201 – How to make your WordPress website run smoothly (even after a year) with Alexandru Covtun

Welcome to the WP Builds podcast, bringing you the latest news. He's from the WordPress community. Welcome your host, David Waumsley, Nathan Wrigley.
Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. This is episode number 201 entitled how to make your WordPress website run smoothly. Even after a year with Alexandru Covtun, it was published on Thursday, the 15th of October, 2020. My name's Nathan Wrigley and just the tiniest bit of housekeeping this week.
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Okay. What are we talking about this week? It's episode number 201 how to make your website run smoothly. It's quite a long episode. We're talking today with Alexandru, from WP Daniel, and this week he goes really deep. Yeah. And to how to keep your website going in a smooth and reliable fashion after many months, there's a huge amount in this subject.
And when I say there's a huge amount, I really do mean it. He spent a lot of time. Yeah. Really finessing all of the details. There's a laundry list of things in here. Some of it's pretty obvious. Some of it is not so obvious. So I would say that whether you're a new to WordPress or whether you are a seasoned professional, there's probably something in this for you.
So I hope that you enjoy it. Just before we begin, though, it might be worth mentioning that Alexandru was very kind in, that he gave leave listeners to the podcast, a 30% off WP dandy coupon code. The coupon code is WP Builds 30. There is actually a 30 code limit. So when 30 people have used that code will expire.
But if you go over to their website, then you'll find that they are a 24 seven. WordPress maintenance and support service. So they can basically take over the running of your website. And hopefully by the end of this podcast, you will believe that Alexandru and his compatriots over there are somebody that you could trust with all of this stuff.
And without delay, I bring you Alexandru Covtun. Hello there and welcome to the WP Builds podcast. You've hit an interview episode today and today all the way from Moldova. I'm joined by Alexander . Hello, Sandra. Hello, Nathan. How are you doing? How's it. How's it in modeling? it's hard. Okay. you have hot summers?
Do you? We, sadly in the UK where I'm based, the summers go between cold and quite warm and that's about it. That's about the extent of it. we're not here, however, to talk about the weather, but before we start, I just want to alert you in case I forget to do it later. I want to alert you to, the URL.
Which Alexander, is working for, if the service that he's working for, we'll come on to that possibly further towards the end of the podcast. But, he represents WP Dandy, which may be new to you. WP Dandy is a WordPress maintenance and support service. You may have come across similar offerings before, but this may be maybe one that you want to check out right off the bat, but we're here today to talk about a whole load of other things.
In fact, the title. That we're going to go with for this podcast is how to make your WordPress website run smoothly. Even after a year in brackets. Now, Alexander came up with this title and I'm quite interested to know why he's put even after a year in brackets. why have we done that at the end? I think an Aten, actually the problem that, I think many of the WordPress, WordPress website owners face.
after the first year, is that when the website, when they start their website on WordPress and it has no content in, it is, not a demised, to work I'm in for a long period of time, because many people are trying to find themselves in this, nation, in case they Don, they just don't pay attention to this.
but one, everything goes well and. The first year passes and the content goes on the website and a lot of plugins, Aryans plugins are installed. And so for the website, it unoptimized, it's, start to go slower and slower. each time we, create content, and some of the forum. that's why I decided to share some of my experience of optimizing the website from the very beginning, in order to not to get into this kind of troubles when the website, gets bigger and has a lot of, clients or users connect website, visitors coming to the website.
And, so as a result, it causes a lot of, slowing down to website. And yeah. it's a story that I'm sure many of us are familiar with. that feeling of, in my case, sometimes you work on a big website and you really feel. The website is slowed down by the conjunction of the amount of queries to the database, their plugins and the theme, and what have you, it's all going on.
And then when you finally get yourself on a brand new vanilla install, all of WordPress, it's very refreshing. Just how quick WordPress can be. If there's nothing to slow it down. If it's simply WordPress with nothing else, it's blazing fast on a decent server. before we begin all that though, I think it'd be quite interesting.
And important to establish you as a credible source of authority. So what's your relationship with WordPress? How long have you been using it and in what guys have you been using it? Do you have a background in making plugins or themes or server side stuff? so starting with 2009 I've, God LPN, WordPress.
I discovered from surf for myself, WordPress and I started to use WordPress from that moment. I do develop, themes and, plugins for WordPress, but most of them are for my clients because, Unfortunately, it's difficult to maintain a plugin for a long period of time. to make your own applying as intimate times as it takes you a lot of time, but when you do it for a client said it's easily easier to do them.
And, what else I can tell about myself? yeah, as I said, I started in 2009. I do, create plugins and, but usually one you want to find at least till now, plug ins on, WordPress official repository, but, thank you for this question. As I was thinking about losing some, speed optimization as it goes into our topic of today, one speed of optimization plugin, that in my vision should be different.
