Webpage speed Timing standards in WordPress

Webpage speed can be divided into two different categories: First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOMContent Loaded (DCL).

First Contentful Paint (FCP) is the time it takes for you to see the first piece on content on a webpage after you’ve landed there.

Typically, webpages load each element individually, but not all at the same time. Have you ever clicked on a webpage to find that the top half has loaded, but the bottom half is still working on it? Or have you landed on a webpage where some parts appear first, and then more detailed parts appear second? Then you’ve experienced First Contentful Paint (FCP). The various parts of a webpage don’t load all at once. DOMContent Loaded (DCL) is the time it takes for every bit of code on the top and bottom of a webpage to load. That includes everything in the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and everything else that comes after.

“...load is not a single moment in time—it’s an experience that no one metric can fully capture.

There are multiple moments during the load experience that can affect whether a user perceives it as ‘fast’, and if you just focus on one you might miss bad experiences that happen during the rest of the time.”

TECHNICALLY! WHY IT MATTERS?

Once your page loads, users form an opinion in .05 seconds. Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed influences their likeliness to buy Only 15% of websites operate at an acceptable page speed 57% of visitors leave a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load Three of the top four SEO UX signals are page-speed-dependent

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs.

"Google"

WORDPRESS SPECFIC :

Studies show that from 2000 to 2016, the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 7 seconds. What does this mean for you as a website owner? You have very little time to show users your content and convince them to stay on your website.

A slow website means users will potentially leave your website before it even loads. According to a StrangeLoop case study that involved Amazon, Google, and other larger sites, a 1 second delay in page load time can lead to 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

No Coding solution:

Install a WordPress Caching Plugin To build your pages, WordPress has to run a process to find the required information, put it all together, and then display it to your user. This process involves a lot of steps, and it can really slow down your website when you have multiple people visiting it at once. That’s why we recommend every WordPress site use a caching plugin. Caching can make your WordPress site anywhere from 2x to 5x faster.

Optimize Images for Speed

Images bring life to your content and help boost engagement. Researchers have found that using colored visuals makes people 80% more likely to read your content. However, if your images aren’t optimized, then they could be hurting more than helping. In fact, non-optimized images are one of the most common speed issues that we see on beginner websites.

WordPress Performance Optimization Best Practices

1. Keep Your WordPress Site Updated.

2. Optimize Background Processes.

3. Use Excerpts on Homepage and Archives.

4. Split Comments into Pages.

5. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

6. Don't Upload Audio/Video Files Directly to WordPress.

7. Use a Theme Optimized For Speed.

8. Use Faster Plugins.

software utility cron

The software utility cron also known as cron job is a time-based job scheduler in Unix- like computer operating systems. Users that set up and maintain software environments use cron to schedule jobs (commands or shell scripts) to run periodically at fixed times, dates, or intervals.

Tasks like cron jobs for scheduled posts and updates have minimal impact on website performance. However, other background processes like backup plugins and excessive crawling by search engines can slow down a website. For backup plugins, you need to make sure that your WordPress backup plugin only run during low traffic time on your website. You also need to adjust the frequency of backups and data that needs to be backed up.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

For example, let’s say your web hosting company has its servers in the United States. A visitor who’s also in the United States will generally see faster loading times than a visitor in India. Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), can help to speed up loading times for all of your visitors.

A CDN is a network made up of servers all around the world. Each server will store “static” files used to make up your website. These static files include unchanging files such as images, CSS, and JavaScript, unlike your WordPress pages which are “dynamic” as explained above.

When you use a CDN, every time a user visits your website they are served those static files from whichever server is closest to them. Your own web hosting server will also be faster since the CDN is doing a lot of the work.

Reduce Database Calls

little more technical and will require basic knowledge of PHP In this example, every time you see

<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="<?ph

language_attributes(); ?>">

<head profile="https://gmpg.org/xfn/11">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="<?php

bloginfo('html_type'); ?>

charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />p        

But if you are customizing your site using a child theme, then you can replace these database calls with your specific information in order to reduce all those database calls.

<html xmlns="https://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr"
<head profile="https://gmpg.org/xfn/11">


<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-
8" />>        

Optimize WordPress Database

After using WordPress for a while, your database will have lots of information that you probably don’t need any more. For improved performance, you can optimize your database to get rid of all that unnecessary information. This can be easily managed with the WP-Sweep plugin. It allows you to clean your WordPress database by deleting things like trashed posts, revisions, unused tags, etc. It will also optimize your database’s structure with just a click. See our guide on how to optimize and clean up your WordPress database for improved performance.

Limit Post Revisions

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 4 );        

Use Lazy Loading if Needed

If you add many images, multiple video embeds, and photo galleries to your blog posts, then your site can benefit from lazy loading. Instead of loading all your images and videos at once, lazy loading downloads only those that will be visible on the user’s screen. It replaces all other images and video embeds with a placeholder image. As a user scrolls down, your website loads images that are now visible in the browser’s viewing area. You can lazy load images, videos, and even WordPress comments and gravatars. For images, iframes, and videos, you can use the Lazy Load by WP Rocket plugin. For WordPress comments see our guide on how to lazy load comments in WordPress.

Use Latest PHP Version

WordPress is mainly written in the PHP programming language. It is a server side language, which means it is installed and runs on your hosting server. All good WordPress hosting companies use the most stable PHP version on their servers. However, it is possible that your hosting company is running a slightly older PHP version.