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Speeding up WordPress with the ewww.io ExactDN CDN and Image Compression Plugin

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Below is my quick blog posts on using the EWWW IO ExactDN CDN plugin in WordPress to set up an ExactDN (Global Dis.cotribution Network (CDN)) to distribute images to my site’s visitors and shrink (optimize) images in posts.

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I have blogged before on speeding up WordPress that has involved moving servers away from CPanel domains to self-managed servers (e.g on Digital Ocean or Vultr), using Lazy Load image plugins like BJ Lazy Load, Optimize images automatically in WordPress with EWWW.io and scaling and moving servers closer to your customers.

For the best performing VM host (UpCloud) read my guide on the awesome UpCloud VM hosts (get $25 free credit by signing up here).

Today I am going to set up the https://www.ewww.io/resize/ ExactDN (CDN) delivery network. I am paying for this myself (and this is an unbiased review).

FYI: I use Ubuntu servers and not Windows.

Know your starting point. 

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” – Benjamin Franklin

In my original post about Speeding up WordPress, I used the webpagetest.org site to test my sites response times, I was getting an embarrassing 21 seconds load time and 6 second first-byte time. I have worked to speed up WordPress by moving WordPress to a self-managed server (away from CPanel), used the BJ Lazy Load plugin and the awesome ewww.io image optimize plugin, now I get about 4-5 seconds.

I am hoping adding a CDN will make things faster. My blog is delivering over two-thirds images, perfect for a CDN, this is why I am trying this out.

Image type cdn

TIP: Check where your customers/readers are located, and how many are New versus Returning customers? Do you need a CDN to deliver content (Images) that are closer to your customers/readers or do you need to move your web server somewhere else?  The more you know the more you can help them. Worst case you will be supporting a positive experience (and potentially turning a one time visitor into a returning visitor).

I looked at my Google Analytics data to see where my visitors are. Whether good or bad, they are all over the world (Hello)?

World

Other data is available in Google Analytics.  I can see the last few years growth is growing and I am getting more returning visitors, now is the time to ensure my site is ready for more traffic and returning visitors.

Data

Note: The fall in traffic in the Audience overview (right-hand side of the left image) is the unfinished month (not a reader fall off).

Personally, I set a goal to have a high page bounce rate of 90% be way lower (at present I am at about 80% and falling (good) and my page read time has gone from 40 seconds to 1 minute 40.  Every bit you can do will help create a positive experience and help your visitors. I can see from the data above the content is being read, I am building returning visitors and they are geographically spread out. A CDN will be great. After you know where your visitors are it is good to know the times of day that your visitors are hitting your site. Lucky for me it is spread evenly over a 24 hour period.

Data Quantity

FYI: My servers outgoing data (last 30 days), not huge but BJ LazyLoad and image optimization may be helping.

Outbound

Traffic Forecast

Do you know the forecasted growth of your website?

Site Growth

Measure Before Optimizing

Before I started to optimize my WordPress site (hosted on a shared CPanel server) I had the following Web Page Test score. I tested from Singapore as that’s was where my server was originally (and the closest to me).

TIP: Read more about Performance, First Byte, Start Render and Complete scores at my blog post here.

Web Page Performace Test Results (Before Optimizations):

  • Load Time: 23.672s
  • First Byte: 6.743s
  • Start Render: 11.8300s
  • Speed Index: 15024
  • Requests: 132/164 (Document complete v Fully Loaded)
  • Bytes: 3,346KB/3,454KB  (Document complete v Fully Loaded)

Quick Web Page Performace Score Card (Before Optimizations):

  • First Byte: F (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Keep Alive Enabled: F (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Compress Transfer: F (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Compress Images: A (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Cache Static Content: X (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Effective use of CDN: X (I should have captured the subscores)

My initial scores were bad across the range of tests (before optimisations). On the upside, I was manually compressing images with a tool on my desktop before uploading images and this showed an “A” but this scorecard overall was really bad.

Here are the results after Quick Optimizations (EWWW.io image compress, moved the server, reorganizing the site and Lazy Load Images)

Now I get these results after speeding up my site (after using the EWWW.io image resizing, reorganizing the site, minifying, lazy load images, moving servers etc.).