Think a person with those that we have at this moment, and she provides some more futures. Okay, should we get into the, should we get into the topic then today? So you've very kindly written me a great big list of the things which you believe, any website owner, really from the outset, even if it's day one ought to be mindful of if they want their website to be.
as you've put it running smoothly, so we could say quickly or smoothly or trouble-free, whatever that might be. let's just go through them in whatever order you want to pick them off. and we'll talk about why you believe this particular thing is important and what it does and how it can go wrong.
So I'm free to start wherever you want. pick something off the list. Maybe if we just go down from top to bottom, it might be easier. Oh yeah, sure. I think I'm the same. So we'll go from top to bottom and possibly we'll stop at some points because I initially, when I, decided to put this lays down that were more than 30 points, but I decided that some of them might, Go inside those points that I have already.
Yeah. Yeah. For example, we have a security optimization on this website I'm in for our WordPress based website, but usually it's a kind of a least of security optimization tasks that might go and justice in mentioning and one single point. Okay. we can get started with the first one. What I think in mag, Tina.
It's very important for those who are starting their WordPress website on their own, where they have a web developer. I used to pay attention to those plugins and themes that go on. Their website, why they doing the Invacare's, jazz Googling. You might find you can and find, the least of those 65 plus WordPress plugins that can slow down your website, even though.
they are good plugins. They have a lot of futurists, but they might be luggage. For example, let's say that you are going to peak a page builder for your WordPress was by when WordPress website. usually, people adjust are paying attention just to how it looks and how it performs. And if they like how it performs for them, they just pick it.
But on. My suggestion would be to pick the one that is less, CPU hunger. And then, for example, we know that in, possibly some divorces developers might hate me. we know that, there is a WP Baker, page builder, that is. Very nice a plugin on has a lot of futures, but if we'll look into the cart of display again, and when it is installed on your website, it has a lot of, Java's creatives.
So the, for that makes your website Lord, slowly. for example, if to compare it with, let's say the same it'll match matter page builder, that in my opinion looks. A preteen. in comparison with the previous one, for example, after optimization, in compression, it, doesn't have any, scripts that go out of the, delivered, minified and catch, JavaScript where a CSS file that is pretty good to the website when it loads.
So that's why I think it is one of the possibly, I'll do us. And for many of those who are listening to this podcast, but it's very important. So it's a desire to be mentioned as the first one to pay attention to the plugins and themes that you, yeah, we, the cohost of the podcast, David Walmsley, and I often have conversations and we talk at great length about really doing your homework, making sure that you don't just pick a plugin.
That you may not need just because it is something, one thing you desire to have on the website, a plugin, which does one thing really is I would say desirable or a plugin, which does a thousand things probably quite badly. And just do your homework, make sure that where the plugin has come from.
Who's behind it. When it's been recently updated, how often it's typically updated, all of those things, just get involved, look on the about us page. Find out, go to the repo and explore the comments over there. It matters. It really matters. Yeah. usually, it even happens the situation when you might even don't need that plugin.
And you might just, I don't know, code a piece of code Haydn too, but I didn't know. Possibly you even might not know you need to create your own plugin just to use that. No, functional as PHP to add some function. features to your website that want load and want. Cause I dunno, a database request and so on with the four.
but in case you still need to apply again, possibly it would be better to put down some pros and cons and to compare it with some other plugins and to find because when you are just targeting you one pay attention to, this kind of stuff, because. You want to start and want to see how it works, but when you start to optimize your website, you fight for each and single bite to make your website faster because you understand a Dodge, weight loads for your customers is depends.
How many customers will stay with you and what your business within your business. So that's why it's important. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. That's a really good point. So yeah. do your homework and, And then I suspect you're going to tell us next to get rid of plugins that you're not using. Yeah. the next point is, actually, this point how's that a little bit different, thing is to disabled.
We're usually I would suggest to all my clients and to all those who are working with the press to delete unused plugins and themes. That are installed by defiance told by default in what price, because that there are basically I'm in the themes that come by default, when you start the WordPress website, there are at least two or three of them come.
And, even though they stay, I'm in, you don't work on your website, they still don't, might cause a loaning on your way. So because they have their databases into a. Rose did that obese of your website and it's okay. One that database is, it has around three to five megabytes by one. It grows to couple of gigabytes.
Each row, is important. So a couple of. Hundreds rolls. You don't need that. And they want to do that to base. and of course it depends on the plugin or the theme because there are some optimized against some unoptimized by against of course. I don't want to say that those that come to come by default are not to my, but anyway, if you don't need, don't use them and don't do websites.
Yeah, there is no happy number here is that there's no follow you is the right number seven is too many. 22 is far too many. I don't know what the right number is, but basically if you go by the rule of three, if you don't absolutely need it, Disable it make it go away. there's no point in it being there if it's not being used.
