I am trying to speed up my wordpress site. In this case, it is powered by Visual Composer. We have attempted to speed up the site using smaller images, static text, and CDN-movement of movies.
However, I am being told by a service that Visual Composer is the main culprit on why the website is extremely slow. I have no idea how to begin troubleshooting this, and I am asking this group if anyone has had this told to them and what they did about it.
My Site is https://www.trekfederation.com/
Anything to start with would be greatly appreciated.
You shouldn't use Visual Composer. Have a theme custom made so you don't have extra bloat in your site. Visual Composer creates plugin madness and bloats your database. Its not a quick process but making a brand new theme or starting with one of WordPress's themes and making it your own is your best bet. You could also hire someone to do it.
I too was curious about the same question and could not find a reasonably satisfactory answer to my question and so I decided to test the results with and without VC using https://gtmetrix.com/
Following are the results:
Speed before creating the page; using Visual Composer:
Speed of page; when created with Visual Composer:
There is a drastic fall in the speed; having said that; if you tend to use Visual composer some of the premium themes; which have been optimized for VC, you will not face such issues. Wowmall is one such theme on themeforest; which has a decent speed. They do use VC and also provide it free with the purchase of their theme.
Here is the checklist I follow to make sure my WordPress sites do not slow down.
Test the themes well before implementing them on the live project (generally use https://gtmetrix.com/ https://tools.pingdom.com/ https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Use Max CDN for content delivery network https://www.maxcdn.com/
Use w3 total cache plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/ (I stick to free version; unless I expect high traffic on the website)
Use a minimum number of plugins; it's very tempting to use some plugin to get things done quickly however it may backfire in terms of speed.
PS: you can consider https://wpengine.com/ for hosting solution; I have not personally used their services, however, know that they take care of caching needs quite effectively.
EDIT:
I have also observed the Revolution slider script slow down the website, whether or not the slider is used on the page; the js runs once the plugin is activated.
To conclude Wordpress is a double-edged sword; if not wisely used will result in a poor web performance.
Okay, so this turned out to be fairly curious - I was able to figure out what the developer has done to trick Google Page Speed (and me).
I have attached a screenshot.
He checked for user-agent-string for Google Page Speeds Lighthouse and then shows it a screenshot of a website instead of the website itself. He even shows separate screenshots for mobile and desktop and has added some CSS animations to make the loading seem more realistic.
Related
I’m looking for some advice when it comes to custom CMS development.
Wordpress has been perfect for me before a became a developer. I used to use page builders like Elementor & WPBakery.
When developing within WP, would I need to develop a page-builder for people (without coding knowledge) to edit their pages? I’m aware of Gutenberg, is that able to edit coded pages or would it not be able to read anything as it wasn’t built using Gutenberg?
If so, would it not be better to develop a Custom CMS similar to Wordpress? That way you are able to offer a blank canvas CMS that you can brand as your own?
Thanks in advance.
Interesting question! It will require some prior research on your part, as there is no obvious answer. Below are my thoughts on the matter, but it the decision is yours to make, as the project requirements are unique and also the time you can invest in it.
When developing within WP, would I need to develop a page-builder for people (without coding knowledge) to edit their pages?
A: No. Gutenberg is perfect for this.
I’m aware of Gutenberg, is that able to edit coded pages or would it not be able to read anything as it wasn’t built using Gutenberg?
A: It won't read anything that wasn't made with it, but you can try recreating those pages with it. Depends on the design, but it shouldn't be hard. If it is a site for a client, you can ask them to recreate one or two pages and see how they feel. They will answer this question for you :)
That way you are able to offer a blank canvas CMS that you can brand as your own?
A: You can "rebrand" the WordPress admin with such a plugin
If so, would it not be better to develop a Custom CMS similar to Wordpress?
A: It all depends on how comfortable you feel with WordPress and Gutenberg, code-wise. You can do pretty much anything, if you understand the PHP, React (Gutenberg is written in React) and logic behind WP, so you won't need a custom CMS. Again, it all depends on your skills with the technologies. If you rate yourself a 10/10, no need to think about it, but I guess you wouldn't be asking this question, if you were.
