wordpress_performance_checklist.md

Wordpress performance checklist

This is a Wordpress performance checklist

Measuring

• Make a performance budget
  • The performance budget calculator is useful to estimate your budget depending on the performance you want to obtain. This one is nice too.
• Measure client side performance; tools like Web Page Test can help you.
• Use tools like Lighthouse to audit your site

Infrastructure

• Use a VPS such as Digital Ocean, Linode or AWS
  • Use newest PHP version
• Install Varnish
• Use Cloudflare
  • Use Cloudflare's Rocket

Development

• Use responsive images with img's' srcset and size attributes
  • If you are using Wordpress 4.x the native functions such as the_post_thumbnail() already does that.
• Enable multiple thumbnail sizes using the function add_image_size()
• Minize the source code (W3 Total Cache does that)

Plugins

• Install Smush.it to compress and limit images max sizes
  • Enable max image size
• Install W3 Total Cache to improve website performance
  • Enable page cache
  • Enable browser cache
  • Enable database cache
  • Enable object cache
• Install Lazy Load to improve page speed and render only images on view port

Maintence

• Keep wordpress updated
• Keep all your plugins updated
• Keep your theme updated
• Remove unused plugins
• Use Wp-Optimize once a week