Web Page Performace Test Results (After Simple Optimizations):

  • Load Time: 8.823s (down 14.849s)
  • First Byte: 3.5533s (down 3.1897s)
  • Start Render: 5,4800s (down 6.35s)
  • Speed Index: 5594 (down 9430)
  • Requests: 73/76 (Document complete v Fully Loaded) (down 59/88)
  • Bytes: 848KB/855KB  (Document complete v Fully Loaded) (down 2,498KB/2,599KB)

Quick Web Page Performace Score Card (After Simple Optimizations):

  • First Byte: F (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Keep Alive Enabled: A (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Compress Transfer: A (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Compress Images: A (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Cache Static Content: B (I should have captured the subscores)
  • Effective Use of CDN: X  (I should have captured the subscores)

Tested my pagespeed tests

Even at 4 seconds web page “First Byte“, this is considered not good. My brain says I want sub 1 second, I doubt this is achievable with WordPress over thousands of miles away with SSL (read here about scalability).

I know https and non-geographically favourable servers add half a second to data. SSL will add processing overheads and latency period. If you only want speed don’t setup SSL but if you want SEO and security then setup SSL.

locationlocationlocation

WebPageTest.org test reveals there is no effective use of Content Delivery Networks (CDN) on fearby.com (that’s why I am about to install EWWW.io ExactDN).

ExactDN (Content Delivery Network)

I did try and set up a number of caching and CDN plugins in the past (e.g Max CDN, W3 Total Cache, WP Fastest Cache, Cache Enable, WP Rocket, WP Super Cache, etc.) but they either made results worse or were impossible to set up.

Now that EWWW.io has a CDN let’s give that a go.

What is EWWW.io’s ExactDN?

You can read more about EWWW.io’s two-pronged approach to delivering one plugin to A) “compress images” and B) “add a Content Delivery Network (CDN)” here: https://ewww.io/resize/

What is ExactDN

Ensure you read up about EWWW.io’s ExactDN here: https://ewww.io/resize/ . If you have not used EWWW.io check out my review of the EWWW.io image compression plugin here first.

Pre Signup

Purchasing and Installing ExactDN Exact DN

Login to your EWWW.io account (or signup then log in).

Signin

FYI: If you have used the Optimise images automatically in WordPress plugin from EWWW.io plugin before, then you will see past purchases here.

Signed in

Now you can go back to the EWWW.io ExactDN product page (https://ewww.io/resize/) and purchase a subscription (Make sure you are logged in with an EWWW.io account before you purchase ExactDN).

Pre purchase

I purchased an ExactDN monthly subscription for $9.00 monthly (with a $1 signup fee for the cloud compression service).

Order

Purchase confirmation screen.

Order

Post-purchase, I was advised to find my “Site Address (URL)” in WordPress and add it to EWWW.io Manage Sites screen.

Add site to the plugin

I now noticed I had a CDN for my domain ( fearby-com.exactdn.com ). Nice.

CDN Site Created

EWWW.io said to tick the CDN option in the Image Resize area of the EWWW.io plugin. But before I do that I  will update WordPress Core and WordPress Plugins before enabling the ExactDN as they are out of date.

Update

TIP: I update WordPress Core and WordPress plugins via command line (my guide here).

Backup WordPress (just in case)

It is always a good idea to backup your website, I logged into my Ubuntu server and checked the size of my site before backing it up.

I copied the website folder (from “/www/” to “/www-backup”)

I confirmed the copied folder size (same, good)

I dumped all databases with the MySQL dump command

While I was there I compress the SQL backup files (text files)

Checking the CDN Status

I checked the DNS replication for fearby-com.exactdn.com with this DNS checker. It’s setup and ready to go across the globe 🙂

A quick CNAME check reveals its upstream provider is fearbycom-8ba8.kxcdn.com. Keycdn.com have been around since 2012. It is great that EWWW.io has paired with keycdn and included their image compression magic in a single WordPress plugin.

Configuring the EWWW.io plugin in WordPress.