Pros of going with WordPress and Gutenberg:
You already have all the necessary tools.
A ton of supporting plugins, already developed by other people.
WordPress has one of the most well-maintained codebases out there, so you will have a great start, compared to building a CMS on your own. Even if you decide to create your own plugin, you have a set of rules and practices that you need to adhere to, which is great for starters. You also have all the necessary components - DB, back-end and front-end ready.
Gutenberg is pretty stable right now and you can install the plugin, because the code that is implemented in WP core is not the latest. It is great for building pages, when you don't know code. Look into all the different blocks it offers by default and think if they cover your requirements. There are also a lot of extra blocks you can add.
The popularity of Gutenberg is growing and the community is slowly, but surely moving in that direction, so making this project with Gutenberg would benefit your future career as a WP developer, if you are interested in building one.
On the point of growing community, you will find answers to a lot of the common issues.
Pros of building your own CMS:
You will see the whole process - DB design, connection and expanding. Back-end and front-end development, user authentication and administration. For me this is a con, because there are many unexpected problems, which WP has solved. It is also very time-consuming, so if you have limited time for this project, I would advise against this.
You can make a slim CMS, which covers only your requirements and you will know the ins and outs of the code, so any future changes and expansions will be easier for you to make.
As you said, it will be easier to brand as your own and you can build the Admin side of it however you want, even though there are defined UX standards, which won't allow you to go very wild. It will probably resemble the WP admin in one way or another. Check out these admin page designs, for reference.
Conclusion
Personally, I would go for WordPress and Gutenberg, because I have had mostly bad experiences with building everything on my own. I am not a good enough coder and that is OK, because I can use all of these tools, built by awesome developers before me. So please keep in mind that building your own CMS will take a lot of time, if you want to make it stable and secure. There are also alternatives to WordPress.
How could I test (suggest me the test techniques, or what to test) if the latest version of Wordpress (4.1) is stable for building a company presentation website?
this is more like a kind of assignment, not something real that I have to conduct.
my initial thoughts: the platform is already released, so I would suggest making "domain testing", testing for boundaries and testing for high loads on the system... what do you guys think?
thank you!
For stability testing on the Wordpress you can use some useful tools:
1. WebPageTest
This is one of the most helpful tools available online to help you test the performance of your website. It runs your site from multiple locations around the globe using real browsers and at real consumer connection speeds.
The only disadvantage this site is that you sometime have to wait in queue for other tests to be completed.
http://www.webpagetest.org/
2. Pingdom
Pingdom speed testing is not only free, but also gives you full information about your site’s performance including load time, page size, and a detailed analysis of page. You can also measure how much time it takes to load all the elements on a specific page, you can then use that information to speed up your website.
Other features include testing from multiple locations, performance grade & tips, ability to share the results with your friends, and more.
Apart from all the great features, Pingdom also saves your performance history, so you can review it later and see how things change over time.
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
3. GTMetrix
Another great tool for measuring your site’s performance and fantastic tool to have in your arsenal. This site not only gives you all the useful information you need to develop a faster and more efficient website, but also compresses the images that are slowing down your site for you.
This feature is quite useful, but if you have a ton of images, then you would be better off with Smush.it WordPress plugin.
http://gtmetrix.com/
Also you can use WordPress Split Testing Tools.
If you’re using WordPress, then it’s worth considering a tool designed specifically for the platform. While some of the tools in our last roundup (such as Google Content Experiments and Optimizely) also work with WordPress, here are a few more.
1. AB Press Optimizer
AB Press Optimizer allows you to test variations of page elements such as images and buttons and content, such as headlines and text on a self-hosted WordPress site. To use it, you need the plugin plus the ability to use shortcodes (though you can use PHP if you wish).
