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Comparing the best optimization plugins for WordPress

Comparing the best optimization plugins for WordPress

by | Jan 15, 2021 | Plugin News

Which of the leading contenders has the best optimization plugins for WordPress?

Optimizing a WordPress site is an essential process that can help speed up your site via caching, image optimization and database optimization. It can also improve performance and help you rank higher in search engines. However, as a customer, which one is the best? When looking for the best optimization plugins for WordPress, there are so many to choose from, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction – with all of them making wild promises to make your site faster than a hammer-time Lewis Hamilton!

In the below review, we will evaluate the performance by analyzing all the the top optimization plugins and show you why WP-Optimize should be your plugin of choice. 

What does ‘caching’ do?

An important part of the optimization process is caching. The term ‘cache’ or ‘caching’ refers to when there is a collection of data that is temporarily stored to allow for quick access upon request. Caching for a WordPress site works so that every time a user visits your site, WordPress will fetch previously viewed and stored information from the file system. By using cache, it allows visitors to skip the time consuming step of loading a site for the first time, as the caching plugin has made a copy of the site and presents this copy to the visitor when they return. 

How much of a difference can optimization make?

As optimization and caching reduces the load on your WordPress hosting servers, it can help make your website run faster. However, the optimization and caching for your site needs to be properly optimized and set up in order to get the most from a optimization plugin and help improve your site’s performance and speed.

If your site offers users a faster and more user friendly experience, it can help encourage users to return again in the future, visit more pages or more likely to make purchases. This in turn helps your user engagement time and reduces bounce rate. All of these factors combined (along with other metrics such as quality of content and how often your site is updated) can help boost your SEO score and drive more traffic to your site from organic search. A faster and more optimized site that includes caching and optimization can gain a significant SEO advantage from search engines such as Google, who prioritize and rank sites higher if a site is proven to be quick and maintains good user interaction. 

There are many WordPress optimization plugins out there that claim to help boost your website’s speed through caching, image optimization and database optimization. But which one is really the best?

How we tested the top optimization plugins

To make this test fair and completely aboveboard, a new, unbiased test site was set up. This test site is a basic WordPress site that contains lots of images and content that provides the simplest way to judge each plugin when evaluating its effects on a site’s speed test results when tested using GTMetrix.com. 

The test site

A 3GB sized test that has not been optimized or altered in any way to favour one optimization plugin over another. 

An example of the large scale images uploaded to our test site

Results

For the following speed test, we evaluated the 4 leading optimization plugins – WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP-Rocket and WP-Optimize, as well as a test with no optimization in order to have a base-line to evaluate performance.

Page Speed

PageSpeed ranking gives you an indication of whether or not your front-end (what the browser sees) adheres to best practices for optimal speed. The closer to 100, the faster and more optimized your site is.

YSlow

Like PageSpeed, your YSlow ranking can also be used to give you an indication of whether or not your front-end (what the browser sees) adheres to best practices for optimal speed, with 100 being the perfect score.

Page Size

Depending on your styling, your page could potentially be delivering larger/smaller images and hiding/revealing assets or resources. This impacts the load performance, so the small the page size, the quicker it will load.

As can be seen from the combined results, even the worst performing cache plugin can offer big improvements to a WordPress site. Without an optimization plugin, the average site is losing out massively in comparison to those that have been properly optimized.

In the interest of fairness and to ensure that our test wasn’t a one off or fluke, we also had another member of staff independently test the same optimization plugins on a different test site. The results that he presented below, largely mirror those that we also carried out.

Summary

Following our testing and in-depth analysis when looking for the best caching, image and database optimization plugins for WordPress, it is recommended that if you are looking for the most effective and best optimization plugin on the market, you should install WP-Optimize today as it shows the best overall performance figures of any optimization plugin. As can be seen from these results, WP-Optimize recorded the best loading page speed, ‘YSlow’ score and is very close to the top ranking for Page Size. 

WP-Optimize is easy to set-up and use and with just these few optimization techniques, it can help improve your site’s speed greatly. When evaluating WordPress site optimization, it is important to remember that a properly cached site will not only give visitors a better user experience, but can also help your site succeed via improved SEO score, bounce rate and repeat visits.

By using the WP-Optimize all in one optimization plugin, you will get everything you need to employ the latest optimization features for optimizing your WordPress website. 

Get a copy of WP-Optimize today and increase your website speed. Be sure to let us know your feedback in the comment section below.