Before you enable the CDN below do check the https://www.whatsmydns.net/ and see if your CDN has replicated around the world (Australia can be a bit slow at DNS replication from time to time). Do wait at least 10 minutes before proceeding.

Click the settings in your EWWW Image Optimizer Plugin.

Configure

Now click the Resize Settings tab and click Enable CDN in the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin screen.

Enable Exact DN

Don’t forget to click Save Changes

Save

 

Testing the CDN

https://www.webpagetest.org NOW reports that my site is using a CDN 🙂

FYI: I have always used webpage test from Singapore and I have done the same here to compare apples to apples.  Singapore is not a good test location in Australia (my server is in Australia) and it is 200ms away and the added layer of SSL adds latency to the connection (read here). This is a real-world test though (worst case).

CDN's Used:
fearby.com : 
fearby-com.exactdn.com : KeyCDN
fonts.googleapis.com : Google
fonts.gstatic.com : Google
static.addtoany.com : Cloudflare
www.googletagmanager.com : Google
pagead2.googlesyndication.com : Google
www.youtube.com : Google
adservice.google.com.sg : Google
adservice.google.com : Google
googleads.g.doubleclick.net : Google
www.google-analytics.com : Google
s.ytimg.com : Google
stats.g.doubleclick.net : Google
fearby-com.disqus.com : Fastly
ssl.google-analytics.com : Google

FYI: https://www.webpagetest.org does want other (all) static content to be on a CDN to give a higher score than 42 out 100, sorry I did not get a subscore before enabling the CDN.

I was expecting a green A here for CDN but Webpage Test has given me more items to investigate to ensure WordPress plugins are also fast (minify or move to CDN). It appears WordPress includes are my next target for optimizing.

Web Page Test indicates the following WordPress assets should also be in CDN.

FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/youtube-embed-plus/styles/ytprefs.min.css?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-social-icons/svgxuse.js?ver=1.1.21
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/youtube-embed-plus/scripts/ytprefs.min.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/addtoany.min.js?ver=1.0
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/js/min/crayon.min.js?ver=_2.7.2_beta
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=1.4.1
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.12.4
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/js/scripts.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/js/menu/superfish.args.js?ver=2.5.3
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/crayon-syntax-highlighter/css/min/crayon.min.css?ver=_2.7.2_beta
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/js/skip-links.js?ver=2.5.3
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/comment-reply.min.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/hoverIntent.min.js?ver=1.8.1
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/genesis/lib/js/menu/superfish.js?ver=1.7.5
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/tabs.min.js?ver=1.11.4
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/news-pro/js/global.js?ver=3.2.2
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/news-pro/js/responsive-menus.min.js?ver=3.2.2
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/core.min.js?ver=1.11.4
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/news-pro/style.css?ver=3.2.2
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/ui/widget.min.js?ver=1.11.4
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/news-pro/js/jquery.matchHeight.min.js?ver=3.2.2
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/css/styles.css?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/youtube-embed-plus/scripts/fitvids.min.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/bj-lazy-load/js/bj-lazy-load.min.js?ver=2
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system/media/js/count.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/wp-emoji-release.min.js?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-seo-html-sitemap/style.css?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-social-icons/symbol-defs.svg
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-includes/css/dashicons.min.css?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/themes/news-pro/images/favicon.ico
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/genesis-tabs/style.css?ver=230d722825ddde2688088d563a906075
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-social-icons/css/style.css?ver=2.0.1
FAILED - https://fearby.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/addtoany.min.css?ver=1.14

It would be a huge effort trying to read and keep static plugin and theme related files in a CDN. I’ll ask the EWWW.io developer to see if this is possible in a future version (that would be nice). The developer did promptly point me here to opt into using the CDN to deliver CSS, JS etc.

Is that it? It can’t be that simple!

I can load my site at https://fearby.com and my images load from https://fearby-com.exactdn.com 🙂 I am impressed, blog posts are now loading images from the CDN network and I did not have to edit posts. I did have to subscribe to ExactDN and tick a checkbox in WordPress though.

