I think my website is loading fast enough. I really didn’t do anything to make this site load fast. I’m just using a very fast theme and I’m hosted in a very fast server! A fast page is great. Yep, it’s really great. It’s actually one of the indexing and ranking factors in Google. If your site loads fast, Google loves you. If your site loads fast, your visitors love you!
I tested my page load speed using GTMetrix.com and I’m somewhat satisfied with the results. My next target is double A, but I guess I need to optimize my images, or just use a text header instead of a very large image header that I’m using right now. In that way, my site will load much faster!
I don’t have any page optimization plugins like W3TC and WP Super Cache. Maybe if I use those plugins, my site will load much faster. I will use it as my last resort. Right now, I’ll just optimize my site manually without caching it.
Based on the reports page of GTMetrix, my Enable gzip compression grade is F. This pulled down my grade to B. Use efficient CSS selectors, Minify CSS, and Leverage browser caching are also graded F! Watda heck! All F! I need to pull my grades to these factors higher.
Compressing my style.css with gzip could reduce their transfer size. I think I should do this. I should also re-code the CSS of my current theme. My stylesheet has 35 very inefficient rules, 58 inefficient rules, and 9 potentially inefficient uses of :hover out of 491 total rules. Whoa! That’s a lot of re-coding to do!
As for the Leverage Browing Caching, I should specify longer expiry time to my images. This is the thing that I really don’t know how to implement. I guess I should research more about it. Or should using WP Super Cache may help, I guess?
UPDATE: Oh boy! After installing W3 Total Cache, my grade is now double A! Check it out here! Awesome! The W3TC plugin really helps a lot! I mean, a LOT!
Here’s my screenshot. Page Speed Grade = A 91%. YSlow Grade = A 91%. I’ll try installing WP Super Cache now and see what will happen to my grades!
ANOTHER UPDATE: After installing WP Super Cache, my page load becomes slower. My Page Speed Grade is back to B which is really annoying. I guess I have to stick with W3 Total Cache alone. Because it’s already redundant if I’m using 2 plugins with the same function, right?