[Resolved] Site Speed

[Janine]

Hi.

I have a basic site — nothing fancy from what I can see — that I built using GP Premium technology from three years ago.

I read that the three top things for site speed are:

1. theme choice (I choose fast and lean GP.)
2. images (I reduce the size of all my images and compress them.)
3. fonts (I only use two fonts styles on my site; although I don’t know if I am loading more than that)

So why am I getting such poor results on Pingdom and Pagespeeds? See screenshots.

Thank you.

[Tom]

Hi there,

Typically these tools will show you what the issues are/what needs to be improved. I like using Pagespeed Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

The first issue (eliminate render-blocking resources) can be solved with a plugin like Autoptimize: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/configuring-autoptimize/

It also seems like there are quite a few Google Fonts loading. Have you trimmed down the number of Variants to the ones you need?: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/google-font-variants/

Other than that, the main thing causes performance issues is third-party code from Google (GTM etc..).

The most important thing when it comes to performance is your hosting. Make sure you’re using a good host, as your performance will never be good if you’re using slow hosting, regardless of the theme you’re using.

Hope this helps!

[Janine]

Hi there.

Thanks. My host is Cloudways. I use their caching plugin called Breeze. I chose Cloudways because they were said to be fast.

And I thought with all the other steps I have taken: choosing a great theme and optimizing my images I would do better than 45 on PageSpeed.

Thanks for the suggestions — I will see what I can figure out.

BE SAFE. And Happy 2021!

[Tom]

Cloudways is a good host, so you should be good there.

I would try going through the other things listed in the report one by one to see what you can improve. Reducing the number of font files being loaded will definitely help 🙂

[Janine]

Thanks, Tom.

BE SAFE. And a better 2021 for us all!

[Tom]

Thank you! You too 🙂

[Author]

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