Improve your Suffusion Blog Page Speed Rating
Raw HTML websites are easily customisable and very lean. However, they are high maintenance and can often lead the writer or developer to get bogged down in the nitty gritty of webpage optimisation. However, WordPress blog pages are even more easily customisable and suited to the novice who just wishes to get their stuff posted to the World Wide Web, however can be very bloated leading to slow page load times and page load conflicts and errors for some people using an outdated web browser.
One of the main issue for people using WordPress is page load time and efficiency. The Firefox plugin Firebug
allows users to identify and measure page load time and troubleshoot areas that may be hampering the user experience for people wishing to read their WordPress blog.
This blog, http://PeterHallam.com.au uses WordPress and the Suffusion Theme Template for display and ‘fancy stuff’. Suffusion is without doubt one of top 5 themes any blogger could wish to use. It is, front and foremost, FREE, has more options that I have yet to explore, and I mean Sayontan the developer / author really outdid himself with the feature set as it is nothing short of comprehensive, and also Suffusion is very customisable. Suffusion, in my option, is the best free WordPress template available. It even much better than many of the paid for templates.
Site Optimisation Conflicts
One problems I have had, which isn’t really even a problem, though is the Site Optimisation options included in Suffusion. I wanted more. Most templates do not even include Site Optimisation as an option, and the fact that Suffusion does is something Sayontan deserves credit for.
One of my websites http://Way2Bliss.com easily scores a 92 / 100 for Firebug. It is raw HTML, very little javascript and uses CSS to take care of the ‘fancy’ stuff like rollover etc.
In comparison PeterHallam.com.au was only scoring an 82 or 83 / 100 depending on the webpage benchmarked.
W3 Total Cache WordPress Plugin
This is not a bad score however in comparison to Way2Bliss I wanted more so I installed a website optimisation plugin called W3 Total Cache. W3 Total Cache is supposed to be the final solution for WordPress Site optimisation. It combines Javascript and CSS etc. into single files to speed up page delivery and reduce DNS calls, which all slows down website page load time.
W3 Total Cache also compresses and minifies the code on webpages, and adds expires values so that end users web browsers will cache pages and much much more.
W3 Total Cache is, good to say the least, however, when benchmarking this site PeterHallam.com.au against Way2Bliss Firebug was showing that my javascript files were not being combined into a single file. Firebug was recommending that this was the most important issue to correct in order to improve my page load times.
After much experimentation, Googling, Yahooing and Asking, I was left with no other option than trail and error.
It appears that the Site Optimisation used by W3 Total Cache conflicts with the included Site Optimisation Options of Suffusion. So, for those people wanting to step up their page load speed just that notch more and go too a dedicated WordPress caching plugin, I recommend disabling Suffusions Site Optimisation options.
Caching Solution – Combine Javascript Files
When checking Site Optimisation options in Suffusion for compressing CSS, Javascript and Site Content (HTML or PHP) to ON, W3 Total Cache is no longer able to combine JavaScript or CSS files. I do not understand why this is the case.
By disabling the Site Optimisation options in Suffusion and moving to a dedicated plugin I now achieve a Firebug Page Speed score of 91/100, which I am happy with.
Suffusion is Still Tops
Please don’t think this is a black mark against Suffusion as it is the only WordPress Template I would consider recommending to anyone. Rather, when you start playing around with multiple plugins available for WordPress, of which there are literally thousands, you will undoubtedly come up with conflicts.
It is extremely difficult for WordPress Developers, Template Designers, and Plugin Developers to be across ‘every’ issue that may pop up. Most of them do it for free or by donation and bloggers like my self are grateful for their dedication to what they do.
Extra Reading
The web site Tutorial 9 has heaps of comparisons and information on caching and why you should use it, what to look for, and how to go about it. I found it very useful as it has lots of highly recommended reading.
Have Fun
Peter
Peter Hallam
Thanks for sharing your opinion about Suffusion. I’m presently trying to switch my dedicated server just because I don’t want to give up on this wonderful theme but I am searching all over for opinions and that’s why I ended up at your blog. Your suggestion to use W3 Total Cache and disable the theme optimization called my attention because Sayontan already suggested it, but I’m unable to install such plugin. When you installed yours, did you have any problems to enable it or was it a smooth installation? Mine keeps asking to chmod 777, which I did via FTP, so I don’t know what to do… Cheers!
Hi Vera,
Sorry I can’t help much here.
I did everything through the WordPress Admin panel interface (just log into you profile) via – Plugins – Ad New (and search for W3 Total Cache) – install and activate. You should be right to go.
I think from your comment that you are hosting your site yourself? ??? I use shared hosting through JustHost so don’t have direct access to httaccess … etc. I haven’t had too chmod anything as I don’t have this level of access to the server.
Why can you not install the plugin? Is it a configuration issue or are you getting an error when you try to enable / activate the plugin?
It is a great plugin and droped my page load time on http://www.webpagetest.org/ from 8 seconds without the plugin, to 4 seconds with the plugin.
You will need to look at combining javascrips and css files in the minification section, but this is easily done when you use the Firebug plugin for Firefox.