In this presentation I’ll show how WordPress themes (and sites) can be built to achieve 100/100 Google pagespeed. You’ll learn about my process of using Gulp to concatenate and minify resources, along with intentional enqueues and dequeues.
Bonus: some ways to configure cache plugins to achieve a similar effect.
Take aways:
How front-end performance effects mobile users on slower speeds.
Tips on improving front-end performance.
Gulp basics and how to use with WordPress.
3. What is Front-End Performance?
Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
4. • Availability
• Scalability
Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
How long users are
waiting for your
website to load
Back-End Front-End
Different Concerns
5. 80 to 90% of poor performance
happens in the front end
Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Steve Souders, Google’s (former) Head Performance Engineer
8. Who is affected by bad
performance?
Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
9. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Business
Adding half a second to a search
results page can decrease traffic
and ad revenues by 20 percent,
according to a Google study
http://alistapart.com/article/improving-ux-through-front-end-performance
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/psychology-web-performance/
Every additional 100
milliseconds of load time
decreased sales by 1 percent
10. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Accessibility
“The Web is fundamentally designed to work for
all people, whatever their hardware, software,
language, culture, location, or physical or
mental ability.”
https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/accessibility.php
11. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Accessibility Concerns
• Limited Mobility
• Blind, Low Vision
• Color Blind
• Cognitive/Learning
• Deaf, Hard of Hearing
• AND EVERYONE ELSE
12. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Poverty
Only 43.8 percent of
households with less than a
high school education
were online, compared to
90.1 percent of those with
a college degree.
• GPRS
• “Edge”
• Dial-Up
Internet Access Options
13. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
& Gomez Inc. 2019
Users expect pages to load in two
seconds—and after three seconds,
up to 40 percent will simply leave.
http://alistapart.com/article/improving-ux-through-front-end-performance
15. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Dequeue assets & concatenate
Plugins & Themes that add resources do it through
wp_enqueue_script and wp_enqueue_style
http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/08/06/how-to-disable-scripts-and-styles
https://css-tricks.com/taking-control-cssjs-wordpress-plugins-load/
16. Front-End Performance Michael Mizner @miznerism
Determine “Critical Styles”
A small style sheet with the most important rules for your site.
Place in <head> before <body>
It’s a little non-wordpressy