A Holistic Approach to Web Performance

About MeAustin Gil (@Stegosource)

Lead developer at Visceral (www.thisisvisceral.com)

I build kick-ass websites and web apps that make life better for clients and users.

I also break things sometimes....

Overview

1. Why performance matters

2. Concepts related to performance

3. Optimization throughout a project

4. Testing & recap

5. Questions & recommended tools

Performance: Why Do We Care?(Super quick overview)

User Experience

Faster loading websites have been proven to keep visitor on the site and interacting longer.

Visitors also are more likely to return to fast sites, or avoid slow sites.

SEO

In 2010, Google decided that page speed would be incorporated in their page ranking algorithm.

It is not the most important ranking signal, but worth noting.

Money

Performance factors directly affect conversion.

Speed affects time spent on site management.

Lightweight sites are easier on data.

The Cost of Latency

“In 2008, Amazon found that every 100ms of latency cost them 1% in sales.”

Amazon earns over $100 BILLION per year

...so 100ms = $1 billion

Let’s go!

1. Choose a good host2. Enable Gzip compression3. Minimize redirects4. Combine JS files5. Defer JS parsing6. Off-load the assets7. Remove unused plugins8. Use image srcset 9. Optimize database

19. Minify HTML20. Minify CSS21. Minify Javascript22. Avoid CSS @import23. Remove query strings24. Specify image dimensions25. Use data URIs26. Serve scaled images27. Specify character set28. Reduce database calls

10. Use image sprites11. Styles in header12. Scripts in footer13. Lazy load images14. Enable caching15. Optimize Images16. Optimize WP_Query17. Reduce DNS Lookups18. Combine CSS files

COMMANDMENTS OF WEB PERFORMANCE!!!“Thou shalt not take the name of thy lord,

Performance, in vain”

It’s Not That Complicated

Optimization Simplified to 3 Rules

Send fewer things

Send smaller things

Send things efficiently

Optimize During Each Stage

Item 2Project Planning - PM’s / Clients

Production - Developers

Architecture & Design - Designers

Planning

Big Players

- Client “requirements” (see: sliders)

- CDN (Cloudflare)

- Client uploads

- Hosting

Be the Expert

Item 2Designers- Educate & position yourself

- Educate your clients (use metrics)

- Share examples

- Learn to compromise (a.k.a. say “no”)

Show Up Prepared

Item 2Designers

- Know your hosts (PHP 7, SSD, HTTP/2)

- Know your CDN’s (cost & effort)

- Know your client (budget & needs)

Make Things Easy

Item 2Designers- Manage uploads

- Share useful tools

- Provide detailed documentation- Do it for them...with a maintenance plan :)

- Image dimensions (Imsanity)- Image quality (EWWW)

- Image editors (Pixlr, GIMP)

Design

Big Players

- Amount of content

- Multimedia (images, videos, audio)

- Complexity

Content & Layouts

Item 2Designers- Grids

- Break up content (multi-page, AJAX)

- Replace images

Less is More

Item 2Designers- Font families (System Fonts, Google fonts)

- Icon libraries (Fontello, Icomoon)

- 3rd party elements (ads, maps, social)

0.3s load time - Motherfuckingwebsite.com

Icon Libraries Compared

Item 2 Designers

Font Awesome:

Font + CSS

270kb

Fontello (10):

Font + CSS

-93%

Glyphicons:

Font + CSS

-60%108kb 19kb

Sliders/Carousels

Item 2Designers- Just don’t

- There are alternatives

- They bloat your page- They’re bad for SEO (Yoast agrees)- They’re bad for accessibility - They don’t convert (about 1% after first slide)

Images

Item 2Designers- Save for web- Automate

- Simpler images (flat design)

- Know your file types (jpg, png, svg)

Item 2Designers

Image Optimization Example

Original621 kb

Save for web (60%)275 kb

-56%

Original Image = 1250 x 877px, complex, many colors

Optimization tool (TinyPNG)192 kb

-69%

The Affect of Image Effects(we can go even smaller)

