Well, that’s better!

If you read my post, “Site rendering problem finally solved?“, then you know I’ve been struggling with problems regarding this blog. It seems that page speed/rendering was my number one pain-in-the… the culprit that led many to see the dreaded CIRCLE OF DEATH! After many tweaks of cache settings, deletion of plug-ins, etc., I was still pulling my hair out and in technical limbo after more than a month. I even moved my files to another US server (same hosting company). Believe me, I tried every trick in my techie book, but to no avail. That is, until last night.

I performed two major changes:

1. Got rid of LiteSpeed – a CDN (Content Delivery Network) that Hostinger uses. Even after readjusting settings (and there weren’t many at my disposal) I wasn’t getting good results. It was supposed to optimize load times, convert images to WebP format, thus reducing file size, and maximize my cache settings. Well, it might work for some, but it wasn’t working for me.

2. Installed WPOptimize, a plug-in that caches my site, compresses my images, cleans my database, and minifies my CSS, html, and JavaScript. I ran it last night, and it performed its magic, and when I woke this morning, much to my delight and amazement, everything that plagued me was gone for good and just look at my page speed report (below).

Thought you might like to see what makes WPOptimize shine, so I’m sharing the instructional video I watched last night. Three cheers to the creator, for he covered everything in precise detail.

The numbers above are from a DeBugBear report, run about two hours ago. Yesterday, according to Hostinger, my mobile ratings were an abysmal 69% and desktop wasn’t that impressive either – 86% was the best I could get. Tonight, they rated Marion’s Mumblings at 97!

Ya, I’m sold and once again, a very happy camper. This one sure gave me a run for my money, and as I said to my friend, I guess the techie gods were testing me to see if I “still had”. Can’t keep a good girl down!