To what degree can use of caching-plugins and a CDN boost WordPress performance? [closed]

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I realize that this question is being asked in a very generic fashion, without detailed specifics of the configuration in question, and thus I am not expecting answers that go beyond anything but general guidance.

With that, given a WordPress site that is:

• based on a typical "heavy" ("kitchen-sink included") theme, purchased via ThemeForest.net, and

• hosted on typical (entry-level, Linux-based) "cheap hosting," priced at under $10/month

... to what degree can one realistically expect that the use of properly-configured caching-plugins (such as W3 Total Cache) and a CDN solution (such as CloudFlare or MaxCDN) can significantly boost the sluggish performance of the current setup?

In other words, if we take as an upper limit the performance that might be achieved hosting that very same website on a "high-end" hosting package (say, WPEngine's "Professional" plan, at $99/month, or even their "Business" plan, at $249/month):

• Is there any realistic chance of achieving relatively-"zippy" performance despite the underlying "heavy" theme and relatively-weak infrastructure of the cheap hosting?

• Specifically, what ballpark percentage of "high-end" performance might realistically be achieved?

• And what estimated plugin- and CDN-related expenses would be required each month? Also: what ballpark percentage of peak performance might be achieved using only a "free" CDN plan?

Primarily, I'd like to receive -- if possible -- a "sanity check" that at least a "semi-respectable" level of performance can nevertheless be achieved with cheap hosting in my situation, with the proper tuning and external support (as well as general guidelines on the direction to take).

Answer 1

If your content is rarely updated and that you have configured a caching solution to have what is commonly called a 'supercache'.

This means that ounce a page is cached, next call to that page will return a static content, without requiring a call to a php interpreter.

Even on a cheap hosting, you can hold some huge traffic (over 1000 hits/s) and your next limit will then be bandwidth.

Answer 2

As Antony Gibbs noted the caching plugin will work best if you have rarely updated content. This is in my experience a key factor to caching tools.

As for using a CDN, I use Cloud Flare on a few of my busier sites and the analytics screen from Cloud Flare regularly shows that I save an average bandwidth anywhere between 30%-60% depending on the type of traffic I have on a given day.

I would say that a CDN like Cloud Flare is the simplest to get setup/started. It will save your bandwidth, but it's not going to help much with the CPU and RAM usage on your hosting server.

Something else that is totally worth checking into is raising the PHP version if you can. Simply moving from v5.4 to 5.5 or 5.6 will speed up your PHP and help quite a lot. One of my sites that I switched from PHP v5.5 to 5.6 used nearly half as much memory per page load.

I'm not against caching plugins, but they generally require that they be fine tuned to your site, otherwise I have seen them actually do more harm than good.

Answer 3

There are no doubt a lot of factors at play when talking Wordpress performance optimization. Implementing a caching plugin and a CDN are certainly great options for accelerating your site speed. A CDN will help speed up your static content globally, will help with scalability, among many other things.

A caching plugin will generate a static HTML file of your page so that the system isn't slowed down by backend processes (i.e. plugins, database, etc).

Although you likely won't achieve the speeds of a high-end hosting plan, if you optimize all other aspects of your speed you should still be able to attain very fast speeds.

Implementing a CDN and caching plugin are important aspects for optimization, although there can be many other things done as well. I would recommend reading through this Speed up Wordpress post for a full list of suggestions.