WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization for Advanced Cloud Setup

WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization for Advanced Cloud Setup is hard as most Cloud providers keeps combination hidden. Here is master guide of the rules. This article on WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization for Advanced Cloud Setup is not for WordPress users using a single Cloud Server or VPS or dedicated server or the worst – a shared server. If you belong to these mentioned groups, you can read these articles cum guide instead for WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization :

1. Page Speed Optimization for WordPress : The Ultimate Guide
2. Speed up page loading speed of WordPress blog through wp config file
3. Speed Up WordPress With CloudFlare while using WP Super Cache

What is the Advanced Cloud Setup we are saying about in this WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization guide ?

At least 4 Cloud Servers / Nodes along with Loadbalancers and Content Delivery Network – be it a ready made Cloud Hosting Solution like Rackspace Cloud Files or fully created by you is the Advanced Cloud Setup for this WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization guide.

Points and Tricks that will help you for WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization in these setup

The first thing is, you need to know what is the Operating System is running on the Server. Most uses Debian Linux or Red Hat Linux. Debian has some differences with other Linux distro. Second point is what Server Software is installed. Either it will be Apache or nginx. Now it is important to know what modules are installed (otherwise plugins will not work).

If it is Apache, increase the PHP memory. For WordPress, 512 MB is considered to be the right. Keep in mind, your Server probably is an Edge server and its configuration will cache directly on the serverside – this understanding is very important as “double caching” to achieve perfect Wordpress Caching and Speed Optimization with plugins will be hindered.

Best Practices WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization for these setups :

• Use Cache Plugins that needs more addon Plugins, like WP Super Cache. Because simply you can control it more than an integrated WordPress Caching plugin.
• Optimize through .htaccess for Apache.
• Test webpage speed with various with and without dependent plugins.
• Consider excluding loading post images from CDN – yes, it sounds paradoxical, but test it.
• All static files (like theme files, JavaScripts of wp-includes) of WordPress must be combined, minified and loaded from CDN.
• You might need to clean up the default WordPress head (there are plugins like Headcleaner plugin) and again add some custom SEO things for optimal WordPress Caching. Good example is – link rel of favicon.
• A hand coded good Theme framework is must for Wordpress Caching and Speed Optimization.

• Delay loading the javascrips by using asynchronous js files and serving them from CDN.
• Consider not to compress the HTML output – page might load faster, but not all old systems (which fetches your website’s data and give free backlinks) can grab required data from a compressed page.
• Always use Yahoo’s smush it service or Adobe Photoshop to reduce image sizes before loading to CDN.
• Use multiple buckets of CDN instead of one. Avoid fancy custom CNAME like cdn1.thecustomizewindows.com, instead use the bare url.
• Avoid SSL as much as possible (both for CDN and Main Server).

WordPress Caching and Speed Optimization can be done by you. Try to understand how to optimize, it will take time but will give the best result.