The post Comparing the best optimization plugins for WordPress appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

WP-Optimize passes 1 million active installs

WP-Optimize passes 1 million active installs

by | Dec 8, 2020 | Plugin News

Thanks to the support of everyone that downloaded the WP-Optimize plugin, we are thrilled to announce that WP-Optimize has now achieved the massive milestone of 1,000,000 active installs.

This makes WP-Optimize the 52nd most installed WordPress plugin in the world (not including plugins that are pre-installed); a figure that is all the more impressive in such a competitive WordPress market and sector.

While there are several optimization and caching plugins on the market, WP-Optimize is the top ranked when users search for an ‘optimize cache plugin’ and has achieved a 5 star rating. This is a clear declaration of our continued efforts to make the plugin bigger and better and achieving recognition by the WordPress community as the market leading optimization and caching plugin. 

Even during these difficult times, everyone on the WP-Optimize team has continued to work hard to improve the plugin, while still providing support to give users the best possible optimization and caching experience and keeping the plugin up to date with the latest WordPress developments.

From everyone at WP-Optimize, we would like to thank all of our loyal users for getting us to this point. They always say ‘the first million is the hardest’, so a huge ‘thank you’ again and here’s to the next million!

The post WP-Optimize passes 1 million active installs appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

WP-Optimize release latest updates

by | Oct 21, 2020 | Plugin News

The latest updates for WP-Optimize 3.1.4 have now been released. We have been working hard on these improvements for a long time, but the latest update comes with several updates that will help improve overall compatibility and performance.

Some of the updates to WP-Optimize 3.1.4 include the following:

  • Improved compatibility with Elementor
  • Possibility to defer all the minified files
  • Automatic purging of Cloudflare cache (Premium)

With the ‘Automatic purging of Cloudflare cache (Premium) update, users can save time by connecting a Cloudflare account directly to WP-Optimize. Any-time the cache of a post or page is purged, the cache for that post on Cloudflare will also be automatically purged. This means that there is no need to connect to your Cloudflare account for your visitors to see the latest version of your pages.

We will also shortly launch an all new update with WP-Optimize 3.1.5. This upcoming release will include the following features:

  • The possibility to change who can purge the page cache and minified files (Premium)
  • Revamp of the admin bar “cache” menu for better access and clarity
  • Optimizing tables will not longer get ‘stuck’ when one table times out

The updates, as well as many others will be released shortly. Be sure to keep an eye out for 3.1.5 from WP-Optimize. 

How does minify work?

by | Jun 2, 2020 | Plugin News

Minify works by combining and minifying the static assets of your website, including CSS and JavaScript files. By removing the unnecessary characters in these static assets, Minify deletes characters such as line breaks and white space from your website’s code; the deletion of which can help your site to load faster by further saving space. Minify also ensures that your files are merged into as few files as possible. This reduces the amount of load on your web server and can be quicker to load fewer files.

Users can also defer the loading of any CSS or JavaScript file. This means any large or extraneous CSS or JavaScript file can be loaded independently from the core of your WordPress site; giving users quicker access to your site.

WP-Optimize Minify has been built and designed to work seamlessly with your website and the overall WP-Optimize optimization process. By activating and using Minify, you should find that everything on your site still acts and behaves in exactly the same way that it always has, with the one difference being that it will now hopefully run faster due to the removal of all the unnecessary information.  

Video tutorial: How to use minify for WP-Optimize

Is Minify easy to use?

We have designed the Minify feature to be easy to use regardless of a user’s level of skill and knowledge. For most people, all you have to do is toggle the main switch to “enable minify”. 

WP-Optimize will then automatically take care of all your minification needs. 

What if I have issues using Minify?

While simply just turning on Minify will get great results and be sufficient for most users, there will be a small number of users that may find that due to their specific website design, the appearance of the site may have altered. While the possibility of this happening will be rare, there is a very small chance it could happen. Should you find yourself in this position, just toggle the “enable minify” switch again to turn off the feature and your site will revert back to its original state. We then recommend visiting our support forum and ask for help on how to configure Minify to work on your site.

Individual control

With WP-Optimize Minify, you also have the option of adjusting the settings specifically for your website. To change the settings to best suit you and your site, you can go into the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Fonts, Settings or Advanced tabs to change the settings, creating specific rules for your site.

Should you wish to undo any of the changes you made, we designed Minify so that any changes you may make will not be permanent and can be rolled back by just removing your changes. 