It's just another, let's say it's going to slow things down, but it also might offer up an attack vector for somebody else. So yeah. Get rid of those things as well. Good idea. Okay, so the next one, will be performing regular updates of your WordPress website, core plugins and themes. in my opinion is also very important, in contest of, Dean nowadays, situation when.
There are a lot of, stop that has to be taken to cause situation. One of the things develop security of days and so on. So it would be better if you would do this. somebody might think how it might, cause, I don't know, lighting on your CPU, of your hosting and some of the forest, usually does prism let's envision that.
Do you have a plugin that wasn't updated for a couple of releases, for example? And, you have, I don't know, a better version of your PHP version of your hosting. For example, I see that moved from the feet, 5.6272 or seven four, even. And, and this situation, it again, would be optimized for, better loading speed.
So it might cause some, loading on your website. Yeah, they, I think it's become, if you're a, if you're a single site owner, it's not beyond the bounds of expectation, I don't think any more to be asking your clients if they're maintaining their own websites to be logging in. once a day, I would imagine would be the ideal number, really.
the more is better, but, if you're a person that's managing other people's websites, I think you do need to be updating daily. Possibly more depends how depends on fussy you become, but there's just no excuse with the wonderful options that you've got in WordPress to update everything by clicking a button, there's a, there's not much of an excuse, really.
yes, I totally agree with you in Iten on Kaz. I even recently had a situation when, some of my clients were using, Apple again, that would replace, And the Jaguar version, because we know that word presbyter felt in order to cover all the browsers. It uses a stable version. not stable, I'm sorry.
the older version of the query, but we know that it has secure to, issues. And there was a problem that some of the website got hacked because that version. Wasn't updated to the latest one. Yeah. And the free point. 3.4, one version of jQuery had two issues and some, a website just got hacked because of that reason.
Whereas small businesses and swap a small website possibly might be a well understood nation because it depends, who has interests. What's your website. And even some of our, let's say that you are in the same niche with some, I don't know some businesses and those guys aren't played, play, just don't play okay.
Their game. And they might, I don't know, hire someone just to hack your website and. Just get it done. So I just situation, it would be battery fuel would apply to antique killed Luke. mostly the situation in when you know that your business goes well and it grows and it might create some, I don't know, nerves to, Other business owners in the same niche.
So it would be that are to pay attention a lot of attention to your work. Yeah. Yeah. I just can't see the, I can't see the logic in not updating things these days. I'm always a good plan to have a system in place to check that everything is updated and, go and just test a few things to make sure it's all working as it should do.
But I'm certainly for those. People who are running agencies, this that's just software to make this so much more easy than it was several years ago. Yeah. yeah, there are some, plugins, even that monitor, the health of even a WordPress has a bulletin built in, when touring, future, but yes, Of course it doesn't replace a human attention because I usually personally are the in, in, let's say not in a situation, but are.
I know some people that would address, like different companies in the same field I'm in workers, maintainers, because the previous one I'm in with whom they worked previously would update like using a plugin, like a word, Maintain the WP. Yep. Yep. Remember it. So they just had one quick, the wall would have dead WhatsApp, but usually it doesn't work this way.
And, so the website goes down and it might cause some problems to the clients that come to your website. my suggestion would be to choose, I know a, the ball company that would do this manually because everything can happen. And if you do di directly to you to do website. Jessica can one click it's not good Nepalese.
Yeah. I do some kind of visual check after the fact I've, I've made use of quite a lot of services that do inspections of websites. Every, I dunno, whatever I wish, 15 minutes or something and they go and take image. they literally. Download a screenshot of the page to see if there's any variation in how it looked 15 minutes ago to how it looks now, or they'll also just download the output HTML and compare one to the other.
They'll even check the stack of technology that's sitting on the server, just to see if anything's changed, many options to make. Oh, and just simple downtime monitoring. Just have some kind of email alert to, and there's free services like uptime robot, which will allow your 50 sites. I believe it is for no fee whatsoever.
Just yeah, no reason not to do it. Yeah. so I think the next, point would be to keep your theme, plugins, lightweight. what exactly do you mean to see the illustration on. The sensitization when you just tart it's okay. So you're just update those plugins. But when you want to have something, that to present your business and I'm in a kind of future that is specific only to your business.
So you have to create your plugin were somehow improve other plugins, others plugins, and this situation my might happen. That's Those developers that you don't have, if you don't have your own in house developers, you might, I don't know, ask somebody to devolve a plugin. And, personally I've met many websites that, hire different developers and sometimes they tried to save some money and those developers do that.