Here is a sample image (my largest) from this blog post.

https://fearby-com.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Infographic-So-you-have-an-idea-for-an-app-v1-3.jpg?strip=all&quality=60&ssl=1

fearby.com WebPAGE TEST Results – Singapore

Web Page Performace Test Results – Singapore (After Setting up the EWWW.io ExactDN):

  • Load Time: 4.177s (down 4.646s from previous optimizations ((My Original load times were 23.672s))
  • First Byte: 2.240s (down 1.3133s from previous optimizations (My Original First Byte: 6.743s))
  • Start Render: 2.800s (down 2.68s from previous optimizations (My Original Start Render: 11.8300s))
  • Speed Index: 3009 (down 2585 from previous optimizations (Speed Index: 15024))
  • Requests: 67/68 (Document complete v Fully Loaded) 
  • Bytes: 535KB/538KB  (Document complete v Fully Loaded)

Quick Web Page Performace Score Card – Singapore (After Setting up the EWWW.io ExactDN):

  • First Byte: F (I should have captured the subscores). 
  • Keep Alive Enabled: A (I should have captured the subscores).
  • Compress Transfer: A (I should have captured the subscores).
  • Compress Images: A (I should have captured the subscores).
  • Cache Static Content: B (I should have captured the subscores).
  • Effective Use of CDN: X (I should have captured the subscores). plugins now need to be on a CDN.

The Web Page Test site does give detailed scores and recommendations if you scroll down or click the score car (A-F). Do read the recommendations and see what you may need to do next.  I am happy that I now have a CDN via EWWW.io. Clicking the first byte and CDN buttons at Web Page Test reveal sub-scores to allow you to see if you have made improvements, regrettably, I did not know of and capture sub-scores until after installing the CDN (I suggest you do).

Full Dump.

GT Metrix Page Speed Score

https://gtmetrix.com is giving a good score across the board (86%). It hints I should optimize Javascript files and “Remove query strings in static files” as some proxy servers do not cache URLs with “?” in them. That is (fortunately) not a problem with ExactDN, as the servers are configured to properly handle query strings.

GTMetrics

Gtmetrix.com does give some optimisation tips too (However, it does report low CDN optimizations if a single file is not delivered over a CDN).

I do like Gtmetrix.com email reports, you can see if your site performance is degrading.

GTMetrix Summary

Page Speed Insights

I am now looking at the Google PageSpeed Insights test for things to fix next. I think I can tweak my NGINX a little (adding caching). Read more about Google Page Speed Insights here.

fyi: My Google Page Speed Insights score (desktop) along with another local big corporate site I tested.

Page Insight

I am happy with 82 🙂

It appears if you want to get 100% you need to get..

  • Initial Response under 100ms
  • Animate, produce frame in under 10ms
  • Idle maximize idle time
  • Deliver all content in under 1000ms

Getting More from ExactDN by caching CSS and JS files.

I added the following to my /www/wp-config.php file as mentioned here: http://docs.ewww.io/article/47-getting-more-from-exactdn This will serve more resources from the CDN

define( 'EXACTDN_ALL_THE_THINGS', true );

I refreshed my site in a browser and now CSS, JS and fonts are loaded from the CDN too.

All

To reduce files served from my website I re-enabled the Fast Velocity Minify plugin in WordPress and pointed it at my CDN (https://fearby-com.exactdn.com/)

cdn-minify

Now I am getting a GTMatrix score of Page Speed Score = 93% (A) and YSlow Score  = 74% (C) and a 2.6-second load and a much lower 35 requests (post minification and pointing the minified files to the CDN).

WOW.

Minifiy

And WebPageTest.org is reporting Effective use of CDN 🙂 Awesome.

Effective use of CDN

I think I’m done (ExactDN CDN and the image optimiser and other tweaks have worked its magic).

How do I compare to other sites?

Given Apple, Microsoft and NBC speed scores are worse than mine I’m happy for now.  🙂

GTMetricx Graphs

GT Metrics graphs show the improvement, YSlow report does indicate I can reduce the website DOM elements to speed things up and tweak plugins but I’d rather keep my design for SEO and not play with plugins or they might break.

I could tweak the server side (NGINX/MySQL/Cache or DNS) but I don’t need too.

