W3Speedster is a WordPress performance optimization plugin with many features:
- CDN Integration
- HTML Caching
- Optimize images
- Lazy Loading
- WebP Support
- Minify CSS
- Minify JavaScript
- Defer parsing of JavaScript
- Serve scaled images
- Avoid CSS @import
- Exclusions
- Debug Site
- Google Fonts Optimization
- Delay JS
Uninstalling W3Speedster
W3Speedster can be uninstalled in two ways: from the plugins page in WordPress admin, and manually through FTP/File Manager.
From WordPress admin
You can uninstall W3Speedster as any other plugin from the WordPress admin Dashboard. W3Speedster will clean up after itself automatically, removing any files/folders and modifications (in the .htaccess or wp-config.php files for example).
Manually
If you manually remove W3Speedster from the plugins folder in /wp-content/plugins/, you will also have to handle the cleaning yourself. Here is a list of things to remove/edit:
- Delete the /wp-content/cache/ and /wp-content/w3-speedster-config/ folders
- Delete the /wp-content/advanced-cache.php file
- Edit the .htaccess file, removing anything between #BEGIN W3SPEEDSTERand #END W3SPEEDSTER
- Edit the wp-config.php file, setting the define(‘WP_CACHE’, true) to false or removing the line
- Delete the w3speedster_settings entry, and the transients and cronjob in the WordPress options table of your Database
How to find the best settings for your site?
So, you’ve activated W3Speedster. And now you’re wondering, “How do I get the best results for my site?”
Every site has a different theme, a different set of plugins, and different content. So the best settings will vary from site to site. In this article, you’ll learn the safest way to experiment with the most commonly used W3Speedster settings.
The goal is always to make your site faster. And activating more options doesn’t always result in more speed. So don’t worry if you’re not able to turn everything on.
To check if your site is faster, you should use a tool that tests load times. You can make use of tools like GTmetrix, Pingdom Tools, or Google Developers PageSpeed Insights to test the load times of your website and get a detailed report.
It’s a good idea to take some benchmark speed tests before you begin configuration, then again after you’re done applying optimizations
Best practices for configuration
When testing options in W3Speedster, please use the following process:
- Activate options one-at-a-time, not everything at once
- After each option that you activate, check your site in a browser window where you are not logged in to WordPress. An incognito/private window works well. By doing this you will be able to see immediately if a particular option causes any issue.
- Check a few types of pages on your site. If anything doesn’t look right, don’t panic! Disable the last option you activated and your site will return to normal.
Getting Started with Configuration
HTML Cache
HTML cache helps us to enable HTML minification, it servers cache via .htaccess and advanced cache files, preloading cache page per minute
General
You can enable optimization to streamline your site’s resources and improve loading times. Separating the cache ensures that different versions of your site, such as mobile and desktop, are stored and served efficiently. Integrating a Content Delivery Network (CDN) helps distribute your site’s content across multiple servers, speeding up delivery to users worldwide. Enabling Gzip compression reduces the size of your site’s files, further improving load times. Fixing Interactive Next Paint (INP) issues enhances your site’s interactivity and responsiveness. Additionally, you can remove query parameters to simplify URLs and improve caching effectiveness.
CSS > CSS Optimization
You can enable CSS Minification so that W3Speedster minifies your CSS files. You can set rules of minification and even exclude CSS files from this minification process. You can also select when to load secondary CSS and whether you want to delay it
Javascript > JS Optimization
You can enable JS Minification from this tab to instruct W3Speedster to minimize JavaScript files. You can also Defer Parsing of JavaScript in this tab and exclude JS from combining. You can also choose when you want to load combined JavaScript and how much time do you want to delay JS tags by.
Exclusion
You can preload resources such as CSS and font files to ensure they load quickly when a user visits your site. You can exclude specific images from lazy loading to ensure they display immediately. Additionally, you have the ability to exclude certain pages, CSS, and JavaScript files from optimization if needed. For resources that consume significant data, you can also force lazy loading of CSS and JavaScript to improve initial page load times.
Custom Code
You can Write custom JS/CSS code which we need to load at the time of site loading. This allows you to apply specific styles and functionalities right from the start, ensuring that your custom code is executed immediately as your website loads.
Image Optimization
You can enable Lazy Loading for images, I-frames, and videos. We recommend activating LazyLoad, because it helps reduce the negative performance impact of images, by loading them only when the visitor scrolls down the page and actually needs to see them.
You can also enable automatic optimization of images when uploaded and exclude images from optimization if you want to.
Hooks
You can write predefined custom PHP functions to perform the tasks mentioned above. This allows you to automate and customize various aspects of your site’s optimization, such as loading resources, excluding elements from optimization, and managing caching. By using PHP, you can tailor these functionalities to fit your specific needs and ensure they are executed efficiently.