Using the Minify feature is completely risk free and is another important and proven way to speed up your page loading times.

We designed the Minify feature to be simple to use and intuitive. Just install WP-Optimize and start using it today.

How millions working from home has slowed the internet and how WP-Optimize is working hard to help

by | May 7, 2020 | Plugin News

The current enforced working from home guidelines in place are in place in an attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19. They have now become a way of life for many, with a growing number of people in the UK and around the world now using the internet to provide not just entertainment, but work and education also. This extra demand on bandwidth and associated infrastructure has caused problems for many and include the recent Virgin internet outage, which left 43,00 users in the UK without an internet connection. Along with these outages, many internet users have also complained about the reduction in internet speeds that have seemed to have been put into effect to combat overuse. 

Why do you have a slow internet connection?

While the increase in the use of the internet by those homeschooling or binge watching Netflix accounts for the increase in demand, there may be some tips and tricks you can employ to help improve and hopefully speed up your internet connection. 

The first thing to consider is the physical location of your internet server. If it is located too far away from your primary device, your home network connection could suffer due to potentially passing through many different devices before reaching your primary device. Also try to ensure that your router is as far away as possible from other devices, such as mobile phones, baby monitors, stereos, smart TVs and speakers, as these devices could interfere with the signal. 

If it is not practical to move the router or bring your device closer, one way to help fix this would be to use a WiFi signal booster. A WiFi signal booster will extend your home network coverage by boosting or amplifying your router’s wireless internet signal. A WiFi signal booster can help to efficiently extend your wireless network, which will be of particular use if you have set-up a temporary office, such as in an attic or garden shed.

Other options you can also try

It is also worth remembering that you should try rebooting your router occasionally as it can help clear specific malware (malicious software that has been designed to cause damage to your device or server) or use a wired ethernet connection directly with the router. 

Also ensure that you regularly check your computer is updated with the latest antivirus software. While most antivirus protection programmes will carry out this task automatically, it is essential that you keep your computer’s protection up to date, which will help stop new threats slipping past your defences and potentially slowing your computer down.

In the UK, OFCOM have released a 7 point ‘Stay connected during the coronavirus’ guide that further details everything you can do to help limit the strain on your internet. As well as moving your router clear of other devices, OFCOM also recommend that you use a landline when making calls if possible, turn off devices such as tablets and smartphones that you are not using (as they will often use WiFi in the background), try a wired ethernet cable to get better speeds, plug your router directly into your main phone socket and get advice from your broadband provider.   

Making your site faster

With millions of extra people using and putting a strain on the internet every day, a scenario could arise where it is possible that your website’s users will experience periods where your site will be slow and unresponsive.

While we are unable to make the internet run faster, WP-Optimize has put in a lot of time and effort trying to do the next best thing. If you want your website to run faster and remain usable, installing WP-Optimize on your WordPress site is a great place to start. WP-Optimize is a revolutionary, all in one plugin that cleans your website’s database, compresses images (which slow loading speed) and caches your site. By improving your website’s performance, WP-Optimize can also help boost SEO, reduce visitor bounce rate and reduce server resources.

For further details on how to improve your website’s speed using WP-Optimize, be sure to check out this blog. In this blog you will discover the best way to set-up and optimize the plugin. 

If you have any questions or comments regarding WP-Optimize, please leave a message in the comment section below.

The post How millions working from home has slowed the internet and how WP-Optimize is working hard to help appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

WP-Optimize to release new Minify feature

by | Feb 21, 2020 | Plugin News

We are happy to share with you that WP-Optimize will soon be adding an all new feature to our popular WordPress optimization plugin. In an upcoming release, users will soon be able to use an all-new Minify feature that will help make their websites run even faster.

How does minification work?

The minify process works by removing all the unnecessary characters from a piece of code, such as line breaks, white spaces etc. The minified code still works exactly the same as it did before the minification process, but the files now take up less space due to the removal of unnecessary information. This process has proved to have been very popular when being used on scripts, stylesheets and and other components on your website which can benefit from faster loading times. The Minify feature will further reduce HTTP requests to help speed up your site. This works by merging CSS and Javascript files into a group of files and attempting to use as few of these files as possible.

Our new Minify feature will be simple to use and intuitive. Most users just need to set it to default settings and let it do it’s thing. This new feature will be launched soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for it in an upcoming release of WP-Optimize. 

 

The post WP-Optimize to release new Minify feature appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.