Conclusion

I still can’t believe setting up a CDN is a one-click solution and adding a wp-config.php lin (after you subscribe). Best of all the BJ Lazy Load plugin still works. I am very happy with the EWWW.io ExactDN. I now have a CDN and it has lowered my First Byte time, Start Render Times, Speed Index time (on more than just the front page) and all I did was subscribe and tick a checkbox.

It is nice that EWWW.io have not charged for Data delivered from the CDN network on top of a monthly subscription at this stage but they have left it open in the terms and conditions. It is important to ensure a service can sustain itself, so this is a good sign. FYI: my favorite Agile toolkit (Atlaz.io) that I reviewed here closed shop today so it is wise for aaS shops to plan ahead. I know how hard it can be to spin up servers and stuff and allocate times to keep them running. Good luck EWWW.io!

Also, I now have a clear set of steps (below) to resolve other non-optimized assets that are outside of the CDN.

Full Report

Thanks to EWWW.io and Web Page Test for helping make my site faster.

I doubt WordPress and my “down under”  server location can get me to under 1000ms but I will try.

Read on here to see how Cloudflare can increase your site’s performance.

Setting up a website to use Cloudflare on a VM hosted on Vultr and Namecheap

DNS Improved

Don’t forget your sites performance/SEO and security.

Website

Update November 2018

I have a much faster loading website after moving it to a new host, read my guide here.

GTMetrix After YSlow

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Revision History

v2.0 November 2018 Update

v1.9 added Cloudflare, SEO, Google Page Speed Insights test and future optimization, page insight speed image, added GTMetrics comments, growth image, gtmetrix.com reports (typos are free), updated change is domain to .com, added EXACTDN_ALL_THE_THINGS, 93 page speed, minify, compare, graph, fixed typos, tidied up the conclusion.

 

Wordfence Security Plugin for WordPress

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WordFence is a great security plugin for WordPress that allows you to secure your WordPress installation and prevent brute force attacks, rate-limit visitors (or Bots), block banned IP’s that are accessing your site and more.

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Fyi

20th Dec 2017: Wordfence report Backdoor in Captcha Plugin Affects 300K WordPress Sites

Backup

Before I started I performed a quick mysql backup from the command line to ensure my WordPress is backed up. Read my guide on installing WordPress from the command line (here) and securin Ubuntu (here).

Don’t forget to backup your WordPress files.

Download and extract WordFence

I downloaded and installed the Wordfence plugin via command line. I visited https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/ and got the plugin URL for the latest version (e.g https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordfence.6.3.19.zip).

I downloaded the plugin zip file from the command line to my WordPress plugins folder. Read my guide (here) on managing WordPress from the command line.

Now the Wordfence plugin can be activated in WordPress.

Activate Wordfence

Enter your email to receive Wordfence alerts.

WordFence EmmiL Alerts

Your Wordfence Dashboard will show local and global issues and statistics.

WordFence Dashboard

I set these default Wordfence options.

ON

More Wordfence Options

More Options

Set Permissions (for Firewall)

You may need to create a log folder (e.g /www/wp-content/wflogs/)  and set permissions to allow Wordfence to work.

Now I can enable the Wordfence firewall via the WordFence plugin at /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceWAF

Wordfence Firewall

Don’t forget to configure the Wordfence firewall.

WordFence Firewall

Firewall Install Options

I do not have FTP setup so I’ll do a manual install based on these instructions.

 

WordPress Install Options

I manually added this to my ~/nxinx/sites-available/default config.

I added this to my nginx config.

This did not work as specified in the official Wordfence docs (https://docs.wordfence.com/en/Web_Application_Firewall_FAQ#NGINX) so I added the following.

Accessing a test /test.user.ini file in a web browser returns a 403  (always test access)

I added this to my active php.ini configuration file.

I restart PHP.

I added my IP to the Wordfence whitelist textbox to ensure I am not blocked: /wp-admin/admin.php?page=WordfenceSecOpt 

Tip: Grab your IPV4 address from https://ipv4.icanhazip.com/

Recent Wordfence Scan Summary (1st Scan)

Wordfence Dashboard allows you to see local and global stats.