Justin mask. with their themes and with their, plugins. So it's not a good option. I, if you want to have, a we'll load Ingo upside, cause what's measured, do you have just hired a tan developer during a year, for example, to do some stuff on your website and they have everyone have introduced you even don't have a, I didn't know, Least of those changes that you done previously on the website.
And sometimes those developers don't know by teacher either, and even some squibs might go one against another and it also co-created problems. So that's why I think it's very important to keep your theme applying as lightweight. Yeah. It used to be that. Everybody was, not recently, as far as I'm aware of certainly in our community that everybody would be dashing over if it's a code Canyon and trying to find the theme with the most features, all of the bells and whistles that the theme could possibly bring to bear.
And I think most people who've worked with WordPress for any length of time have decided that's, that's just a joke race to the bottom. And you're far better off finding a lightweight theme that you trust that is updated. And sticking with it and getting to understand how it's built and how it works and how to troubleshoot it.
Yeah. Good idea. Yeah. so the next one would be defeated twice would be to unifying and combined compress and casually files in both the browser and the server. What's important. I think those who are familiar with how, No a days, most of Noah days, hostings works. I'm in those that are based on patch patchy.
I don't know if yeah, that's right. Yeah. the situation, as more, the more. The resources you use the, more limits you might, get to your, hosting a mosque, those who don't hold they there. and they know VPs and the dedicated service where they can do anything they want, but in case you are.
Of course it's important for the I'm in a website that are also based on dedicated, but I think it is more important for those who are just starting to use WordPress. And, they have, I don't know, three to $5, shared, hosting, situation that I don't know, your website, will go on their load. I dunno, you might get some, Visitors come to your website.
So the bigger your, website would be, the last, yeah. The more problems you might get with your hosting provider. Yeah. Personally, I've been in a situation, when I just started. it was a simple WordPress website, but we know that many. hosting. They, even though they ride that, it's only with the bandwidth and I don't know, 10 or 20.
Yeah. It's a memory bytes, a usual a day limit the quantity of the CPU usage and the more files I'm in, the more scrapes and it's all for you run a soap, it might get your website sometimes even, go out of service and so on and so forth. So that's why I think, yeah. There's just so many solutions now for this isn't there it's been identified as a problem by the community.
WordPress is designed to work on just about anything. but obviously the bigger, your bigger, your infrastructure, the better, but not everybody can cope with the amount of money you need to spend for big infrastructure. And so you have to go for cheap and. Looking again, maybe this is something you're going to do on the kind of hosting level, or you're going to do this with the assistance of a plugin again, do your research find out what it is possible to minify found out what it is possible to compress.
it's not going to be. Immediately possible to click a button. there are solutions which claim to be able to click a button and you'll be fine, but you can finesse it and tweak it and spend a really lengthy period of time making work, making your WordPress websites work more efficiently. So it's just one of those things you've got to do.
Yeah. And so the next question is not a question, but the advice would be to reduce the amount of run their blocking resources, if could possible do a sync or defer, those resources not are random blocking, what's important in the same quantity where the previous one, with the faith advice. and we know that, if you.
One to promote your business in search engines like Google, you have to pay attention to their requirements, to do website for some there, a, service from Google that tests your website on the loading speed. It's called a dab, personal. I like it very much. And it tells you what, how your, clients see your website and not just how it was previously in that new member, how it was called that service from Google it's chap or something like this.
Yeah. Speed. Oh yeah, it's gone. I don't know. What was it called? It's gone anyway, that one. so in comparison with the previous one, when it would be just, immolated how your website is seen on a mobile device on the computer. so I'm in a web Dodd dab now that uses real data from the browser, so of, your clients.
and so in case you want to. Beyond the top of the competition, you have to pay attention for DS. And in general, I would recommend, after all the, optimization that you do, there will be some, after the six advice is to go to that website and to pay attention and to fight for agents and go single bite.
of your speed, your loading speed. there is. A very unique, I think, and very interesting, resource also that is called GT metrics. That, just that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That I think. This in turn down, these two ones might bring you a lot of, ideas, how and why to optimize, not to be on the top of the competition.
It goes, we know that every business is a fighter pilot fight for, I didn't know. For each single penny and for each a single visitor to your website and do more you time and money, you invest in what you do and passion, of course, the more you get. So living just how it is. It won't work. Yeah. Good point.
So that's, I'm reducing render, blocking requests. And then, Oh, this one, I'm hoping that this next one that you mentioned is now a moot point. Hopefully most people don't have to worry about this one. you mean disabled one? Yeah. The one about HTTP instead of HTTP. Yeah. That one, the one.
Yeah. yes. once again, from my experience and from the experience of my colleagues, using gov HBS connection, instead of HTB one, might be also not might be, but we'll for sure be, very important for your business. First of all, it's for security reasons, because I D. H D P of the second generation, not only faster, but also secure.