B & W

131kb

-32%

Monochrome

99kb

-49%

Gaussian Blur (5px)

77kb

-60%

Partial Effects

B & W Mask

167kb

-13%

Blur Mask

162kb

-16%

Transparent Overlay

135kb

-30%

Color Mask

130kb

-32%

Production

Big players

Item 2Designers- Caching- How you <img>- Unnecessary resources- Database

Caching

Item 2Designers- Manually…

- WP Rocket (Paid)

- WP Fastest Cache

- W3 Total Cache

- The WordPress way

Image Markup

Item 2Designers- Image sizes (Settings > Media)

- Use srcset: <img src=“...” srcset=“...” />- get_post_thumbnail( $post_id )- wp_get_attachment_image( $img_id )

- Match to major breakpoints

- Responsive background images (Gist)(Pen)

Lazy Load Images

Item 2Designers- Lazy Load (Lazy Load)

- Progressive Lazy Load (Gist)(Pen)- Load thumbnail overlay (blur with CSS)- Javascript load full size- Fade out thumbnail

- Load tiny transparent img- User interaction (scroll, click)- Use JS to replace with actual image

- Accessibility...?

Scripts & Styles

Item 2Designers

- Minify & concatenate

- Conditional load

- Plugins (Autoptimize)- Taks runners (Gulp, Grunt, Webpack)- Manually (Shrinker)

- If ( is_font_page() ) { wp_enqueue_script(“...”) }- Only when a shortcode is present (Article)(Gist)- Plugins (Plugin Organizer, WP Asset Clean Up)

- It’s ok to dequeue

CSS Grids Compared

Item 2 Designers

Bootstrap:

CSS & JS:

152kb

Custom Grid:

CSS: 5kb

-97%

PureCSS:

CSS: 27kb

-82%More cool CSS info and tools at CSSPurge.com

Queries

Item 2Designers- Learn WP_Query (Codex)

- Reuse same query- wp_reset_query()

- Filter in query (post_type, posts_per_page, meta_query, tax_query, etc.)

- WP_Query optimization tricks

- Optimize database (Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions)

Offload Resources

Item 2Designers

- Understand what you’re doing

- Images (Flickr, ImageEngine)

- Videos (YouTube, Vimeo)

- Audio (SoundCloud)

- Scripts & styles (JSDelivr) (Gist)

- Take advantage of hosted services

What About Servers?

Item 2Designers

- A look at the modern WordPress server stack

- Carl Alexander is AWESOME

Test, Analyze, Repeat

Item 2Designers

- Query Monitor - Too much goodness to write

Testing Tools

- GT Metrix - Webpage grades and advice

- P3 - Compare plugin load times

- Bitcatcha - Server speed testing

Item 2Designers

Address Biggest Impactors First

- Upgrade your host

- Enable caching

- Check your file sizes

Item 2Designers

- Swap out plugins

Low Hanging Fruit

- Optimization plugins

- Remove unnecessary everything

[clap_hands]

Designers

Image Optimization Tools - TinyPNG or Kraken: Support batch uploads/downloads. Results vary.Image Optimization Plugins (choose one):

EWWW: Plug n’ play. Free. Good for agencies with lots of projects.

Compress JPEG & PNG images: Better performance. Freemium. Requires account.

Imsanity (plugin): Automatically resize super large uploads. Plug n’ play.

WP ImageEngine Responsive Image Resizer (plugin): Image hosting serviceFile Minification & Concatenation Tools:

Autoptimize (plugin): Easy to use, but be careful, it can break things sometimes. Test it.Gulp, Grunt, or Webpack: Task runners. Add to workflow to automate file optimization (advanced)

Shrinker: Online tool. Supports inserted code, upload files, or upload from URLConditional Load Assets Plugins (choose one):Plugin Organizer: Lot’s of setup work. Good for individuals fine tuning.

WP Asset Clean Up: Not as powerful, but much more simple to set up.

JSDelivr: Scripts & styles CDN. Also can minify and concatenate.

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions: Database optimization plugin. Supports schedules.

Cloudflare: Free CDN