Recent Scan

Wordfence (In Progress) Scan summary.

Scan Summary

My Issues

Wordfence alerted me that I needed to update WordPress and some plugins  (see my guide on installing and managing your WordPress via the Command Line here).

I updated my WordPress core files (via the command line).

I updated my  WordPress plugins (via the command line).

Output:

I manually updated my WordPress theme (from my.studiopress.com website) and uploaded via SSH

I could then SSH into my server and extract the theme.

Wordfence Dashboard

Wordfence allows you to see worldwide Blocked IP’s by the Wordfence network.

IPs

You can also see local successful or failed login attempts. The Ukraine IP 91.200.12.49 tried to log in to my WordPress installation but was banned globally as it was seen unsuccessfully logging into 900 other global servers, good work Wordfence.

Failed Logins

Attacks blocked locally.

Stats

View global WordPress attacks by countries

Global Attack Stats

Wordfence Features I like

  • Finding abandoned plugins
  • See Globally banned IP’s
  • See local failed login attempts
  • Brute force protection.
  • Stats on local blocked events.
  • Identification of old files.
  • Simple reports.

Wordfence Features I don’t like

  • Your mouse must be active in the window for scans to complete/seen.
  • Setup firewall almost requires FTP.

Wordfence: 7.02 updated (listed here)

Revised Dashboard looks nice

Wordfence 702

More to come, I will update this guide over time.

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[contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]Revision Historyv1.2 added info on Wordfence 7.0.2

v1.1 added info on Captcha plugin backdoor detected by Wordfence

v1.0 Initial Post

etc

Improving the speed of WordPress

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This post shows my never ending quest to speed up WordPress for free.

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I have used to use WP Total Cache in the past but decided to check out what other recommended, I found this post 6 Best WordPress Caching Plugins Compared. Some WordPress Caching Plugins.

What plugin do I use?

Benchmark (No Caching Plugin)

I tested my site before installing a caching plugin with https://www.webpagetest.org/ and my site was loading in 21s (loading over 141 files).

My site loaded in a terrible 21.3 seconds. My blog is hosted on Jumba (Net Registry) on and Ultimate plan for $25 a month.

My site seems to deliver 70% images so I wonder if a page caching plugin can help?

I do run the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin to automatically compress images when I upload them to my site. Read my blog post on the EWWW Image Optimizer here.  I do keep images at a high quality to capture all details.

WP Fastest Cache Plugin

I have decided to try the WP Fastest Cache because it’s source was updated 4 hours ago compared to WP Super Cahches update 5 months ago. Both these plugins offer similar GT Metrix performance improvements and WP Fastest Cache has been tested on WordPress v4.8.

Installing WP Fastest Cache

I looked for the WP Fastest Cache Plugin on the WP plugin directory but it was not there.

I downloaded the latest version WP Fastest Cache from https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-fastest-cache/

I upload the WP Faster Cache plugin to my site.

I Activated the plugin.

WP Fastest Cache plugin is now installed 🙂

It appears to have auto cached/indexed my site?

Now it’s time to run the same benchmark and see if the site is faster (with the same settings (Singapore chrome))?

1 of 3 test are under way.

WP Fastest Cache Results

Wow WP Fastest Cache loaded my site 2 seconds slower (Try 1 = 23 seconds, Try 2 =  21 seconds and Try 3 =  28 Seconds).

This could have been because of weekend traffic or hosting issues but this was not what I expected.

I disabled the WP Fastest Cache plugin and ran the benchmarks again and it was still 23 seconds (weekend traffic?). I re enabled WP Fastest Cache and re ran the test but no improvement.

My bad I think I needed to manually configure the WP Faster Cache plugin by opening the new WP Faster Cache menu on the left-hand side of the WP admin dashboard.

There I enabled caching options in the WP Faster Cache options.

I ran https://www.webpagetest.org tests again and got 16s, 18s and 16s seconds results in three tests and an A on compressed images. It appears you need to manually configure the WP Total Cache plugin after installing it (I missed this step).

