Issue fixed with plugins and Page Speed

byapache1

11.6K followers

Updated 3 months ago

Well, today has been a long day working with some page speed issues.

This is something that I put off for far too long and never got around to it.

But enough was enough and I worked on the page speed all afternoon the long way.

When I started last week, I did find one particular plugin that reduced my page speed, especially on mobile then I got distracted and had other things to deal with and I totally forgot about it until today.

But for some reason, it didn't give me the full results I was looking for.

So I decided to just work on this all afternoon and got a much better result with my mobile and desktop speed.

I still have some issues to work out as far as SEO results but will work on finding a solution to that later and have quickly looked at some possible reasons speed insights gave me.

However mobile especially and desktop speed were my main thoughts to get fixed.

plugins

Many times you may hear some people say too many plugins will slow down your website but that is not necessarily true as I will show you my results with 18 plugins on this site.

At times plugins are generally the main cause when the coding within the plugin creates the issue not the number of plugins.

Of course, if you can get away with as little as possible that is great but not always the case.

You may also find that a plugin you have been using works great then an update comes along be it an update for that plugin, a WordPress update or even other plugins and now the plugin or other plugins may clash even though they were great mates together for so long without issue.

Sometimes plugins don't get updated for months i have seen some for years some may work while others can easily crash your website.

This is for mobile for my site

Desktop results for the site

Final results using WA Speed insights for some posts and pages.

As you can see I am pretty stoked with the final results.

As I said I still need to work on the SEO side and perhaps why some of the posts are a bit lower than what they should be but they still are pretty good results and that is the way they should always be.

One by One

As I said I wasn't fully happy with the result so the only way to sort it out was to find which other plugin or plugins were causing me an issue and I found it which I was surprised by.

To do this right I had to deactivate all the plugins and go one by one and keep testing the page speed results.

I know it is a painstaking process but one that needs to be done.

At times I had to re-check each time refresh the website cache and then check page speed insight to make sure all the right actions were taken and trust me this does take time.

Good thing I did now I have 18 plugins on this site and at the moment happy with the result as shown above.

Originally, I had 20 plugins on this particular site and now I know the two troublemakers for me.

So, when I check out the other sites this time will be quicker, I hope.

Here are the two plugins causing me issues

Sassy Social Share plugin

While I liked this plugin and I know many recommend it this may not always be the case for everyone certainly not for me.

If it works for you your speed is not affected and you are in the 90's at least then good on you keep it.

For now, this was the one that I found last week but never got around to fixing it all.

So I need to find another solution to replace this plugin and hopefully, it will keep the speed results up high.

Sit Kit by Google

Yep many have been adding this plugin and then have it connected it to Google Analytics or GSC I should say but if you think about it, you don't really need it you should be able to go on GSC and find the info you need.

This is more of a slight convenience and not a necessity to have.

Although I was surprised by how slow my site was with this activated.

Results without the two plugins

Once I deactivated all the plugins and played around activating and deactivating many times I finally brought it down to these two plugins.

What I did was activate one and test the results.

Here are the results with Sassy Social Share activated.

Remember the final results I gave at the top to this one for both mobile and desktop and you will see the difference in negative results it gave especially on mobile.

Speed results for mobile and desktop with Sassy Social Share activated

As you can see the mobile speed really went down

Site Kit by Google

Now I deactivated the sassy plugin and activated Site Kit to see what results this gave Both mobile and desktop below.

Again, you can it is totally different to the final result.

I am glad I finally did this and now just need to find out how to sort out a better score with the SEO results.

So, if your page speed results are not that great and you can't find an easy or quick solution then you may need to take the long and winding road and deactivate all the plugins and go one by one until you find the results.

Ideas

So if anyone has some great ideas on the best social media plugin to use that won't affect the speed like above, I would love to know and then I can check it out.

Update:

With the issue on Sassy Social plugin, I have now added one called Social Rocket and there were no issues plus the mobile and desktop speed went up by 1 from 98 to 99 on mobile and 97 to 98 on desktop.

Just to let you know.

In the meantime