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I’ve been researching and learning about speed optimizations for Wordpress for the last couple of months. Bluehost has always been slow for me in Vietnam, and while I didn’t think I could change that in the end (I am not so sure it is their fault really), why not try to do some enhancements?

In the end, after spending many hours reading and trying out different things, here are my suggestions. I won’t go into too much detail on everything, if you’re hard core, you’ll be able to read up by yourself, but let’s assume you just want to do some quick and easy things to noticeably help your blog site out.

That’s what this guide is for.

First, look into installing Firebug and YSlow (the screenshot above is YSlow running for my site) for Firefix: Firebug and YSlow (you need Firebug in order to run YSlow) are Firefox extensions from Yahoo that helps you understand how your site is slow. Oftentimes, it’s not just purely the max download size of your site that causes slowdown, it’s how the files are processed by your browser- the best comparison I can think of, though not entirely accurate, is traffic on a freeway. Let’s say you have 100 cars. If you have 5 lanes, 20 cars per lane may not be so bad. But if you put all 100 cars into just one lane, there will be major slowdown. Using tools like YSlow can help you see if you’re really using all 5 lanes for your web site. When running YSlow, remember to choose “Small Site or Blog” under “Rulesets" in the upper middle area of the interface. YSlow (Why Slow?) will give you a numeric grade based on how well optimized your site is (I got 100%!). Again, it doesn’t guarantee that your site is fast, it’s more about finding big issues that you may be able to fix and YSlow has great documentation to explain what each of their scores mean.

Of course, how to actually improve the scores is the hard part, so let’s identify some ways that can help with the common problems identified by YSlow.

1. PHP Speedy. PHP sites often use PHP Speedy in order to help quicken things, and guy who wrote it has done a Wordpress-specific version as well. I’ve compared it to other plugins or sets of plugins that do similar things, but PHP Speedy seems to to the best choice. Be wary of running multiple plugins that do the same thing, as that could could slower speeds. PHP Speedy by default loads JavaScript files at the top of your CSS, but you can hack it so it will load at the bottom (your site will feel like it’s loading faster). You can also let Speedy gzip and minimy (basically makes your files smaller) your site for smaller downloading size, though you should let your server handle that if possible, like in your .htacess file….
2. Your .htaccess is another big way to not only make your site more secure but also improve its speed. If you’re not sure what this is, basically look for this file in your root directory. Here are some optimizations in mine, which include Zlib compression, .htaccess file protection from outside access, some basic DOS-attack prevention, cache optimization, and ETags settings. If you get any errors, you may want to check with your Hosting Service to make sure they support all the settings below; it took me a long time to figure out which compression settings would work on Bluehost. Just paste this in your root .htaccess file:
   

   # php_flag zlib.output_compression On

   # protect the htaccess file
   <files .htaccess>
   order allow,deny
   deny from all
   </files>

   # disable the server signature
   ServerSignature Off

   # limit file uploads to 10mb
   LimitRequestBody 10240000

   #ETAGS/CACHE

   FileETag MTime Size
   <ifmodule mod_expires.c>
     <filesmatch "\.(jpg|gif|png|css|js)$">
          ExpiresActive on
          ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year"
      </filesmatch>
   </ifmodule>

   # disable directory browsing
   Options All -Indexes

3. FastCGI: Ask your hosting service about it.
4. cSprites: cSprites uses a technique called CSS Sprites to eliminate multiple loading of images. Let’s say you have 10 different images on your post. Instead of making the browser download 10 images (browser has to ask the server 10 times, back and forth), you can combine all those images into 1 larger image. The user can’t tell the difference in terms of the images, but on the system, it’s usually faster overall this way. One problem I noticed, however, is that it may not work with caching plugins well…, which I discuss next.
5. Caching Plugins: Most people probably know about WP Super Cache. WP Super Cache is a super popular caching plugin, but I’ve been using DB Cache and Hyper Cache. Some people, including me, have tried using both together, and like the results. I have been using both for a couple of months and I like what I see so far. Like I said though, cSprites isn’t quite 100% compatible with caching plugins yet, but the author has said he’s working on a version that will be.

So there you go. If you don’t know how to install plugins or have a friend who can help, then I suggest not tampering with anything as if something goes wrong, you won’t know how to get the site back up.

As for I Spit Hot Fire, with these new changes you should hopefully feel that the site is fairly quick (especially if you’re from the US), but if you don’t let me know!

With the caching settings enabled in my .htaccess file, you should also notice that your browser downloads virtually nothing each time you come back to the site (see screenshot), really making things quick.

By the way, here are some sites that go into more detail about if your site code is validated (follows standards, is clean and causes no problems) and how fast your site really is:

• Techhive.Net / Xinu – Check your site’s PageRank, backlinks, feed subscribers, xhtml/css validation and more.
• Web Page Analyzer
• Is My Blog Working? – let you know the general loading speed of your site, if your site supports gzip and caching, etc.
• Web Page Performance Test
• Cache Testing – make sure your site lets your browser cache properly- critical for fast loading speeds on the second and following visits

Next: I’ll tackle some common plugins I like a lot, including security tools.

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