And if we're not by the security team, most of the time, I know people are just, those who are using WordPress will just go on your stall because Google shows notification that your website isn't encrypted and you just want to be as a order of your competition art. So you might have style, but it is also good for your speed.
The requests going are going faster just in creation. Of course, it depends on your, work, WordPress, where it is hosted on there's WordPress, for example, but in general, just using I'm in let's imagine that you are a newbie and these terms I'm in and just using best, a lot in your website from the encrypted version will save you or help you save.
some. Time off of lighting gear website. So we will website will load faster. Yup. Yup. That's a good point. seems it seems like only yesterday where we were all suddenly faced with this moment in time where Google was going to downgrade the listings of people over and HTTP a session, as opposed to an HTTPS session.
it was the catalyst which was needed to push everybody over the edge. Luckily it coincided with something, things like let's encrypt, which made it ludicrously simple to achieve. So yes, even though that Google says that they don't decrease I'm in, in, the rankings, the rankings of the website, yes, they are.
say that data is vital in my opinion. And just paying attention to those researchers that, many companies like, A draft help to know that we're not going to correctly Taos. it's usually those who there's websites that are run through the HDP connection, underperform I'm in the search results on those who run through the HTPs be yeah.
Eight, out of 10, websites. Data in top 10 and go through D HTPs. Yeah. And also just the big red flags that the browsers throw at you saying that's not secure runaway, it's, it all helps. So go. And if you haven't done that one, that's an easy one to win on. Yup. so the next third advice would be to maintain a minimal Mont or HDPE or HBS.
Let's mention that you move to SPS request or to keep the minimal amount of this request. once again, it depends, where this, our Glasgow, for example, let's say that you have a CDN. Even a couple of sit downs that go to different sit downs. in case it's not as scrape, let's say where any audit file died is will be, I don't know.
somehow updated at a time I'm in over a very short time and this situation I would advise to reduce their lawns by moving those files locally and to load them through Amin from. Website hosting, even though, in case you have, I don't know, a couple of, HTP requests, outside HTP requests on this situation, it might be okay, but you should also pay attention to the quality of those HTPs requests because our Google, for example, has some good sit downs, but there are some not so good sedans, especially white.
Because we are speaking about loading speed and performance, and when every single bite is important, you don't want to know, send in a request. For example, I just recently mess up and mentioned, a file. It was in PNG file for social networks that weighted, But wait, I'm sorry. around 450 kilobytes and it is loaded directly to in theme.
I would say that my, I don't know the guy who created that plugin has no idea though. Speed optimization. Yeah. That's a big lot big image. Yeah. And it is load locally, but let's imagine dots. Somehow nowadays we don't find it. Yeah. Many times when it happens, but over, in the past it was a usual experience when, people would load, it, I don't know, possibly to gain some juice.
you sell as E O So they would load it from their own hosting. So it's in general, it can do a lot of bad stuff to your website, but of course it's important when you optimize. when you optimize, your, loading speed of your website is to pay attention to your and single HTP request in case you can move them to your hosting.
And for example, your web hosting is optimized, by some CDNs that you know, that they are good. So I would recommend to do this. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got a couple to do with images, optimization and lazy loading. Yeah. Good points. yeah, this same Obdivo since Tom situation, I've worse. I'm in.
Owners of the WordPress website. but it's worth mentioning because, usually people, John Patterson, two images, they visually, when you look at a certain website and in case it has a good, what posting and your, or your database is and big, you might think that it's a cave. It will lie to, even if it's two megabytes, Single image, it will be your key, but, It's for you. For example, if you are a closed, let's imagine that you are in United state and you are close for the web hosting where your website is hosted. So it might be visually looking. Okay. But for other people that are away for the new hosting, where you're hosting a website, it might be not that good.
So in this situation, would Optima woods the jazz optimizing images? Of course. A lossless optimization is a win to win, in comparison, they didn't all with, lots of humanization because, of course it depends on your previous knowledge of, for example, I've. Personally, seeing people that are optimizing images and two for the show, for example, they just are, when they are sending their pictures, they are just saving and low quality thing.
I was thinking, yeah, just, they will save a couple of buys, but it doesn't work that well. I would suggest that the lossless compression personally, I like our one, whose source this is called a tiny PNG. Yeah. Yeah. and they also have a WordPress plugin, but I wouldn't suggest to anyone to play with this plugin every time when you are uploading an image, because usually, this plugin would optimize each image at, the, when you applauded.
but, Once again, in case you don't have an experience in this situation, and you run eAgent single time, you upload an image in your run. the optimization you might get into a trouble when your images are lose there, because even lossless optimization, it can be optimized. I don't know. Forever.
So in this situation, of course I would pay attention. I would suggest to parents. And just in case you have some previous images that you installed. So Ron, just a single time, this plugin. And let it to do his job and don't run it each single time, because you might get with some blurry images that will make your business look very ugly.
