Whats Bad About Uploading Test Pages for a Website
When it comes to your WordPress site, speed is of import. This is a fact. Why? Start off, website speed is a significant factor in Google's algorithm. Fast-loading websites can look to rank higher in the SERPs and concenter more visitors. Second, there are all the user feel considerations. If a site loads quickly, visitors are more than likely to stick around, read your content, and ultimately catechumen. In other words, a lightning-quick website unlocks all the good things that webmasters crave.
Yet, we're not here today to talk about how to make your website faster. Nosotros've already covered that extensively in our speed up WordPress guide and article on page speed. Nosotros're here to hash out another common problem we see WordPress users making on a daily basis, and that is running a website speed test incorrectly.
You might not think this is that big of a problem… simply in reality, it is, specially when yous're trying to approximate improvements. If you lot run a website speed test the wrong way, it might appear that your site is slower, when actually it'due south faster.
So below, we'll dive into the proper mode to run a website speed test, along with some tools you tin employ to tangibly measure your site's speed and rails any improvements.
Before You Run a Website Speed Exam
Before running a speed test, you should check to come across if you lot have the following 2 things already configured and running on your WordPress site:
- Caching
- Content Delivery Network
If y'all don't know, check with your spider web developer or hosting provider. And if you're launching a make new site, make sure to set these things up first, and then run your speed tests.
i. Configure Caching
If you're a Kinsta client, our server-level page cache will already be running on your live WordPress site, so there's zip you need to configure. Withal, recall that caching is disabled on our staging environments by default for development and debugging purposes. To enable caching on a staging environs, you can toggle the "Enable Enshroud" button on the tools page for your site in MyKinsta.
An instant 37% reduction in the loading time afterward moving @WPColt to @kinsta! (NO CACHING PLUGINS) 🚀🚀🚀
— WPColt (@WPColt) January three, 2018
If you're hosting elsewhere, make certain to check out their documentation to ensure caching is enabled. If you're using a shared host or VPS, this might hateful y'all need to install a WordPress caching plugin.
ii. Enable Content Delivery Network (CDN)
If you don't know what a content commitment network is, you should first read our in-depth post on why you should be using a WordPress CDN. In 99.nine% of scenarios, it volition take a huge impact on the speed of your site. Depending on the location of the data heart your site is hosted on, and the location of your visitors, we've seen a CDN subtract load times by over 50%!
If yous're a Kinsta client, nosotros include gratuitous CDN bandwidth on all of our hosting plans. You lot can enable the Kinsta CDN in ii simple steps.
Footstep 1
Beginning, log in to your MyKinsta dashboard. Click on your site and so on the Kinsta CDN tab.
Stride 2
Then confirm the change past clicking on the Enable Kinsta CDN button in the modal window that appears.
If you are using or interested in Cloudflare, we have an in-depth tutorial on how to install Cloudflare on your WordPress site and this mail service on the about optimal settings. Nosotros also recommend checking out our comparison of the Kinsta CDN vs Cloudflare, and our guide on CloudFlare'southward Automatic Platform Optimization.
Third-political party CDN providers should have documentation you can follow to set up their CDN on your WordPress site. You can then use a complimentary plugin like CDN Enabler.
How to Properly Run a Website Speed Test
Now that you have caching configured and a CDN enabled, information technology's time to dive into how to properly speed examination your WordPress site.
There are a lot of different tools you can use to measure the operation of your site. Yous can check out a full list further below. For this example, we are going to be using Pingdom, one of the most popular and commonly used tools.
Speed Test Location Matters
Almost every speed test tool allows y'all to choose from unlike testing locations around the world, and this matters quite a bit. This is because your speed is relative to the information centre where your WordPress site is hosted. TTFB, network latency, and more come into play. And if you're a Kinsta customer, we have 29 different data centers you tin can choose from for your sites.
