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Need For Site Speed: Why I Wish I Had This Fruit Stand Owner’s Problems

Last Updated on March 12, 2018

site speed ranking factor image I read a news story the other day about a Los Angeles fruit-stand owner who was complaining about a rash of high-speed chases in downtown L.A.

His exact words:

“Every week, as many as 10 high-speed auto chases, either comical or dramatic in nature, come roaring past my corner, sending my cardboard-box-mounted pyramid of oranges flying in all directions. If these chases are not curtailed, I will have no choice but to declare bankruptcy and take up work as a sheet-glass courier.”

What does it have to do with your blog speed? Probably nothing other than the fact I wish I had that fruit-stand owner’s problems with speed.

In my previous post on site speed as a ranking factor, I gave away 6 very practical and  VERY easy tips on how to improve your site speed.

Now it’s time for some FAIRLY easy things to do to hurry up that great blog of yours.

Let’s talk about some plugins.

I know I told you to get rid of all unnecessary plugins and it still stands.

However, it doesn’t pertain to the plugins that WILL improve your site’s performance, and these are some of them.

Warning: before you run off to install any/all of them, make sure you back up your blog – good idea whenever you change your blog. I use WordPress EZ Backup plugin for that – mostly because, well… it’s easy. Also, any of these plugins might not be compatible with your theme – some of them did not work with mine.

OK, so here we go:

W3 Total Cache

– this one is like WP Super Cache on steroids – it will cache every aspect of your site and decrease the download time of your theme. A must.

WP Minify

– this plugin will combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time. If you don’t know what they heck JS and CSS are, you’ll be in good hands with this plugin, since it’ll do all the work for you.

Autoptimize

– works similarly to WP Minify; has actually a few more features. For the technically inclined, it concatenates all scripts and styles, minifies and compresses them, adds expires headers, caches them, and moves styles to the page head, and scripts to the footer. It also minifies the HTML code itself, making your page really lightweight.

cSprites

– automatically compresses your images into a big sprite, decreasing web page load time.

More on that:

CSS Sprites are a great way to reduce your loading time by combining a bunch of small images into a big one using CSS tricks. Nothing changes as far as your readers are concerned, but what it does is reduces the amount of times the browser has to go back to the server (this process of going back and forth is call “HTTP requests“) requesting to load each images separately.

So for instance, if you have 10 images on your page, the browser has to go back to the server 10 times, thus obviously decreasing your site and page load speed. If you create a “sprite” out of those 10 images, you’ll create 1 big image containing all 10 of them within. So now your browser goes back only once.

That’s what the plugin does for you.

I am also going to give you an alternative to cSprites plugin.

You can do the same thing by hand by going to http://spriteme.org/. From their page, you simply drag and drop their “SpriteMe” bookmarklet to your “favorites” toolbar. After you do that, every time you are on the page you need to create a sprite for, just click on “SpriteMe” and it will give you a code, which you download to your blog like you would a regular image.

If you have any trouble with this way of doing it, here is another suggestion: http://csssprites.com/.

WP Smush.it

– another plugin to help you with image optimization. Every image you add to a page or post will be automatically run through Smush.it behind the scenes. You don’t have to do anything different. You can also optimize your old images by running them through Smush.it in your media library.

One more plugin to speed up your site; this time for mobile users.

WP Touch

– automatically transforms your WP blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

Face it: we live in the world on the go, and our blogs need to go where our readers go. This is a must-have plugin to speed up the load time on a cell phone. Less scrolling and less junk than other plugins of the kind.

Learn more about WordPress plugins mobile.

Marketing Takeaway

Just as I noted before, just because these plugins exist doesn’t mean that you need all of them or that they will work with your theme. Try them out, make sure your blog doesn’t malfunction, and most importantly, make sure your blog performs better with these plugins. Only then decide to keep the ones you like best.

YOUR TURN: What other plugins do you use to increase your site speed?

Love it or hate it? Comment to show me that you’ve alive!

ana hoffman seo link buildingana hoffman yournetbiz

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21 Intelligent comments · espresso yours below

  1. Anne says

    September 30, 2011 at 10:57 pm

    Hello Ana,
    Thanks for sharing this post. These site speed tips are indeed very helpful to us particularly to our Google ranking. Our site needs to load fast since it is needed. Thanks a lot again!

  2. Sheila Atwood@newbielifeline.com says

    December 22, 2010 at 6:30 am

    Ana,

    Thanks for the speed tips. I will be sending others to this post.

    I have to agree that reader experience is the most important.

    I have super cash on, but I will be checking out W3 Total Cash and smush.it.

