Thanks for the tip. I was thinking about getting a reliable CDN provider and I don’t mind spending more to get the best one.

I am looking at KeyCDN in particular. Do you think it is good?

I would like to hear your thoughts on it.

Thanks,
Jeremiah

I really appreciate your help! What I was concerned about was…is there a backlog that is slowing down my site that needs to be cleaned out?

Amanda, Autoptimize is a helpful plugin for many things, but it won’t help with the reason behind my suggestion to log out when you’re not actively working.

As you work, WordPress sort of phones home. This happens even more often when editing than when working in the dashboard.

Either way, the longer you’re logged in, the more the requests add up.

There are some helpful reasons for this “phoning home” (a.k.a. Heartbeat) behavior. But when you stay logged in it’s ultimately a drag on server resources and therefore performance.

If I haven’t convinced you to log out (I get it…I used to be the Queen of Open Tabs), you can use the Heartbeat Control plugin to at least slow down the WordPress Heartbeat behavior.

Since controlling the Heartbeat affects autosaves, the plugin does have the potential to backfire when you wish it would’ve autosaved (ask me how I know 🙂 ).

Makes sense. Thanks!

I have autoptimize. Can you point me in the right direction for how to clean that up?

Hey, Jonathan!

Running a speed test and looking at the waterfall chart (that’s the one with all the bars) can help you track down speed suckers. GTMetrix isn’t always accurate for load times, but I do like them for this purpose.

The longer the bar, the greater the load time. For the average WordPress blog (i.e., one that needs optimization work) images tend to be the resources with the longest load times and therefore longer bars on the waterfall chart. Not plugins.

Look for the longest bars and click on them to expand the info for that particular resource. It’s totally TMI, but don’t worry because you’re only going to look at the URL at the very top.

Look at the URL to see if it is a plugin. While it might not have the exact same name as the installed plugin, it should give you enough of a clue to figure out what plugin it is.

As far as how to identify a lightweight replacement, it is a pain in the rear TBH. Research, installing and testing are the only ways I’ve found, and it changes all the time. For the sake of time and sanity, I maintain only one list of suggested alternatives, only for the most common plugins, and it’s inside the 7-Day program.

If the URL in the resource info corresponds to an image, you know what to do 🙂

One last thing to mention – the size of the bars is relative. So if your site loads in just a couple of seconds, your “long” bars only mean that those resources take longer to load than other resources in your site. Make sense?