There were hundreds of web providers at the time, but only a few provided cloud web hosting, much alone economical cloud web hosting. In order to "carve out" our niche, we provide high-speed cloud web hosting for less than $5 per month. Despite our high-performance infrastructure, we often get reports from customers questioning why their websites load slowly. This is an issue that we felt compelled to discuss in depth, since it is a very good one.
High Speed Hardware
When constructing our high-speed cloud, we spared no expense in terms of hardware. Even though pricey, nothing less than Solid State Drives (SSD) secured by Raid 10 is acceptable. The same holds true for our Intel processors; we refused to purchase AMD or any other inferior brand.
High Speed Software
By adopting the Apache web server, we would save thousands of dollars per month. Instead, we decided to deploy LiteSpeed in conjunction with Cloud Linux to guarantee that every Hostingli account has adequate resources. LiteSpeed is a drop-in replacement for Apache, so your scripts, such as WordPress, will function identically but considerably more quickly. CloudLinux resides on top of the CentOS operating system and provides each account with a set of constraints, as well as a Caged File System that enables PHP core files to be independent for each website. This also enables us to provide different versions of PHP to each client, giving them the option to select the version that works best for their website.
WordPress Speed Test
Having reviewed all of these points, it is now time to assess the speed of WordPress. GTMetrix is our preferred "free tool" for doing such testing. In contrast to many other "free" speed assessments available, GTMetrix truly explains why a website received the result that it did. A "brand-new" installation, devoid of plugins and fancy themes, appears as follows:
Any website with a PageSpeed and YSlow Score of at least 90% is exceptional, particularly for shared hosting environments. This verifies that the hardware and software of our infrastructure are performing as intended.
WordPress Speed Test With LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed has released a WordPress caching plugin that has acquired considerable popularity in the community. In fact, LiteSpeed has benchmarked the plugin against a number of the most popular WordPress caching plugins:
We use LiteSpeed with the Keep-Alive feature enabled. If we add LiteSpeed cache to the exact same simple WordPress website we tested before, the results are as follows:
As can be seen, the increase in fully loaded time is not significant, but the percentage gain is not awful!
What If Your WordPress Website Isn't Getting These Results
Custom plugins and themes are the most common reason why WordPress websites get lower ratings than this. We believe that almost all of our WordPress clients at Hostingli employ custom plugins and themes in some capacity.
However, you should not use the two interchangeably. For instance, you should only install Plugins if they are really essential. The more plugins you install, the greater the number of database calls and the speed degradation. The same is true of Themes. The bulk of WordPress theme developers are motivated by financial gain. They are not building the theme, installing it on a big website, and then optimising its load speed. They are designing the concept to be visually appealing and marketable to the people. Consequently, you may need to approach a professional WordPress developer for assistance with some of these adjustments. The advantage of GTMetrix is that it tells you just what has to be done!
How To Speed Test And Optimize Your WordPress
We are a group of web hosting nerds at Hostingli. It is our responsibility to offer the highest-performing infrastructure, but it is the customer's responsibility to be able to modify the code to take full use of the tools we supply. If we offered individual site code help, we would have to charge a great deal more since the credentials for a support position would extend much beyond server administration! If your WordPress site isn't loading as quickly as you believe it should, we suggest examining your Plugins and Themes after using improvements such as LiteSpeed cache and Cloudflare. You may wish to check for themes with overwhelmingly positive ratings and an active community that is willing to answer queries about implementing essential optimizations.
Please feel free to ask any question, and we'll do our best to respond.
