Site Speed Nerd Roasts Our Setup 🔥 (Ep. 331)

Did you know that Google is about to introduce a new web vital metric? 😨
Neither did we.
But this news did prompt us to take another look at our site speed setup, and we wanted to bring in a pro to help us out. So in this week's episode, Gael chats with Brian Jackson - the guy behind the enthusiast site speed plugin, Perfmatters.
He's seen hundreds of site setups, this week he critiques our setup and gives you tips on how to fix your setup as well.
If you've ever wondered:
👉 if the number of plugins you use is cutting your site speed
👉 what the best CDN setup is
👉 what caching plugins you should never use...
...or even if you should delay or defer your JavaScript, then you won't want to miss this one.
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A special thanks to our sponsors for this episode, the all-in-one SEO tool set, Ahrefs:
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
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Check out the latest video on our new ✨news channel ✨:
👉 • Reddit SEO: It’s Worse...
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More about Brian:
Twitter:
x.com/brianleejackson?s=20
forgemedia:
forgemedia.io/
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Perfmatters (Site Speed Tool):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Kinsta (Hosting):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Cloudways (Hosting):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Rocket.net (Hosting):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
BigScoots (Hosting):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
GeneratePress (WordPress theme):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
GenerateBlocks (WordPress blocks):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Elementor (site builder):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
BricksBuilder (site builder):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
FluentForms (WP contact form plugin):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
WSForm (WP form plugin):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
InstaWP (creating online testing environments):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Cloudflare (CDN):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
BunnyCDN (CDN):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
ShortPixel (Image Optimizer):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
EWWW (Image Optimizer):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Optimole (Image Optimizer):
www.authorityhacker.com/recom...
Imagify (Image Optimizer):
imagify.io/
Zaraz (third party tool manager):
www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/appl...
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:48 The dangers of poor site speed
06:52 Hosting
09:57 Theme & Page Builders
19:47 Caching Plugin
25:52 Front-end Caching Plugin Settings
27:57 Minifying CSS & Javascript Files
35:08 Deferring vs. Delaying Javascript
39:57 Pre-loading
47:48 Cleaning Databases
54:06 CDNs
55:33 Authority Hacker’s set-up
01:06:20 Image Optimization
01:12:31 Image Compression Limits
01:16:15 Perfmatters
01:29:31 Wrap-Up

[@clappedoutsubieshoopties2216]

Dude, Brian is the MAN. Straight up blew me away when he personally spent an hour helping me optimize my site. Perfmatters for life.

[@cmgweb6951]

That's hilarious! "1 million Swifties hitting F5 at the same time!" "over and over and over! Gonna be a great show!

[@SpencerCampbellSG]

Many plugins are rejected by Ezoic especially cache plugins even using their Leap feature, it would be interesting to know if Permatters clashes with Ezoic or not!

[@karinaserah]

Does Brian has a course on site speed optimization? He's great at explaining things. I'd love to understand why he does what he does on optimization.

[@blackholesupersloth3276]

This podcast was FANTASTIC. Thanks guys 👍👍👍

[@lewis99170]

Great episode! Heads up, your suggested video at the end isn't populated.

[@QuickEasyVeganFood]

I really enjoyed this episode, even though I am not technical.

[@nicolaskeith8945]

Hey @Brian -- have you tried Bedrock/Sage from the Roots stack?

[@marcmcdermott4742]

Awesome episode! Does Brian do paid audits? Didn't see anything on his website.

[@the0great1one]

Is there a benefit in having both WP Rocket and Perfmatters? Does Perfmatters do everything Rocket can do?

[@marcmcdermott4742]

I have the same question.

[@LeoKoo]

wow nice, you guys got Brian! :) Well done folks!

[@AuthorityHacker]

Brian is awesome!

[@ExploitingLife]

Thank you, very insightful

[@PhilippeLarcher]

Yes I knew and I believe it was already correlated with traffic in some ways as far as last summer. I also found out that mediavine impacts this metric.

[@cwd31768]

Great interview! No discount code for perfmatters to join? :( Common guys, through us a freaking bone here)))

[@paologtrulli]

What if your using hostinger. Do you enable things like image optimization, minify css/js etc? Or do you utilize wordpress plugins for this and why one vs the other?

[@CaseyBotticello]

How many PHP workers do you use currently?

[@adametes]

Fantastic.

[@darcymason319]

where is the part about contact form plugin?

[@blogambitious]

It’s not that I don’t like Blocks it’s that it NEVER works for me. Options are hidden and the UX is not intuitive at all. I spend 40 minutes working on a site and then I have to abandon it and switch back to generate press because I can’t find how to control an element I need. It also always adds the h1 site title on all pages when I only want it on the Home page.

[@unknownpara7]

You me mentioned the trick to improve LCP by making Heading bugger or something, can you please explain it please BECAUSE my LCP IS 4sec

[@tipstricks3766]

What do you say about nitropack?

[@AuthorityHacker]

Not worth the price anymore. The setup described in the pod is better.

[@tipstricks3766]

@@AuthorityHacker I liked Hummingbird pro but they don't have page preload (cache warmup) like nitropack. How do you do page caching before user visits the page? Without page cache warmup, cache is not created & core web vitals fails.

[@jimnech5066]

Some questions are better left not asked.🙊

[@jimmears]

An hour and a half is a dreadfully long time to cover site speed isn't it?

[@lewis99170]

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Could have gone 2 hours honestly.

[@ohmightyhealth916]

Agree.

[@adametes]

@@lewis99170even 3, wanted to keep learning. Best episode in a long time.

[@dinorossi6611]

Meh