The Texas Wedding Ministers were referred by a friend and had some issues with how their site was loading. We all know that three seconds waiting for a page to load is just too long. The site was loading at six, sometimes seven, seconds. This is not good for any user but especially for any SEO (search engine optimization) that you are trying to do. First we reviewed the website, took some measurements if you will, and gave the client some honest feedback about what it would take to speed up the site. We made suggestions for image sizes, hosting servers, and upgrading plugins and the theme. All of these suggestions not only help with the speed, but also the integrity of the site security wise.

We had some issues at first because upgrading certain plugins and files would cause the site to break. But as we powered through, chipping away at the issues, we stair stepped our way to a good working base so we could handle the theme upgrades. Another thing we had to deal with was conflicting plugins so we tested which plugins were actually needed to run the site and cleaned it up. We also removed any suspicious files that seemed like someone's attempt to hack the site.

After our initial clean up was complete we moved the site to a much better server location which added more speed and CDN capabilities. This greatly improved the site's overall performance. We then implemented a child theme for the current site’s theme, which should be done on all WordPress sites when using a third party theme.

After all the work was done, the speed tests speak for themselves, links below. Now WordPress itself is hard at passing these speed tests because of the way it loads assets. But things are getting better with that and if you concentrate on the aspects you can control, you should be able to improve on your site as well.

Before Site Speed Optimization (PDF)

After Site Speed Optimization (PDF)