  3. Michele @NewBizBlogger says

    November 3, 2010 at 7:10 am

    Hi Ana,

    I’ve use most of these and they really have made a difference. W3 Total Cache unfortunately breaks my site, so I’ve used W3 Super Cache which I think works just as good.

    cSprites seems interesting…haven’t heard of that one. Will have to give it a try since I include a lot of images on my site. Will look into doing it manually though as I have sooo many plugins already. =)

    Thanks for sharing this list! Ciao!

    • Ana Hoffman says

      November 3, 2010 at 9:23 am

      I know what you are saying about using too many plugins, Michele. Time to lighten up the load? 🙂

      I personally use Smush.it on my site; easy and works great.

      Thanks for coming by!

      Ana

  4. JBR says

    October 28, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    Great post, thanks. Site speed is being used in Google rankings now, which is why this is all the more important.

    How many of these plugins overlap in their functions? I don’t use W3 Total Cache yet, but doesn’t it also do minifying? How about smushing?

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 30, 2010 at 10:25 am

      You are very right; many of these plugins overlap in their functions.

      W3 Total Cache does do minifying, but not smushing.

      Ana

  5. Andrew @ Blogging Guide says

    October 25, 2010 at 3:32 am

    Ana,

    As I said in my last post, I use w3-total-cache and it shaved off a few seconds of my load speed.

    I also use smush.it.

    cSprites is a new one for me and I shall investigate.

    Re: backups.

    I use BackupBuddy – it backs up my whole blog not just the databases.

    Andrew

  6. bryan says

    October 24, 2010 at 5:24 am

    Wow Ana,

    That’s quite a list for site speed. I shall call you the Queen of Site Speed 😀 Very helpful list here. Now time to see what it can do especially Minify and cSprites.

  7. Larry Rivera says

    October 24, 2010 at 3:28 am

    Hi Ana thanks for sharing all these speed boosting tweaks. I have been steadily working towards speeding my blog up.

    I know there is a lot you can do , sometimes though it comes down to hosting. I use several different hosting companies, I have noticed a huge different in performance just by switching hosting services.

    I have noticed that sometimes you have to be careful with plugins because not all of them play well with each other.

    Thanks for sharing!

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 26, 2010 at 6:36 pm

      Hello Larry,

      Yes you have a point there. We need to check the plugins first before using it and make sure that they can work well together.

      All the best,

      Ana

  8. Richard says

    October 23, 2010 at 10:24 pm

    Hi Ana,
    Great list of plugins. I’ve been using w3 total cache on my site and things are running faster. I also used many of the tips that you gave in your last post about site speed and my blog is loading much faster now.

    Do you recommend running more than one of these plugins at a time? For instance w3 total cache and minify together?

  9. Moon Hussain says

    October 23, 2010 at 11:30 am

    I see some crazy plugins here…… I have to check out the WP Smush.it. Nothing worse than a slow, slow site loading.

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 23, 2010 at 7:01 pm

      I love WP Smush.it – really does the job well with no effort on your part.

      Have a great weekend, Moon!

      Ana

  10. Steve@Lifestyle Design says

    October 23, 2010 at 9:51 am

    Wow, this is some really awesome stuff. I can’t wait to play around with them and see what it does for site speed. Thanks Ana!!

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 23, 2010 at 7:00 pm

      Welcome, Steve; let me know how it goes.

      Ana

  11. Roy Scribner says

    October 22, 2010 at 8:22 am

    Very cool list, Ana – I actually have WP Touch on my list of apps to try. Are you running it, here?

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 23, 2010 at 6:52 pm

      Hate to admit it, but haven’t gotten to it yet, Roy; it’s on my list as well.

      I definitely need to hurry up and install it though; I tried my blog on my phone and it was painful. 🙂

      Ana

  12. Sean@SEO Marketing says

    October 22, 2010 at 7:29 am

    Great share Ana! Yep site speed matters now – not a whole lot, but it’d be neat for both your readers and search engines if your site loads as fast as it possibly can.

    • Ana Hoffman says

      October 22, 2010 at 9:07 am

      Definitely, Sean.

      My primary concern would be my readers – the fact that my ranking might benefit from it is the icing on the cake. 🙂

      Thanks for coming by!

      Ana

      • Sean says

        October 23, 2010 at 12:44 am

        Yep it’s definitely just icing on the cake

        I plan to get more involved here in your blog – especially since I’m planning to guest post here every once in a while (once a week would be ideal) 🙂

        Cooking up another one tonight for ‘ya

        Thanks Ana!

        • Ana Hoffman says

          October 23, 2010 at 6:51 pm

          Look forward to it!

          Ana

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