I feel defeated trying to optimize this WP website. Is there such thing as a company that actually edits the code of your wordpress site to make it run more efficiently or do they just do the general steps to speed up a site? Because I have done all of those with no success.
What I’ve done:
* Siteground wordpress hosting (I know there’s dedicated hosting but im not going that far)
* stackpath CDN ( I remember researching this awhile back and this was one of the best)
* Image optimization plugin to convert to WebP & AVIF
* siteground optimization plugin with half the things turned on (I couldnt turn everything on because it broke the site)
So im thinking if I hire someone what else would they do differently? Do they actually edit things in the code so that I can actually turn on all the optimization settings? Or removing unnecessary bloat code?
​
[ad_2]
Determine the root cause first, then fix it.
Editing the code of your site to run faster is a very broad term, and sure there’s companies that’ll do just that, but at this point you’re asking for someone to basically alter or create a theme so the cost is accordingly.
Sent you a message with a few questions. I can help.
Server – Siteground is reasonable, I’ve managed decent speeds there
Theme – Which theme?
Plugins – Which plugins are you using? Page builder?
Images – Is GTMetrix prompting large image file sizes?
Optimization – Make sure Siteground’s optimization and your CDN are playing nicely, with cache implemented. Look for cache hits
Your hosting might be the bottleneck. A good hire can sort that out plus other things like big ass PNG files or uncompressed jpg
Use google pagespeed insights and read all the documentation and suggestions and adjust code and/or use wp plugins that do this for you. I have yet to find a site that I did not manage to get to an A for a client
It seems like there’s something big that you’re missing. It’s really hard to get an F on GTmetrix because that’s measuring desktop performance. Your site would be completely unusable on mobile.
Try webpagetest.org and run a 4g mobile test. Look at your waterfall and find out what’s render blocking. You’re likely to have a lot of css and JS there that you could work on.
Do you have large images or videos loading? Use browser dev tools and look at the images in the network tab to see what’s loading.
Run pagespeed.web.dev will give you mobile results and show you some of your bigger issues too. GTmetrix default scan is usually only good for pumping your ego with its desktop scan. You always get the best “scores” from that test. That’s why it’s concerning that yours are so low on that one.
Most of it can be done with plugins like WP Rocket, image optimizer and a bit Googling. You have to determine if it’s structured DOM blocks, defer js files, minify js & css. My site was once that level and now it’s A grade.
I used to do this sort of work in support of high availability and high traffic sites. Happy to point you in the right direction if you post a link to your site.
I have had people hire me to speed up their sites but while I like getting paid, I am never comfortable with the results after two or three months. For the most part, optimization really should be an ongoing process and you should consider everything you do through a performance lens.
Feel free to DM if you’d like me to take a look at your site. But my preference would be to give you the tools and knowledge you need to do it yourself. That way, you can keep things going fast into the future instead of getting me to do it, watching your performance regress and then calling me up again in a couple of months.
I don’t do wordpress hosting or managed hosting.
I think crappy coded theme or plugins is the problem.
I remove any plugins that have not been updated in 6 months or longer, used to be 12 months.
Image optimization is key as well.
Also, you don’t need 3000 x 3000 photos.
Also, the whole “too many plugins” is BS. You could have 3 plugins and 1 is bloated and crap coded. It will slow down your site.
Also, so many themes have features that it should be plugin territory.
GTMetrix provides additional details on what is causing the poor performance. Without seeing what it is flagging, it’s hard to tell what the problem(s) could be.
What type of hosting do you have with Siteground? Shared? They call it “Web Hosting” but it’s still shared hosting.
Have you minimized HTML, CSS, and JavaScript? Cached all 3 and leveraged browser caching? Have you optimized images to reduce size? How many plugins do you have installed? Have you eliminated render-blocking of CSS and/or JavaScript?
Have you tried Google Lighthouse? That will also give you details on what is causing performance issues.
There are a lot of questions that can be asked but without seeing what the results are, it’s kind of a needle in a haystack situation for any of us to provide you any guidance.
Depending on your current setup and how complex it may be, one of the cheapest and easiest steps is switching hosting. Site ground has a terrible reputation for performance among professionals in this field and qualified developers.
SG is okay if you’re just starting out because it’s low cost, but it’s problematic when you grow. And from a direct experience, in a web-agency context, I can tell you that IT/server admins I know “caught” SG support lying. This web-agency had to migrate their 500+ websites with another provider, and all performance-related problems “magically” disappeared.
You can look into Kinsta and WP Engine, no need for a dedicated server unless you have crazy amounts of traffic.
I made a video a while ago about this topic (choosing good hosting services) maybe it can help. Most videos and websites about hosting services are just a bunch of affiliate links that will not bring you concrete benefits.
If you’re looking for performance optimization specialists, I know some that I can recommend, but in general it must be worth it to hire someone for this reason, since they aren’t cheap. If you’re currently generating good revenue, probably it is worth it since page load speed directly affect that
By the way, if you have a very static and simple website then yes, often using Autoptimize and similar plugins will bring you a big performance boost right away. If you have something more complex, e.g. e-commerce or a membership website or even a small social network (e.g. with BuddyBoss), plugins alone are rarely enough. And like you said some of them will break your website because they don’t work well with some plugins or specific types of caching
Install LiteSpeed plugin and enable opcache and object cache (memcached).
Also install Query Monitor plugin and it will tell you if there’s a bad plugin that is causing slowness.
PM me your website and I will examine your site and give you some pointers. There is something obvious you are missing.
Open your site in an incognito window in chrome and inspect it, then navigate to the lighthouse tab. Run a pagespeed insights report and check the feedback. From a brief glance at your screenshot, that very high LCP time suggests you have a very large image or video at the top of the page that is not well optimised.
Siteground is a decent host and I work with a number of clients on that platform with solid performance metrics so it’s not down to the hosting platform.
Edit: looking at your previous post about Revolution Slider, I would suspect its your slider causing the LCP problem.
I had a very positive experience with it. Paid $300, the guy went over everything with me on Zoom and we just did troubleshooting for hours. Got the site to an A and it’s been there ever since