Oh, it does. It does it rerun on the images each time? Oh, I see. Oh goodness. Yeah, it could really quickly look really bad. That's a good point. There's lots of services. Isn't that? There's lots of 'em. plugin solutions for that WPM you'd have got this thing called short pixel. There's also lots of freely available open source apps that you can download for your phone, for your Mac or PC, which you can throw images at them and they'll do a fairly decent job, but, yeah, definitely worth it.
another idea we're in the same context of, image optimization is to use as VG format. I know that. Once again. And then developers might say that it's not secure to use as Virgin images, but at least for the front page, I would suggest to use as VG images as much as you can, because, I don't know, Duracell, there are not so many security threats, in case you do it correctly.
For some, there are some centers, sensitizing, plugins that help you to keep, Away from difficult, different vulnerabilities. Yeah. That as VG might cause to your website, but it helps you a lot because as VG images, first of all, it is very lightweight, as image format. the second one is, we know nowadays, those.
big resolution screens when personally, when I look to some website that a load on an old log, or at least log on in the PNG format and get blurry. For example, when you have. 4k for example, mag book. So it's not very progressive. And of course, as VGs are very white weight and they don't have it.
There's images. For example, if you go to web optimization, those sources like to Matrixx and so on and wiped out from Google and you try to get a very good score. You want, if you use a lot of PNG, whereas where a JPEG files while, as VG load into the code and they don't show us images. So once again, it might be useful.
Yeah. Yeah. they're tiny little files across there. They're not images at all, are they? They're a sort of file format. And so the open to abuse, but as you say, there's. Plenty of sanitizing plugins. I can't remember the one that I recently stumbled across, which I thought was quite interesting.
but yeah, there are ways that you can force WordPress to accept SVG images. Cause of course it doesn't by default, but just be mindful that it's not safe out of the box necessarily. You've got to, you've got to strip out lots of the metadata in order for it to be safe, but there's plugins for that.
Okay. So I think the next one would be Lucy loading your images. of course it is good when you, I dunno, are a guru and you have optimized each and seeing every single image on your website. but once again, if you want to get even faster, And we know that there are some good standards nowadays on there too seconds of loading.
So I'm lazy of your images would be a solution to a situation because okay, you have stores those random blocking JavaScript and CSS files and so on. Yeah. But you might have images on your website and they might was that same random liking a soul Lee's lawn and going to be a solution to your situation to get.
Because usually it's not the case in most of the situation. I'm in those website, to get all the images at the same time, just the log on a couple of images that are going the first, part of the screen. And you might get some time when loading on it's very else. also very important in my opinion, for the landing pages when they have, I don't know, a lot of images on the, main, Page in a word, the home page, and also those shops that have also on different images of the products on the main page.
It's also very important in my opinion, and save a lot of time I'm in of the loading time of your website. Yeah. There's also the future looks bright for this as well, because this is now being taken on a sort of browser level. Isn't it? We've hopefully in short space of time, we won't have to. Load a bunch of JavaScript to do this for us.
Every single image will be handled natively in the browser and let's see. let's see what happens with a whole lot. Okay. So the next advice would be the 11th advice would be to disabled the health linking images and files to images files. yeah, I think that it's is not a good, option for the website Eleanor, to have I'm in.
Let's say a couple hundred or a couple thousand when even, I don't know, it depends on the website, a couple of million requests to your hosting, to , an image or a file from your hosting it. And once again, take into consideration that nowadays hosting, most of them are based on, I didn't know, even though.
Those on the website, provide, and the web hosting providers as that is, the bandwidth is unlimited, but it will be limited for sure. As far as you run, after one terabyte of bandwidth. Yeah. So you don't this. And we also know that the patch is a resource hanger, and if they. If a patient runs out of its, database limits, it might get from the files and it might also cause are problems with the loading speed of your website.
So a good ideas will be just disabled because it's just a piece of card and two functions. PHP file. Yeah. And you get rid of this we're into AGB access file. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Good idea. Okay. Yeah. So the next one would be, took to my as phones are, I would, once again, as a person that I would say possibly not the, school, developer, because they taught us in myself was to be, I didn't know when, yeah, internet net only started, but I was a JAST too.
You keep all those, Fonds that you have. On your, hosting, because once again, it depends. One card of, falsity is, And, Google is pretty fast. For example, if you use Google fonts, but in case you use some other sources, they might be even for the CDN, they might be not so fast. So I would suggest to self host defiance, cause usually a fonts dot don't need, regular updates.
So just apply them and just. link, to the style sheet and it goes very well. And, plus, you know how, last, HP request, as I mentioned previously, so yeah, it's one less or two less, because usually it might happen that you have two free kind of fonts on a single website. So it just will add some more loading speed to your website by hosting, Your fonts.