So it'due south of import to speed exam your site both from a location that's close to your data center, besides equally i that's far away. This will also help you see how much of an impact the CDN has on your WordPress site. Y'all tin even disable your CDN temporarily and re-test again without information technology to really run into the difference.
Whatever you do, be consistent with the location you cull.
You Have to Exam Multiple Times
Nosotros won't go also deep into caching in this article, but just remember that caching — both from your WordPress host or plugin and from your CDN — is what makes your WordPress site load super fast.
The large problem is that many users tend to merely run a speed test once. Frequently in this case, the content isn't cached on the WordPress host or CDN yet, then it appears that the site is actually slower. This can too happen if you've just cleared your WordPress site or CDN's enshroud.
How tin can you tell that your content or media isn't serving from enshroud?
Information technology'southward easy: Every speed test tool shows you what are called HTTP headers (also known every bit response headers). These contain important data about each asking.
We have a development site set up at Kinsta with the Kinsta CDN enabled. We beginning tested information technology through Pingdom and got the following result.
If you take a look at the case below, the first request is to the primary domain, and this is loading directly from the Kinsta server. Below that, you tin come across the remainder of the requests are loading from the Kinsta CDN (xxxx.kinstacdn.com).
If yous look at the request to the Kinsta server, y'all'll see a header called ten-kinsta-enshroud. When information technology'southward non serving from cache yet, information technology volition register aMISS. The name of this header might vary slightly based on your hosting provider.
The Kinsta CDN requests below that are the aforementioned way. Look for the header chosen x-cache. When information technology's not serving from cache yet, it volition annals aMISS. Once again, the name of the header might vary slightly based on your CDN provider. For example, when you're using Cloudflare, the HTTP header is called cf-cache-condition.
To properly speed test, you need to encounter everything load from cache, both from your WordPress host and your CDN. In one case everything is in view, the 10-kinsta-cache and x-cache headers will register a HIT (as seen below). This commonly requires running your speed examination multiple times. We've found that iii is usually the magic number.
Some speed examination tools like Pingdom also limit the time between each test (usually a couple of minutes), so you might have to run your speed test, come back after, run it again, etc.
Information technology'due south also possible that your WordPress host volition annals a HIT with cache before your CDN. You can quickly browse downwardly the test and expect for the big yellow bar. This indicates TTFB (wait fourth dimension), which is what spikes really high when a page or asset isn't delivered from cache.
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Why does this matter so much? Because if yous look at our speed test before and afterward, the site that loaded entirely from cache was over fifty% faster. And this was on our small evolution site. On larger sites, the percentage will be fifty-fifty bigger. This is why information technology's vital that you sympathize how to speed test your website properly.
Besides the requests to your hosting provider and CDN, you lot will almost likely also accept external requests to things such equally Facebook, Google Analytics, Google Fonts, etc. Troubleshooting these is an consequence for some other day. 😉 Cheque out our mail service on how to place and analyze external services on your WordPress site, our ultimate Pingdom guide, and our in-depth guide on how to change fonts in WordPress.
Now it's time to swoop into all the different website speed exam tools you tin can use. What'due south the optimal load time that you should be aiming for? Well, the faster the improve, but nigh experts suggest that around two seconds or less is a skilful target. Remember too that in that location is a difference between perceived performance and bodily performance.
- Pingdom
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Google Mobile Website Speed Testing Tool
- Google Analytics Site Speed
- WebPageTest
- GTMetrix
- KeyCDN Website Speed Test
- DareBoost
- Web Page Analyzer
- YSlow
- Chrome DevTools
- Site Relic
- dotcom-monitor
- New Relic
Ane of the most important rules when it comes to website speed testing is to pick one tool and stick with it. Each has its own ready of different metrics, and therefore, yous can't directly compare ane tool'due south test results to another. In that location is no correct or incorrect tool; y'all should simply focus on the ane yous prefer to help you make improvements.
Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst from Google, sums it upwardly well:
Each tool has a set up of different metrics but each metric on its own makes perfect sense to better. No tool is perfect and usually I'd tell you which one is the closest, merely in this case is really about picking i that you similar.
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) July 12, 2018
1. Pingdom
Pingdom is a market place-leading website monitoring service, best known for its gratis website speed testing tool. The speed testing tool displays all of your site'due south requests in a waterfall view. Yous can filter by load order, file size, and load times, giving yous different perspectives for identifying potential improvements. It also lists total requests, load time, and page size.
It has gained popularity over the years due to the fact that information technology is super easy to use, especially when compared to similar speed examination tools. For beginners, Pingdom can be a dandy fashion to start.
Pingdom likewise gives you lot a speed performance rating, scored out of 100. This rating is cleaved downwards into twelve criteria, with each given an individual score. Once more, this is helpful for identifying the "quick wins" you lot can target to make instant, tangible improvements to your site'southward speed. Information technology's possible to score as high as 100. All the same, don't captivate too much over scores, as they don't thing every bit much equally merely making improvements on your site to speed it up.
Pingdom stores the results of all tests performed on your website, allowing you to historically rails speed improvements over time.
two. Google PageSpeed Insights
Google has said since 2010 that folio speed is an important ranking factor for SEO. To aid you amend your site'southward speed, Google has its very own speed testing tool, Google PageSpeed Insights, which measures the performance of a page for mobile devices and desktop devices.
PageSpeed scores range from 0 to 100 points, and they're based on Lighthouse. A higher score is meliorate; a score of 85 or to a higher place indicates that the page is performing well. The report page gives yous a useful breakdown of the steps you lot can take to improve performance. PageSpeed Insights also provides you lot with additional user feel suggestions for mobile devices. Cheque out our thoughts on whether or not it's possible to reach a 100/100 score on PageSpeed Insights.
If you lot care about elevating your website to the meridian of the SERPs, it pays to listen to what Google recommends. Nosotros too take a walk-through on how to fix that stubborn leverage browser caching warning.
three. Google Mobile Website Speed Testing Tool
Co-ordinate to Google, people are five times more likely to go out a site if it isn't mobile-friendly. That's why they released their mobile website speed testing tool. This tool is really powered past Google PageSpeed Insights, and it'due south aimed more toward marketers and agencies to better evangelize easy-to-empathize optimization reports.
You can get reports sent right to your e-mail, or forward the information along to your webmaster or developer. Nonetheless, retrieve that a 100/100 score might non even exist possible in all scenarios, depending on how your WordPress site is set up. With a lot of multipurpose themes and sites with dozens of external scripts, you'll find information technology almost impossible to reach a perfect score — which, bear in heed, is perfectly OK and not at all the developer's fault.
4. Google Analytics Site Speed
Google Analytics also has the power to measure out site speed. This exists in your GA dashboard nether the Behavior menu. Information technology captures data via a snippet of code yous'd include in your web pages.
Their site speed reports measure three aspects of latency:
- Folio-load time for a sample of pageviews on your site
- Execution speed or load time of any discrete hit, event, or user interaction that y'all want to track
- How apace the browser parses the document and makes it available for user interaction
While this can be helpful as an overall comparison, nosotros by and large don't recommend using this equally your speed test tool — nosotros've found the data isn't always accurate or accompanied by a clear depiction of what's really happening on the site. Why? Considering it'due south nerveless from a random sampling of data.
Joe Christopher has a cracking write-upwards on the trouble with site speed accuracy in Google Analytics. Tedd Rodman has besides reported on frequent errors that tin throw off the site speed averages substantially. Nosotros recommend using one of the other speed test tools mentioned in this post.
5. WebPageTest
WebPageTest was created past Patrick Meenan, a Chrome engineer at Google. It's an open source project that allows you to run a complimentary website speed test from multiple locations around the globe, using real browsers (IE, Chrome, etc.). For you more than advanced users needing to become additional information from your speed tests, this is a great tool.