You can run and get real time reporting on unlimited experiments with unlimited visitors for the $39 personal license, though you will have to upgrade if you want additional support.
https://abpressoptimizer.com/
2. AB Theme Testing
If you’re running a WordPress site, sometimes you need to get back to design basics and test a couple of themes. That’s where AB Theme Testing is useful. It integrates with Google Analytics so you can see your data in your Analytics account. This plugin costs $19. The developers have used it to tweak their own site, as this case study shows.
https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/ab-theme-testing/
3. Simple Page Tester
Simple Page Tester says it’s an SEO friendly plugin that allows users to setup quick split tests. It works well with caching plugins and is available for free. You’ll need to upgrade to premium to work with custom post types, PHP template tags, Javascript and shortcodes and to get more in-depth analytics.
https://simplepagetester.com/
I am developing a new plugin for wordpress. I will put it on own site which is developed in wordpress, so other can download and use it.
I want to give the revision facility like updated version of plugin with old version available on site and FAQ's etc. is there any plugin which can control this.
Thanks
WordPress was only really developed to manage revisions of posts, not software (as far as I know), but GitHub is pretty cool, you should definitely look into it. You can use it to help you develop and get others to help out too. It makes your work publicly available without you having to purchase any hosting or worry about setting up a site for it.
There is a little bit of a learning curve for git, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be thankful you started using it.
And just to clarify, git is a version control system. GitHub is a place where you can keep your git repository, and it makes your life super easy in doing so.
Here are some research links for you...
https://github.com/
http://git-scm.com/
If you wanted to, you could still create that Wordpress site, but have your commits or tags (not too sure about the latter) tied to a feed, so whenever a new one is up on GitHub, it gets picked up by your site automatically.
Just some food for thought anyway :)...
Good luck!
Should I avoid using a CMS if I want to be able to quickly make good sites with more features/options to customize than Wordpress?
I want to become a better webdeveloper and able to quickly make good, fast, secure websites with lots of functionality without being limited so as I'd be with Wordpress. I don't see writing lots of plug-ins to reach the same functionality as a nice solution for doing my own programming.
I have written a few games, quizzes and other scripts I'd like to be able to recycle or easily adapt to work with the CMS.
I currently have a multi-lingual website that works with a /nl/ and /en/ part, that has a few self-written games I wrote in PHP.
CakePHP has a very good CMS called Croogo. It's still quite a young project (still in beta and being actively developed), but the great thing about it is that its a Cake app so it's coded to the well-documented Cake standards.
Whereas customizing/extending Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal et al would mean you'd have to invest a huge amount of time learning about their respective frameworks, all for the sake of one part of any given website (the CMS), if you learn CakePHP, you're learning a much more advanced and flexible framework that can pretty much be used to do anything well beyond the confines of CMSes.
If you learn Cake (or if you already know Cake) you'll find that you already understand Croogo without having to invest much additional time at all. Code you write in Cake can easily be packaged to be a Croogo plugin and even if Croogo doesn't stay around for the long term (I hope it will!), it wouldn't be difficult to re-factor all the plugins you've written to work in any other Cake-based CMS that comes along in the future, or even your own Cake apps.
Croogo is pretty basic, but quite powerful. It has a Wordpress-like feel to it, it supports nice URLs via an amazing reverse-routing system, the /en/ /nl/ language thing you mentioned works out of the box and it's very easy to get any of the huge array of Cake components and plugins working in harmony with the CMS through the use of hooks.
I'm currently working on a project using joomla and there are a ton of custom features that I need to implement. I usually have to create a plugin or module in that case. It's a pain. I'd much prefer doing most of this from scratch instead of hacking at the code. If I had a choice, I would not use a CMS. I hate them.
I think ultimately it's about long term support. When you build a custom CMS in cake or another framework it is much easier and faster for you to customize and build the way you wan too. This works great if this is a project you are planning on supporting (by this I mean bug/user support for when you unleash this CMS on non devs). This can become a headache pretty fast when things need updates and clients are looking for fixes and changes. It's completely manageable, just more of a headache then something with community support.
That being said, if you are comfortable in wordpress the amount of support that exists in that community is huge. So often times you can leave the project knowing updates for the CMS and plugins will come in at a regular speed.
TLDR So if it's a project you know you will be supporting long term (or people with the same comfort and skill level as you) then I would say build it your self for ease of build and customization. If this is a one off or something you plan on handing off to a client with little to no support, building inside of a community supported platform is best.