And of course there are some, also some tricks. If in case you don't want you can't, you can, I'm in Hollis, those fonts are, you might reload, those, phones or Elsa pre connect, just to create a faster loading speed onto your website. Yeah, it's just that it's one of the smaller wins, but it's a win, if you can achieve, if you can achieve a tiny little bit of benefit from it, then yeah.
It seems like a good idea. Okay. So the next one would be to optimize comments, also to laser them. Yeah. That's a good idea. Especially if you've got a big popular site with millions of comments on each threat. Yes. And yeah, maybe the situation. Possibly, you might need some order optimization, but this one would be because I, from my own experience as the WordPress maintenance, we'll say possibly not expert, but a person that does this kind of job.
I observed that, even. When you have, let's say a couple of hundreds comments per day and it creates, I didn't know, co comments, it lost this comments. it creates, laws to the database. It requests different information. That's a depends on the comment. For example, I've seen comments of 2000 words and so on.
So this situation, yeah. Yeah, it might a load, your website, and downgrade and dispute of your website. So we can give you advice as a small advice would be better to live in London. Yeah. I just can't see a day. I can't see a situation where that's not a good idea. If nobody wants to read the comments, then they don't need to be loaded.
And if they want to keep reading the comments, it's not a big deal to wait half a second to let's see the next couple load. Yeah, I agree. so the next one would be to use a good CDN. Why good, because we all know that it depends on how big is the provider of the sedan, for example, we, for and personally from Moldova and iPhone, that Coalfire has a CDN even in, Severus even in Moldova.
I suppose that it has in many other countries, so it could Sudan, By the way it's, like content delivery network for the first time I'm in this term. So it will help to make your website and to deliver your website a little bit faster and sometimes even more fostered than if you would be loaded or not from heisting.
For example, from far away, come through from a couple of thousand kilometers from your, I'm in place. So I'm just station and, also wildlife Claude flare, and I would recommend authored to others is, in case you have a, kind of a small website that you don't have, dynamic doctor and in daunting.
Yeah. Daily soldier, dirt, just a couple of articles and a couple of images on the homepage and the situation cloud would just cash all this cash or rowdy. Staff and wood will LOD, even if your website doesn't work at a certain point. so it will load those copies and it will load. And the cached copies.
First of all, it will reduce the amount of data and CPU that you're, a website, what has tank, requires. so once again, as an example, we had, Not a DDoS attack, but I found, as we found after that, when we, paid our attention, to the logs that we found the website, some whole need hackers tried to find if there are some database files.
on the hosting of that, website, and all of those requests caused, many, visits to our website. And if it's a website on a shared hosting, so the owners started to received a notification that you have too many. connections. So the single time. And so please do something where we'll have to move to a higher level of, hosting.
I don't remember. It's, they proposed him to move to a dedicate, yeah. Go from very cheap, so very expensive, right away. yeah. and, when we found, we just advise them to. Until they didn't have enough money to move into a higher level of housing. They advised them to use 12 square.
And what we found is that it reduced it drastically. So our, that client never experienced the same issues we do upset. So that's why I would advise to use quotes. And, it works even, not for him. Not only for the small law businesses, but also for big websites because CloudFlare also have sell plans for, I'm in, for a bigger business.
Oh yeah. They get the big ones. yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So not only for the small mice, so you shouldn't think, those very few during this podcast that. It's just for a small business owner and those big businesses don't have to pay attention to this. It has been fair to Asian, every business.
Yeah. Yeah. They, they've got a huge network. I, no idea what proportion of the world's internet runs through cloud for it, but I bet it's a lot, but it's a huge amount. Alexander, sadly, we are running out of time, so I don't, so I don't know that we're going to get to the end of your list, but if it's okay with you, I'm going to mention what they all were.
Gotcha. and that will give you time to, to just talk about WP Dandy that I mentioned at the beginning. And, I think it's a fair exchange. so the other ones were too to simply keep an eye on the HP version of your WordPress website. Obviously WordPress goes back, it tries helpfully to go back really a long way back and be compatible with earlier versions of WordPress.
But, if your host allows it. Go to the latest version of whatever PHP and if your host doesn't allow it. Maybe move host, clean up your database regularly was another one. yeah, that again, just a no brainer. Get rid of all of those, bits and pieces. All of those things in there that are just not needed tables for plugins that are not needed anymore.
What about a revision history? That's just loitering doing no help whatsoever. Perform regular web WordPress website performance checks. Perform regular WordPress website security checks. and then the final two were implement security scenarios that probably could have been a podcast in itself that one.
And, and do go some way to block bad bots. Yeah, that's a, there's a few nice solutions. I've come across that assist with that. Yeah. What I'll do though, is I'll post those in the show notes and I'll be sure to link to a WP dandy so that people, if they've been intrigued by what you've said, and they want to know more, they can find you.
