How to Optimize WordPress Performance

25 Lessons / 3.21 hours by Zack Tollman in ,

optimize_wpZack Tollman loves WordPress performance. He has worked to optimize WordPress for peak performance on a number of sites. In this course, he shares all of the tips and secrets he’s collected over his experienced career.

The course begins by introducing a number of simple tools we can use to measure performance – if you can measure it, you can optimize it! Zach also starts off with explaining some of the most basic principles to website performance, from server response time through the entire cascade of HTTP requests and browser rendering. From there, we’ll focus on some of the server-side configurations you can do to improve site performance and then progress towards optimizing the rendering path on the front-end so that the most important elements load first and fastest.

The topic here is quite advanced, but Zack explains it with such relatable, easy-to-understand concepts that viewers of all skill levels will be able to follow along. He’s a master, and we’re thrilled to host him!

You must be a WPSessions Member to access this course. Become a member

Already a member? Please sign in.

Lessons

1 Measuring Site Performance 21:08
1.1 If You Can Measure, You Can Optimize 1:10
1.2 Using Query Monitor 3:51
1.3 Conducting Remote Performance Tests 14:58
1.4 Performance Recap 1:09
2 Installing Memcached 21:18
2.1 Intro to Object Caching 4:17
2.2 Installing & Testing Memcached 4:47
2.3 Teach PHP to speak Memcached 3:12
2.4 Teaching WordPress to use Memcached 9:02
3 Using Object Caching 30:28
3.1 Analyzing a Poor-Performing Plugin 9:36
3.2 Introducing Caching to a Plugin 8:06
3.3 How to Refresh the Cache on the Back-End 12:46
4 Using Bat Cache 27:07
4.1 Intro to Page Caching 1:49
4.2 Using Siege to Test Performance 11:23
4.3 Installing Bat Cache 7:37
4.4 Testing Bat Cache using Siege 6:18
5 Using Varnish 29:54
5.1 Intro to Varnish 2:24
5.2 Installing Varnish 4.0 7:10
5.3 Configuring Varnish to Cache WordPress 14:44
5.4 Testing Varnish Performance with Siege 5:36
6 Improving Front-End Performance 1.5 hours
6.1 Another look at WebPageTest.org 11:30
6.2 Minifying & Concatenating JS and CSS 17:37
6.3 DNS Prefetch Explained! 7:59
6.4 Forcing jQuery (and other JS) into the footer 10:31
6.5 Loading web fonts asynchronously 11:52
6.6 Final Performance Results & Explanation 3:59