Optimizing WordPress for Speed

Even if you end up hiring someone, first read the official WordPress site optimization guide to understand the factors that affect the speed of your WordPress site:

Optimization

Thanks for the info I read as much as I can, we’re already working on optimizing hosting, DNS, CDN, getting the theme filesize down to100kb, optimizing content and more.

The last frontier is WP itself I read articles like these https://www.toptal.com/wordpress/guide-optimizing-wordpress-performance, and it just seem like a waste not extracting the fastest version, especially taming wp datatransfers (apart from plugins).

And we can test until we have a stable version, but I can’t find any info what happens once you have a customized superfast wp installation file. 

Can you store this optimized wp installation file, use it for new wp site setups, and when you install it does it get updated as usual to latest wp version, without overwriting your optimizations? I understand applying child themes, does customizing your version of WordPress work similarly?

Thanks!

and it just seem like a waste not extracting the fastest version, especially taming wp datatransfers (apart from plugins).

I have no clue what you said there. What “fastest version” are referring to?

And we can test until we have a stable version, but I can’t find any info what happens once you have a customized superfast wp installation file.

Again, I don’t get what you mean by “superfast WP installation” file here. Customized installation file? And whatever that is, I guess “what happens” will depend on the “customization” you did.

Whatever you do, do not edit the WordPress core files… as

1) You’ll lose all your changes when you update WordPress
2) 3rd-party plugins may not play nice with your core customizations.

Except in some rare edge cases, any performance gain is going to come from how you use the provided WordPress functions in your custom theme or plugin — like the kinds of queries you make, and not in tweaking the core functions themselves.

That’s what the post you linked to is all about: optimizing the queries you make in your theme or plugin. It’s not about changing WordPress itself.

From the article:

WordPress, one of the most popular publishing platforms, has stood the test of time and now powers a significant portion of the web. Sadly, its reputation is plagued by claims of poor performance and complexity with scaling. However, the root causes of such performance issues are often bad code and poorly implemented plugins and themes.

… and concludes by saying:

From the above, it is clear that the root causes of poor performance in WordPress are bad and inefficient code. However, WordPress provides all the necessary functionalities through its various APIs that can help us build much more performant plugins and themes without compromising the speed of the overall platform.

Good luck!

Thank you George for your specification and apologies for sounding casual about it.

I’ll return to my notes and respond with exact optimizations I’m considering in a bit.

Here are the optmimizations I thought can make our new WordPress installations faster.

Assumed they’re ‘once and done’ customizations, or do they need upkeep?

Do they get overwritten with WP versions udates? Or should you apply these optimizations to each new website/wp installation?

Would a https://web.dev/vitals/ test give some of a (obvious) quality indication of the optimized WP code?

And would you suggest other optimizations?

Thank you George.

https://www.toptal.com/wordpress/guide-optimizing-wordpress-performance

1. Limiting the Query
2. Excluding Posts from the Query
   

https://www.toptal.com/wordpress/tips-and-practices

3. Use a Function to Load Scripts and CSS
4. Spring Clean Your WordPress Functions (do you need to do this every time WP updates?)
   
5. Limit Post Revisions https://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-performance-speed/#limitrevisions
   
6. Disable Hotlinking and Leaching of Your Content https://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-performance-speed/#disablehotlinking
   
7. I try to minimize plugins, but is this one to always install? https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/performance-lab/