Looking for a step-by-step guide on what to do after installing perfmatters? Well, you have landed on the right page.
I have been using Perfmatters for quite some time now and will list all the essential Perfmatters settings to optimize your website.
1. Toggle Options
The best part about using Perfmatters is almost all the important features can be enabled using toggle options. For this, you can click on the General settings of Perfmatters, and you will find many features.
Some of them are –
- Disable Emojis
- Disable Dashicons
- Disable Embeds
- Disable XML-RPC
- Remove jQuery Migrate
- Remove RSD Link
- Remove short links
- Disable Google maps
- Disable Comments
- Disable Heartbeat along with frequency settings and more
2. Lazy Loading
To enable lazy loading, go to the Perfmatters settings, which you will find on your WordPress admin dashboard.
Then, click on the submenu – Lazy Loading. You will see the option to load images, iFrames, and videos lazily.
The tip for you is to log out when testing the number of images you can exclude. Automated exclusion will not work on background images.
You can also exclude any particular image or video from being lazyloaded.
Another hack I learned over the years is that if you use YouTube videos on your website, then it is ideal to enable their preview thumbnail option. This will increase the site loading by 50-60% and will drop your website weightage by 50%.
3. WooCommerce
If you are working on the WooCommerce platform, then you can definitely make use of these features.
If you have WooCommerce installed, you would know that it default loads all its scripts and styles on every page, which can harness your website’s performance.
To disable your WooCommerce script and styles, disable all the features in the General settings of the Perfmatters plugin.
Once you scroll down, you will see an option for disabling scripts under the WooCommerce submenu.
Similarly, you can also disable WooCommerce cart fragments, Status Meta Box, and Widgets for better performance. After completing all the settings, save the changes.
4. CDN settings
CDN optimization is done to enhance the delivery speed of web content, reduce latency, and lower bandwidth expenses. This is one of the most critical components which is optimized to improve the speed of the website.
You can also enter a particular CDN URL, directories, and exclusions.
In order to enable CDN rewrite, you can go to the CDN menu under Perfmatters settings. Under that, you can use the toggle option to enable or disable it. After enabling CDN rewrite, save changes.
If you’re conducting tests on a staging site, it’s likely necessary to temporarily disable the CDN rewrite feature since the CDN URL will only correspond to your live site.
5. Google Analytics
Another way of reducing your DNS lookups and solving browser caching issues is to host Google Analytics locally.
To do this, Scroll under the Analytics sub-menu from the Perfmatters. There, you will see an option to enable local analytics. You can also add a tracking TD, Code position, script type, and more under the same settings.
Perfmatters uses the CRON job, which helps update the Google Analytics script’s latest copy every day.
6. Delay and Defer JS files
Delaying JS until user interaction is needed at the end of the page load can actually greatly enhance your website’s performance. Both “defer” and “delay” can help improve Core Web Vitals scores and reduce render-blocking issues.
“Defer” pushes the script to the bottom of the page load, while “delay” removes the JavaScript from the initial page load altogether.
To do so, you can click on the Assets menu in the Perfmatters settings. There, you will find two options: Defer Javascript and Delay Javascript.
Enable the buttons and save changes. You will also get an optional function of “Include jQuery.” Using that, you can also defer jQuery, which is part of WordPress.
You can also add a few files which you want to exclude from deferring. Such specific options are the reason why Perfmatters is one of the best plugins you can use to optimize your website.
7. Removal of unused CSS
There are two different methods of handling CSS.
Inline (default): Your CSS is included directly in your site’s source code at the top of the page. This is good for PageSpeed scores but makes your HTML file larger.
File: Your CSS is saved in a separate file. This is best for how fast users see your page, as the file can be stored for later visits, and it also makes the HTML file smaller.
To reduce unused CSS using Perfmatters, go to the Asset menu in the settings column.
There, you will see an option to remove unused CSS along with the Used CSS method. You can also change stylesheet behavior. I would recommend you use Delay stylesheet behavior for best results.
You can also use Async or Remove if you want to prevent pop-ups or remove all the CSS stylesheets aggressively.
8. Preloading resources
Also, Instant Page, DNS prefetch, Preconnect, and Preload can be useful. It’s very important to preload things like Font Awesome web font icons because they block rendering.
You will find these preloading options under the Preloading menu. You can enable instant pages, preload as per device and type, preloading critical images, pre-connect, and DNS prefetch for better results.
9. Schedule Optimization of Database
If you want to schedule optimization regularly, perfmatters comes with an in-built scheduler that you can use.
Under the Perfmatters settings, click on the Tools Option.
Under that, You will see the Database submenu, where you will get many options for optimization.
Some of the functions that will come under this are –
- Post Revisions
- Post auto drafts
- Trashed Posts
- Spam comments
- Trashed comments
- Expired transients
You can select the options you want for regular optimization and then schedule the time, such as daily, weekly, or monthly, as per your requirement.
Wrapping Up…
So far, I have listed down almost everything that I feel is important for you to set up in Perfmattes. By implementing these essential Perfmatters settings, you are not only optimizing your WP site, you are unlocking its full potential. This will help you rank your blogs in SERP and enhance your user experience.
Perfmatters, being a growing company, keeps on updating its plugin. As and when we move forward, we will keep updating this article for your benefit. We hope that this blog post has helped you in configuring your plugin and optimizing your website better.
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