Fassbender
Member
Hi
It seems to me that a lot of us struggle for alidropship theme speed optimization. After trying a lot of plugins to improve page load times, I would like to share how I have optimized page load speed with you.
I get davinci load time to be around 1.6 seconds and raphael gets 2.4 seconds (1.8 secs at best) on average on gtmetrix. Overall I get over 85% speed grade on gtmetrix and google pagespeed insights.
Here are my optimizations:
1. Get a faster host
I used GoDaddy before but have switched to FastComet to take advantage of their Varnish Cache and other speed boosters available. I use their SpeedUp Plan which costs $9.95 per month at this moment and get apcu, memcache and opcache bundled with high resources on my plan. They also have cloudflare built into their cpanel so take advantage of the free plan and it really does make a lot of difference.
2. Get a cache plugin
If you are not using it I suggest you do so. Get something that minifies and combines the files. There are free plugins such as WP Total Cache and WP Fastest Cache. I use the paid plugin WP Rocket, really does make a lot of difference. Also, use the lazy load feature of this plugin and turn off the in-built theme lazyload. In case you do end up using this plugin, add //connect.facebook.com/en-US/sdk.js to the excluded javascript files. It will stop the problem caused with facebook widget being shown on footer. Also, if you are having problems with currency add ADS_CUR to excluded inline Javascript.
This above options does offer a 45 day money back guarantee so I would highly advise that you give this a try. No improvements, just ask for your money back.
3. Optimize images
The images must be optimized. This reduces page size up to 70%. I use ShortPixel to overcome this. Make sure you optimize the thumbnails also. There are free plugins available such as resmush.it but I prefer the efficiency and compression level of ShortPixel.
You must host the images in your server as it wont optimize images served through aliexpress cdn. To do so, head over to Alidropship > Aliexpress > Settings. Under product images check all the boxes and click update. This will significantly increase the image load on your website and also increase the inodes usages. Make sure you have the necessary server resources before you begin. The SpeedUp plan gives me 500,000 inodes and I seem to have used over 280k. I would advise to to ask any host you may switch to about their inodes count of the package. The higher the better for you when you start importing more products. The space is not a big issue, the file count is. Check the stats on your current Cpanel dashboard to see how many inodes you have.
4. Use Image CDN
Photon is free cdn by Wordpress.com, use it. Download Jetpack plugin and enable it. As easy as that. Before you do so, make sure you optimize the images first or else you will get stuck serving large images.
5. Reduce bloat
Decrease the amount of http requests per page by limiting the number of reviews shown per product. Under your Wordpress Setting > Discussion. Enable threaded comments and break the comments per page to 5 or even less.
The final recommendation is to reduce the number of gallery images per product. Some seem to have almost 7 main gallery images and various other variation images. Reduce it. 3 is optimal I believe. Also, get rid of any plugins that are not native to Alidropship Original. Use the ones created by Alidropship developers. With regards to security plugin, use one your server can handle.
Use SVG for logos and other images. This keeps the quality perfect and also reduces the picture size by almost 90%. Use JPG for page promos on homepage. Optimize databases when you can.
I hope this helps you.
It seems to me that a lot of us struggle for alidropship theme speed optimization. After trying a lot of plugins to improve page load times, I would like to share how I have optimized page load speed with you.
I get davinci load time to be around 1.6 seconds and raphael gets 2.4 seconds (1.8 secs at best) on average on gtmetrix. Overall I get over 85% speed grade on gtmetrix and google pagespeed insights.
Here are my optimizations:
1. Get a faster host
I used GoDaddy before but have switched to FastComet to take advantage of their Varnish Cache and other speed boosters available. I use their SpeedUp Plan which costs $9.95 per month at this moment and get apcu, memcache and opcache bundled with high resources on my plan. They also have cloudflare built into their cpanel so take advantage of the free plan and it really does make a lot of difference.
2. Get a cache plugin
If you are not using it I suggest you do so. Get something that minifies and combines the files. There are free plugins such as WP Total Cache and WP Fastest Cache. I use the paid plugin WP Rocket, really does make a lot of difference. Also, use the lazy load feature of this plugin and turn off the in-built theme lazyload. In case you do end up using this plugin, add //connect.facebook.com/en-US/sdk.js to the excluded javascript files. It will stop the problem caused with facebook widget being shown on footer. Also, if you are having problems with currency add ADS_CUR to excluded inline Javascript.
This above options does offer a 45 day money back guarantee so I would highly advise that you give this a try. No improvements, just ask for your money back.
3. Optimize images
The images must be optimized. This reduces page size up to 70%. I use ShortPixel to overcome this. Make sure you optimize the thumbnails also. There are free plugins available such as resmush.it but I prefer the efficiency and compression level of ShortPixel.
You must host the images in your server as it wont optimize images served through aliexpress cdn. To do so, head over to Alidropship > Aliexpress > Settings. Under product images check all the boxes and click update. This will significantly increase the image load on your website and also increase the inodes usages. Make sure you have the necessary server resources before you begin. The SpeedUp plan gives me 500,000 inodes and I seem to have used over 280k. I would advise to to ask any host you may switch to about their inodes count of the package. The higher the better for you when you start importing more products. The space is not a big issue, the file count is. Check the stats on your current Cpanel dashboard to see how many inodes you have.
4. Use Image CDN
Photon is free cdn by Wordpress.com, use it. Download Jetpack plugin and enable it. As easy as that. Before you do so, make sure you optimize the images first or else you will get stuck serving large images.
5. Reduce bloat
Decrease the amount of http requests per page by limiting the number of reviews shown per product. Under your Wordpress Setting > Discussion. Enable threaded comments and break the comments per page to 5 or even less.
The final recommendation is to reduce the number of gallery images per product. Some seem to have almost 7 main gallery images and various other variation images. Reduce it. 3 is optimal I believe. Also, get rid of any plugins that are not native to Alidropship Original. Use the ones created by Alidropship developers. With regards to security plugin, use one your server can handle.
Use SVG for logos and other images. This keeps the quality perfect and also reduces the picture size by almost 90%. Use JPG for page promos on homepage. Optimize databases when you can.
I hope this helps you.
