In this post, I would like to describe how to speed up a WordPress website.
Here I want to describe a plugin that serves exactly for that purpose, called WP Meteor.
You can download WP Meteor from the WordPress plugin folder.
So far I have tried a lot of different plugins that are used to speed up WordPress sites and I have to admit that many of them worked poorly or simply did not do what they were supposed to do.
I came across WP Meteor quite by accident, when I was working on a page in Elementor and the speed for mobile devices was only 19%.
After I turned on the plugin the speed jumped to 75% which was simply amazing.
Defining settings
After you download, install and start WP Meteor you will need to define 3 types of settings.
Don’t worry because the setup is not complicated.
Settings panel
In this panel, you will be able to specify four options:
- LCP optimization only
- One second delay
- Two seconds delay
- Delay until the first interaction
You will choose Delay until first interaction if you want the greatest acceleration, and if you have certain problems and the page loads incorrectly, then you will choose LCP optimization only.
You can also experiment with other options to see which one works best for you.
Elementor panel
You will use the third panel called Elementor if you are using the Elementor page builder.
Of course, after changing the settings, you must press the Save Changes button to save the settings.
Exclusions panel
We have left this panel for last because it needs additional explanation.
Here we will define the scripts for which we do not want the program to accelerate.
For example, when the highest acceleration –Delay until first interaction is set in the settings, it may happen that Google Analytics does not record the visitor.
To prevent this from happening, we will exclude analytics scripts from acceleration.
We will write them in the provided window (ga and gtag in the picture) and mark Exclude scripts matching regexp from optimization.
If you have problems with loading, for example, contact forms, then we simply exclude the Javascript they use from acceleration.
An example of acceleration
Here I also give you an acceleration test measured by Page Speed Insights for one of my websites.
Wp Meteor disabled
The speed is 86% for mobile devices and 92% for desktops.
Wp Meteor included
The speed is 95% for mobile devices and 100% for desktop.
Conclusion
WP Meteor is a really good accelerator for WordPress websites
and for now, it’s free.
But I have to mention that depending on themes and plugins it might not work well for some.
It can also work together with many plugins with a similar purpose:
- Autoptimize
- WP Rocket
- WP Total Cache
- WP Super Cache
- LiteSpeed Cache
Soon, new interesting additions and themes in the WordPress category.
Until then, best regards.