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Google Page Speed Insights - Improving Server Response Time - How to?
MTUser2012
Member
in Help
I've been working on getting good GTmetrix scores for my WP sites, and have been getting high 90s now I understand what is involved. After GTMetrix, I tried Google PageSpeed Insights. Its primary complaint above 90 is that my servers are too slow, response times of 550msec compared to Google's "suggestion" that I lower response time to sub 200msec.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Most of my sites are hosted on quality VPS providers like BuyVM. I am using Centos x64 and Virtualmin, standard Apache, MySQL installs.
Comments
Install quick cache on wp.
Install pagespeed for apache, xcache/apc for php and quickcache/hypercache for wordpress.
You need static caching. I prefer W3TC, with APC or Memcached installed for the database & object cache (quick rebuild), static page caching enabled - and serving up static pages via .htaccess instead of making a php request to pull the right static file.
WP Super Cache does the static via .htaccess easily - but doesn't have the extras. If your pages don't need to rebuilt often (not a lot of comments or dynamic elements created by plugins, etc) then it'll work fine.
But whatever you do, do NOT use object and DB cache without memcached. It will actively increase load time and decrease performance. It may take a few days or weeks for it to become true, but it always happens. I've seen it do impressive things with memcached though.
WP Super Cache is usually my go to for simplicity in an average environment.
Keep in mind that server response time is the time the server spends building your application into something that can be served, so unless the server is just way overloaded or terribly configured, the answer is typically found at the application level.
@Jar EasyEngine is dope, should try it out if you haven't. I prefer the --wpfc setup, which is Nginx Fast Cache for the static page cache. Works brilliantly.
If you're running apache in a shared hosting or low memory vps environment (<1GB), then WP Super Cache is the way to go.
Going against the rogue.
Static site generation? I use jekyll for my personal domain, so everything but the front page is cache-able save for when I get sick of the theme.
Nice share! Gonna have some fun toying with that tonight.
Easyengine setup is very fast. On top of that you need to optimize your theme to fit in all google page speed suggestions.
We are developing plugin for WP speedup that will do as much as possible google page speed tasks done on fly.
Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. Some of them are going to require more study. I understand and have set up Super Cache, and it did improve load times at GTMetrix and Page Speed Insights.
If I've installed Super Cache, should I also be using APC and memcached as well or is Super Cache a kind of low end substitute for W3TC/APC/Memcached regimen?
Very nice suggestion guys. I'll try quick cache for WP with memcached.
@MTUser2012 Super Cache is a really simple 'low end' caching solution. I recommend it for shared hosting & if you have a tiny VPS running WP. Adding APC or using PHP 5.5+ with an opcache built in will help immensely. Depending on the plugins and how busy your site is, you'll be rebuilding the cache quite a bit - so shaving off time on the rebuild will help your server hurt less and increase overall performance.
If you have the room, then a simple solution would be to get apc going and crank up the cache size, then instead of WP Super Cache, use W3TC and set the object & db cache to use APC and then just the standard (disk) static page cache.
W3TC + Memcached ++ should only be setup on a 512MB+ (ideally 768-1GB) VPS - otherwise it becomes too heavy and you start swapping like crazy and negate the whole benefit.
I really like EasyEngine - the guys behind it are all about WordPress and figuring out exactly the best way to tweak it, everything is setup near-perfectly. Only thing that can use some work is MySQL tuning on smaller VMs.
If you have some DO/Vultr credits or whatever, just fire up a box and install a test site on it. It works brilliantly. I'm very performance-conscious and I think an optimized Nginx stack w/ nginx fastcache is the way to go for WordPress. I manage dozens of WP sites - from small 50-100 visits/day blogs up to 5-8k visits/day sites and we're always moving clients away from the standard LAMP stack as it gives the user the best results when a page loads near instantly.
It looks like you know a lot about this. I'm currently working on a website that needs to be running as fast as possible when it's done. Would you mind taking a look at it when it's done?