Aced It! After almost 15 hours of tweaking the site!

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The header image is a screenshot of my website! Today March 11, 2021.

I spent most of the day, ok about 15 hours, literally, tweaking this site, (not hosted here).

In a question I posed today, I asked if we could date the responses found in our search for relevant subject matter....

DON'T DO IT!

Hahahaha....Had I not read the post, that was answered by Kyle, (yes, THAT Kyle) SIX YEARS AGO, I never would have considered deactivating all of my plugins and retest my page speed.

I did just that. Deactivated all of my plugins, in bulk fashion.

Then, one by one, I re-activated only the basic plugins, which is about one-third of all of the plugins that are installed.

Let me just say this, just because a program, such as a page builder, offers up some shiny products to help embellish your site, does not mean you need to take the bait...

Sure, you might want to use the plugins associated, for example, WooCommerce.

All by itself, that plugin is a program within a plugin. It already covers many of the added plugins claim to do, like cart recovery, special addons (woolentor-cuz it worked with elementor).

Nope, not necessary.

I say this because I've been running this site since 2010. And we ALL know how basic everything was then. All I has was woo commerce. And I had no issues with lost orders, lost products, use of PayPal, etc.

And that is why I spent so much time trying to fix this site - the need for speed...grin. (Top Gun movie reference).

On the downside, I rechecked my stats on Google Insights, and fared worse, at only 80 for desktop. I found conflicting errors, where my images are not using the size measurements (width x height), yet, under the 'passed' audits, my images passed the same issue with flying colors.

So, it can be done....You won't hurt your site, although it might look funny or might disrupt someone's viewing for a few seconds.

Go to your plugin page, and deactivate all plugins


(Top of plugin column)

Select box, Hover over bulk actions, and click on deactivate. Then hit apply.

This will not delete them, only make them inactive.

Run your speed check again. Do not be dismayed by that result. This is a base for comparison.

After you receive the result, return to your plugin page and add the plugins you need (some themes require certain plugins).

Re-test and see the results.

In my case, my site is an e-commerce site.

Yesterday I added a Cache plugin, and later deactivated it, with thoughts of replacing it. While writing this post, I returned to my plugin list and verified that the cache plugin was active...But to my horror, I saw that my WooCommerce plugin was not activated. I activated and re-tested.

While waiting for the results, not very patiently I might add, the results came back with the same results.

The only change was that performance dropped from 98% to 97%, yet the most significant difference was the increase in the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), as it went up from 0.11 to 0.17. From GREEN to ORANGE, if you are familiar with the coding.

And there you have it.

Please like and add any comments you might have.

Rudy

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Recent Comments

15

Great idea and good to know. Which site(s) do you use for testing speed. There are a ton of them and I get all sorts of different results from different sites.

I used http://GTmetrix.com and Googles page insights.
There is another one called http://www.webpagetest.org I tried that one, too as a comparison.
Withe the webpagetest, you can adjust settings, change server location,and browser type.

All three are free...

Thanks, Rudy! Have a great time away!

Thanks, Steve! Will do...

Good move Rudy

Thanks, Geoffrey!

Wow, Thanks for posting this. I will try the same thing on my site to see where it gets me.

I will be interested to drop off some plugins if I can. I find woocommerce good, but there is a tendency to upgrade with various plugins. (even from woocommerce).

When you start looking at mix and match and bulk items, and flexible shipping and invoicing, etc....they all add up

I would be interested to learn what plugins you have running at the final result if you would consider to PM me the results, and or post here.

Alex

Hey Alex!

Thanks for stopping by...
Yes, it's true, the new shiny implements for those basic pkugins are killer...

Not as necessary as you would think with the pro versions of elementor and GeneratePress. Add some woo commerce and you're good to go!

I posted on a reply comment to one of my questions where I listed the plugin issues with the woolentor plugin, the hybrid of woo commerce and elementor..lol. for some reason, it's not loading properly. Of course, I didn't know that until I started to use it. I wanted to see what there was to select from, like I needed any more options, right? And the page didn't load.

Will try later, as I purchased the pro version because of what custom option it provided for woo commerce.

Overall, when you deactivate your plugins, run a page speed test. Then add back the most needed plugins akismet, page builder or editor, backup, cache, optimizer, seo and anything else you might need.
Run a test after addingbeach plugin and test the plugin by opening a home page of your site, refresh each time to see most current version.

Let me tell you, what a relief that was to get that out of rhe way...
I thought I was going to need to redo the site and it works perfectly, so now I can promote it with giveaway trends for emails etc. Next step is the newsletter.. quarterly issues.
Maybe a video or two...

Sky is the limit...!

Thanka for stopping by, Alex!

Rudy

I had exactly the same thoughts. I thought I might need to re-do the site because of all the issues I am having. I will try your method first and see what transpires.

Alex

Yeah, it only takes about 15min to deactivate the plugins, select the site test then run it. Your score will be low, but don't worry.
Return to your plugin page and check the boxes of the plugins you want to add. Start with about 5 plugins. Re-test and see what happens.
Each time you add a plugin, run the rest.
Also, check the plugin to see if it is working properly after the most recent WP upgrade.

Let us know how it worked out for you!

Rudy

Will do

It certainly does take time to test site speed. There used to be a plugin "p4" that was so great to use for testing WP plugins but it is no longer working. It saved so much time testing because it showed all of the plug ins in one graph.

Did you say you used page builder? I hope I didn't miss mention of it in your blog. Did you find it slowed your site down?

Yes, I use elementor pro. With paring down plugins, I found an issue with one that didn't load. Go figure. Didnt realize it until 8 tried to use it, a new plugin for woo and elementor...its not loading properly at this time. WP just updated again so soon after the last one, sometimes plugins won't work right away. Only happens when WP updates too closely together.

The added woo commerce PayPal plugin us currently untested too. I think that plugin provides more esthetic options, as I really don't like the product page layout display , long submarine butyons...lol.

We shall see. I might be able to tweak it some more by adding some css code for the buttons.

I'm using w3 cache and that is working seamlessly.

Each time I add activate, deactivate, delete or add a plugin, I clear the page cache. Then I re-test the page speed.

So far so good...acing it...grin.

Thanks for your detailed response.
You are being very diligent about this.
And you are doing a good job! Great!

Thanks...now it's on to finishing some posts for other websites...

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