WebPageTest allows yous to perform advanced tests, including multi-pace transactions, video capture, content blocking, comparison of start view verses repeat view, changes in the connection speed, and much more than. Their waterfall charts and resources loading reports provide lots of boosted information regarding improvements that can exist made across your site.
6. GTmetrix
GTmetrix is some other popular speed analysis tool and arguably the all-time-known of all the Pingdom alternatives. Information technology'south easy to apply, so beginners can choice it up quite fast. The tool provides comprehensive analysis by combining the functioning and recommendations provided past Google PageSpeed Insights and YSlow. This ways that GTmetrix is effectively a i-stop shop for all your speed optimization needs.
To ensure that your top-level information is easier to digest, GTmetrix displays a summary at the top of the folio, listing your full page load time, page size, and number of requests. The tool too displays a list of your requests in a waterfall chart, enabling you to place problem areas and bottlenecks with ease. The waterfall chart tin be downloaded, too, so that you tin can perform further analysis offline.
What's more, y'all can create a free business relationship for the tool, which allows you to record the concluding xx tests, compare historical data, and salve pre-configured settings for testing locations, browsers, connection speeds, and more.
Make certain to as well bank check out our in-depth guide where we swoop into how to use the GTmetrix speed test tool.
7. KeyCDN Website Speed Test
KeyCDN's free website speed test tool provides an incredibly fast and easy way to make up one's mind the overall speed of your WordPress site. The unproblematic page speed examination includes a waterfall breakdown and a website preview. Y'all tin can select from xiv different test locations strategically located around the earth in order to better determine the overall download time of your avails from that physical region.
You can run both a private and public exam, which you tin can then afterwards share or bookmark for future reference. The breakdown report shows a nifty overview of the request methods (GET/Mail service), HTTP status codes (such as 200 OK or 404), file types, content size, wait/receive time, total download time, and the overall number of HTTP requests generated on your site.
KeyCDN as well offers other free handy web performance testing tools such every bit Ping Examination, HTTP/2 Test, HTTP Check, and Traceroute Tool.
8. DareBoost
DareBoost is an all-in-one service for website speed testing, web functioning monitoring, and website analysis (speed, SEO, quality, and security). And while they are primarily a premium service, you can use their website speed test tool for five gratuitous reports per calendar month, though you'll be missing a few advanced features that are only for paid customers. The free reports are actually pretty impressive!
The DareBoost speed test report analyzes over 80 dissimilar data points across the following categories:
- Cache policy
- Number of requests
- Security
- Accessibility
- Compliance
- Quality
- jQuery
- Browser rendering
- Data amount
- SEO
You lot can speedily see where your WordPress site is struggling and needs work. The security reporting is also very unique when compared to the other tools we've mentioned — you lot can run into things such as whether your website is exposed to clickjacking attack, whether you're missing a content security policy header, and even information nigh your SSL certificate. Their design is pretty awesome, besides!
If you lot need a report for your boss or bureau, this might be a tool you want to check out.
nine. Spider web Page Analyzer
The Web Page Analyzer is a highly recommended free tool for analyzing your site's speed, size, and limerick. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums upwardly each type of web folio component. Based on these page characteristics, the script and then offers advice on how to amend page load time.
More than specifically, the tool will tell you how long your website takes to load through dissimilar connection speeds. If you lot like your information detailed, the Spider web Page Analyzer tool breaks it down for y'all, displaying the size and a annotate for each element. At the bottom of the analysis, the tool provides comments and recommendations on 11 specific aspects of your site's performance, including the areas where yous perform well. Yet, it appears this tool hasn't been updated though for a while, and so don't await things like HTTP/three back up.
10. YSlow
Adjacent up is Yahoo!'s folio functioning tool, YSlow. The tool requires installation every bit an add-on for your browser, but it'southward completely complimentary to use — and well-nigh popular spider web browsers are supported.
