDN to serve static content. Then it mostly doesn’t matter.
Ecommerce sites and sites that users login to are different of course.
Kadence and Gutenberg block is golden. You are more than half way there by using those. You are shaving almost half a second by using those by themselves.
I think you are overthinking it, you will be fine with the setup you have of Nginx and a caching plugin, like wp rocket, also GTMetrix will give yo detailed results and for each section, they will give you instructions on how to fix it.