• I’ve been playing with this and some other “performance improving” plugins, as well as some non-plugin techniques to try to improve loading speed on several sites and frankly, I’m stumped.

    – Yslow gives me a grade of C or D on every site no matter what I do – nothing better. But regardless of what Yslow says, the speed test tools I’m using say that my load speed is okay. So, how important is what Yslow says, really?
    – iwebtool.com always gives a decent number under 2 seconds, so does site-perf.com no matter what performance improvers I’ve got installed, or not.
    – The php call in my footer (<?php echo get_num_queries(); ?> queries in <?php timer_stop(1); ?> seconds.) consistently says its under 1/2 second regardless of setup.
    – On one pretty bare-bones site, Websiteoptimization.com shows *very* high numbers that can’t possibly be correct. I can watch my site come up much more quickly than it says it does. On another site with more content, more plugins, external calls, etc. it gives me a great report.

    So, what tool do y’all use to test speed? I’m skeptical that ANY of them are giving me accurate numbers, because they’re all so different.

    On one site, W3 seems to have made some significant improvements – the same configurations on another site seems not to get anything.

    So what’s the trick? What am I missing?

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/

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  • Yslow gives me a grade of C or D on every site no matter what I do – nothing better. But regardless of what Yslow says, the speed test tools I’m using say that my load speed is okay. So, how important is what Yslow says, really?

    All of the tools are different. Site unseen (no pun intended) it’s difficult to say anything direct about your situation. However, keep in mind that the thresholds for satisfying a given performance measurement tool vary and you cannot always take things to heart. In particular, Google Page Speed and YSlow penalize you for things that facebook, google and other widget providers do wrong. So some of the promises of various performance plugins are completely false because somethings are beyond anyone’s control.

    Also if you’re not using the self-hosted method of CDN, you should check out the _htaccess file in wp-content/plugins/w3-total-cache/ini/ for some browser cache optimizations.

    iwebtool.com always gives a decent number under 2 seconds, so does site-perf.com no matter what performance improvers I’ve got installed, or not.

    I think you should spend some time with http://www.webpagetest.org/test instead.

    The php call in my footer (<?php echo get_num_queries(); ?> queries in <?php timer_stop(1); ?> seconds.) consistently says its under 1/2 second regardless of setup.

    This is meaningless if pages are cached. Switch on debug mode in your general settings tab and have a look at what’s really happening. Be sure to check from a browser that does not have an active login.

    On one pretty bare-bones site, Websiteoptimization.com shows *very* high numbers that can’t possibly be correct. I can watch my site come up much more quickly than it says it does. On another site with more content, more plugins, external calls, etc. it gives me a great report.

    That’s a classic tool, not always helpful/ideal. Use the recommendation above.

    On one site, W3 seems to have made some significant improvements – the same configurations on another site seems not to get anything.

    This statement is vague. There could be countless reasons behind this statement, page cache settings, use of http compression, minification settings, lack or use of CDN, # of queries (high execution time) etc etc. It’s best to compare a site to it’s own performance history.

    Thread Starter digigirl

    (@digigirl)

    Thanks for the information. Just having a recommended page speed tester will help. I will continue to delve deeper to see if I can figure it out. Thanks!

    You’re welcome.

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