There is of course, a contact form on there you go to WP, dundee.com forward slash contact. Then you'd be able to get in touch. But, let's just for a few minutes, focus on what is WP dandy. We mentioned it at the start. what's its purpose. what is it all about? as a Sergeant from the very beginning, in comparison with all the developers that are considered.
There a duty to create some plugins. and I did not how to share them into WordPress post three. I decided to move a little bit different way and to help people to maintain what they already have. And that's why I decided to create our, then this website and to low people, to contact tasks with their problems and to, CMS, but it needs a lot of attention and it needs a lot of passion and it needs a lot of knowledge because for example, I have Lisa only 20 most are basic, I would say optimization. Yeah. Yeah.
Your own design, greater Themis, not the far, but the person can't have older knowledge possible. For example, I would, my team, have around as it is written on the website. They're on 100 years of experience personally, I worked from 2009. It's already 11 years and we also have an even. People that started to work with WordPress from it's their beginning one, even it wasn't a PHP version, a content management system or all Lu.
it was just a couple of templates that would run for the internet net. It would be for free. all these make makes our team and help, businesses, not to go out with, Of, either net, because it oftentimes happens that people just lose their parish and, just the know what to do. And they are approaching some, I don't know, freelancers.
They have them for their limited amount of time. And after dark, the men, once again are face to face with their problem. And this is why it's WPP dandy. Does it helps people to keep going. Would their businesses. So it's a, it's like a maintenance service whereby you sign up, is it, I guess it's a monthly subscription and depending on the tier that you're on, you're entitled to a certain amount of assistance.
Shall we say, do you want to just talk us through the three different pricing plans, which appear on your website at the moment you've got starter advanced and pro what's the difference between the lower package and the highest one. in general, these free packages aren't weighted for, I would say free levels of businesses, from the, for those who just have started it's then, I do know that you have a kind of website that you need to contact your developer because an old company we, provide, Each a single website, its own our developer and it, supports that website. So we don't move from one developer to another it's continuously develop, takes, pays attachment to your resource and works with you.
Nice. So yeah, In this situation, you might need to, support, to contact, support by phone and to ask for some the developer and do ask for help. And so the model, so in the case and this case, and you might need some small. A development, a word design or a content management stopped doing one math that, want, overcome their own
So in distribuition you've got four H and dollars. So it's just a chat, $20, different as bites you have additionally supported by fine and 30 minutes. And in case you want, I don't know, to get. and what I forgot is that for the $69 to get just, updates for once per month in case you have, or there a higher level of planets will be twice a month.
And thrice math will be for $109 and it will be additionally, one hour of development. It could be development design, or some changes to, I don't know, in case you need some changes to your design. Yeah. Nice. So a professional WordPress website maintenance company designed for people who are probably in need of some support, maybe.
you've got some clients who would, we would benefit from this. You could pass them over to WP Dandy. You can find [email protected]. And the pricing that we just mentioned is that WP Tom WP dandy. Should I say.com? Forward slash pricing. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat with you, Alexander. I'm sorry that we ran out of time, but, thanks for joining us today.
and we'll speak to you soon. thank you, Nate. And it was my pleasure to talk to you today and to all the audience. And of course, I also hope to have, some more, corporation and a podcast like this one. Yeah. Yeah. you're most welcome. Have a nice day. Take care. Thank you too.
I hope that you enjoyed that episode. I certainly learnt a lot, whether you've been using WordPress for years, or you're a bit of a newb that was tons of information in there. It was quite a long episode, but certainly worth listening to maybe it's those episodes that you have to go back to and pass in smaller chunks, because there's just so much coming at you.
I could have gone on with Alexandru for much longer, but. We had to cut it at to a reasonable length of time. But yeah, fascinating episode love that. Don't forget that if you want to make use of Alexandros sort of concierge service, it's called WP dandy. It's a 24 seven WordPress maintenance and support service.
You can get 30% off that by using the coupon go, WP Builds 30, there are 30 of those available. And so hopefully some of you will make use of that. The WP Builds podcast was brought to you today by AB split test. Do you want to set up your abs you split test in record time, then you AB split test plugin for WordPress.
We'll have you up and running in a couple of minutes. Use your existing pages and test anything against anything else. Buttons, images, headers, rows, anything. And the best part is it works with element or Beaver builder and the WordPress block editor. Check it out and get a free [email protected].
Hopefully, we'll see you again this time. Next week. Remember we're back around on Monday for the WP Builds weekly WordPress news and the live version of that as well. Check it all out with WP belts.com forward slash subscribe. And I hope that you have a nice week. Stay safe. Bye bye. For now cheesy music come in. .