The Yahoo! team has identified 34 factors that touch a website'due south speed. Unfortunately, only 23 can be tested quantitatively, and so the tool focuses its analysis on these areas. The YSlow website lists these 23 "rules" with extended details, which are well worth checking out.
With the analysis complete, YSlow will grade you for each surface area, scored from A to F. This makes it super piece of cake to spot your weaker areas, which you can then target for the biggest steps forward in terms of site speed.
This used to be the nigh pop speed testing tool, but unfortunately, the YSlow project is no longer maintained. Their last commit was years ago, and there are over 100 open issues on their GitHub page. However, there is still some useful information that the extension can provide, though nosotros would recommend using a newer and more actively supported website speed examination tool.
xi. Chrome DevTools
The Chrome DevTools network panel comes as part of Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers. This is a very popular tool among developers every bit it's hands accessible and a great choice for local debugging and testing. You can easily launch the network panel in Chrome by pressing Control+Option+I (Mac) or Control+Shift+I (Windows and Linux). You can then generate a waterfall analysis of your site and dig into the operation of each of your assets.
Another not bad characteristic added in Chrome sixty is the ability to block requests. This can be very useful when trying to determine how much overhead a 3rd-political party service or script is having on your site.
The team at Google also integrated Lighthouse into Chrome DevTools. Lighthouse is an automated open source tool for improving the quality of web pages. It offers audits for performance, accessibility, progressive web apps, and more. You can run it from the "Audit" tab. Information technology has a similar 0/100 grading system. You can dive into your requests, come across what scripts might be render-blocking, find your prototype pinch savings, then on. You tin then easily share your results with others.
Other features in Chrome DevTools include being able to disable the cache, throttle your network connections, take screenshots of page rendering, and diagnose wearisome TTFB.
12. Site Relic
Site Relic is some other completely complimentary website speed test tool that has popped upwardly recently. It allows you to easily check your site'south load time on both mobile and desktop beyond nine different regions. You can also view your TTFB beyond all regions at once.
Individual location reports let you to hands see your fully loaded fourth dimension, page size, first byte, full number of requests, request counts past type, and asking counts past response code. The waterfall report in the tool is also very well designed.
13. dotcom-monitor
dotcom-monitor has a lot of free and useful tools, 1 of which is their website speed test tool. It allows you lot to instantly test your website'south speed from 25 locations around the globe. You tin choose between different browsers such every bit Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, iOS, Android, and Windows Telephone.
Their web operation report includes:
- Summary by location
- ten% top fastest elements
- x% summit slowest elements
- Comprehensive waterfall chart
- Breakdown past host element, including DNS, Connectedness, SSL, Request, First packet, and Download
- Error check and diagnostics
14. New Relic
New Relic offers all sorts of services, from awarding performance monitoring and server monitoring to mobile monitoring and real-fourth dimension user insights. Technically, this is a premium tool, but if you need more data than the above tools provide, this would be the one to invest in.
We actually use two of New Relic's products here at Kinsta to monitor uptime and performance: their application monitoring and synthetics products.
One peculiarly useful feature is the WordPress plugins section. You lot tin can instantly see which plugins and themes have the longest response times.
If your website starts to slow downwards, y'all can easily spot this with New Relic and get notified then you can take immediate action toward fixing the issue. This too includes viewing external services or ad networks that might be slowing downwardly your site. New Relic has been a great tool for u.s.a. to ensure we provide the best support for our customers.
Summary
Understanding how to properly speed test your WordPress site volition ensure you're gauging your performance finer — especially if you're trying to measure how fast your site is after yous migrate to Kinsta. 😉
Past now, it should be abundantly clear: Website speed is an important component of any successful website. The faster your website, the amend your chances of success. If a lightning-quick website is your priority – and it should be! – make sure you're using at least one of these tools to quantitatively measure your speed optimization strategy.
What tools do you utilise for measuring website speed? Share them in the comments beneath!
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Source: https://kinsta.com/blog/website-speed-test/
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