I really comes down to priorities, if you what to build a site really fast a CSM is hard to beat, but you do not have the same control over the core as you do when you wright it from scratch.
But you can do most any thing with plugins/modules so the control is there if you are willing to work for it. If you wright it your self you will be the only set of eyes most of the time so it will in most cases be slower to implement new standers and security fix's (because you will need to find them first) but with a CMS you will have many people working to make it better and safe at the same time.
If you want to be well rounded I think youe need to be able to do both, you can't control what the customer wants to use some times.
You can make site very quickly with a CMS like Joomla but the problem is even having over 7000 extensions sometimes for your particular purpose you don't find an extension and developing an extension can be real tough. it requires a comprehensive knowledge of Framework. If all you need to do is manage content CMS is the best choice. If it is like a web app and require more interactions go for some framework which provide the basic skeleton of your app. e.g. for CRUD operation many frameworks provide scaffolding feature and make this thing a piece of cake. CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Kohana are some of the best PHP frameworks you can use.
Using Chinese Cms DedeCms or phpcms And developer it more easily !
I like PHPCMS, it works with nginx, fasctcgi, mysql on linux or windows.
I use it to make portal site or enterprise sites group. The multi-site architecture and PHPSSO works well. Template engine is also strong enough.
take a look at big mysite: xinm123.com
Most important thing: it's open source.
I need to develop a newspaper site in Drupal, I've already played around with Drupal a little, and I think I know which modules would best suit my purposes. Naturally, one of the modules I'll be needing to use most is Views, but I have a couple of questions:
Because this is a content-intensive site, I was wondering if using 5-6 views on each page to generate node teaser + thumbnail lists would impact performance adversely?
I am a designer with significant front-end development experience. Like I said I've played around with Drupal quite a bit and other than running into a few hurdles which I eventually overcame, for the most part I was able to get it to do what I needed it to. Having said that, does one also need strong programming skills to fully develop a site in Drupal?
Thank you very much for your help!
Jane
Views offers caching and Drupal also has block caching, which should help you improve performance. The SQL that Views generates is never as good as handwritten SQL, but if you make simple Views, the SQL is actually quite good and not a performance problem (unless you have millions of page views).
If you can create the features you need, with modules from Drupal.org, you don't need strong developer skills. But you do need to know some PHP to make a Drupal theme which is what controls the layout of the site. It will also be a great help, in understanding the Drupal theming system, but not a requirement.
First off, check out openpublishapp.com for a Drupal distro that is made for publishers from the ground up, it's pretty hot.
To answer your questions:
1) As far as performance and views goes, having 5-6 views on a page is a normal requirement for a drupal news site and the performance issues are usually handled by views/panel cache, and using a page cache like Varnish in front of a web server, Object caches like Memcached (for the DB) and opcode caches like APC...if you don't want to learn all that off the bat you should still be fine if your traffic isn't too intense (but go sign up at getpantheon.com for awesome hosting with all of that and the kitchen sink, and check out groups.drupal.org/pantheon)
2) If the functionality exists by way of core/contrib modules, to fully develop a site for the most part one only needs to understand enough PHP to theme, and often with starter themes like Fusion, and some of the others you hardly even need that, just an understanding of how they work and are extended (which is well documented). That said, if you want functionality that doesn't exist, you'll have to code it, or have someone code it for which strong programming skills are desired, but not necessarily required :)
Even I recommend the use of the OPENPUBLISH - https://www.acquia.com/solutions/publishing
On top of to this you can make an efficient usage of
1. APC - PHP byte-code caching
2. Drupal Caching - block/template/view level caching
3. Boost - Caching module which doesn’t need any external tools
4. Varnish - HTTP accelerator
5. Memcache - Data intensive content.
Apart from this you will also need to think effectively on deciding on DEPLOYMENT ARCHITECTURE of the site - preferably Acquia or Amazon environment.
Learning curve may vary depending on your current skills in PHP or Drupal. Usage of already established distribution like OPENPUBLISH may help you to minimize the dependability on too much custom coding.