I disable WP Fastest Cache and tried the WP Super Cache plugin and the test results were 29s, 24s, 24s (slower than WP Faster Cache). then tried W3 Total cache and the results were ()

I tried the W3 Total Cache plugin and the results were (30s, 16s 26s).

I Tried Autoptimize and it was tested at 45s.

It looks like WP Faster Cache is the fastest, ill turn it back on until try setup a CDN.

Fast Forward to Sept 2017

Since writing this post I have moved away from a shared C-Panel host and have moved my domain to a self-managed Vultr server closer to me, I have moved my email to Google G-Suite. I have learned how to deploy and manage WordPress by command line tools. I have set up servers on Digital Ocean before but the servers are located in Singapore and not Sydney and latency and scalability was poor. SSL will make sites slower and servers far away will just compound the issues.

Re enabling the WP Fastest Cache Plugin

I tried reinstalling the WP Fastest Cache plugin and for me, the plugin just slows down my site by 6 seconds.

I opened my NGINX config and got my NGINX user

My user is: www-data

I enabled the WP Fastest Cache plugin and ensured the WP Fastest Cache has ownership and access to the cache folder.

Below are the settings I use.

WP Fastest Cache

installing the WP-Optimize Plugin

I recommend setting up WP-Optimize plugin as it will optimize your database and keep things fast, it only saves me a second on my load times but this helps.

WP Optimize

WP-Optimize will allow for to review database optimizations

WP-Optimize database savings

Setting up Nginx GZip Compression

I set up my Nginx config to include

I set the minimum size to gzip too

Benchmark with G-Zip, Caching and WP Fastest Cache 

With WP Fastest Cache I now load my site in 13.9 seconds from Singapore. Time to disable WP Fastest cache plugin as it does not seem to be helping without linking to a CDN.

With Cache plugi

Setting up Browser Caching

I also setup browser caching by editing in NginX.

Added

Not sure if caching CSS and JS will cause problems in future?

Benchmark with G-Zip, Caching and without WP Fastest Cache (Singapore)

I re-ran the tests and got 10.9 seconds and got a B for cached content. When in Started on C-Panel I was getting near 30s

Benchmark

Benchmark with G-Zip, Caching and without WP Fastest Cache (Sydney)

I have always benchmarked from Singapore (as Sydney was not an option when I started) but now it is.  Out f curiosity is my website load time in Sydney?

8.2 seconds. Distance does affect performance.

Google Speed Insights

Google has an awesome tools to help you increase your benchmark mobile and desktop website speeds and reccomend focus areas to resolve problems: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Mobile Speed Score

Desktop Speed Score

Tips

I was getting SVG files failing compassion tests so I added the following under allowed mime types under “http gzip_types” in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

Minifying JS and CSS

This needs to be done and 50% of my site files appears to be CSS and JS related.

It looks like 30%~40 of your sites google speed index is related to minified/combined JS/CSS.

Google Speed Test

I installed the Fast Velocity Minify WordPress plugin.

I ran this to install it from the command line

cd /www/wp-content/plugins#
sudo wget https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/fast-velocity-minify.2.2.1.zip
--2017-09-23 19:51:46--  https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/fast-velocity-minify.2.2.1.zip
Resolving downloads.wordpress.org (downloads.wordpress.org)... 66.155.40.187, 66.155.40.203, 66.155.40.188, ...
Connecting to downloads.wordpress.org (downloads.wordpress.org)|66.155.40.187|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 821621 (802K) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: ‘fast-velocity-minify.2.2.1.zip’

fast-velocity-minify.2.2.1.zip 100%[=================================================>] 802.36K   830KB/s    in 1.0s

2017-09-23 19:51:47 (830 KB/s) - ‘fast-velocity-minify.2.2.1.zip’ saved [821621/821621]

Unzip

I activated the plugin and set some settings

Minify Settings

Verified minify logs

Logs

Google Page Insights can now see the minifies, css, js and html

Minified

Google Page Insights – Possible Optimizations

issues

And Google Ad Words and Google Analytics appear to be holding back Google Page Insight scores

Google adwords and Analytics

I am getting a few false positives with plugins javascript but that can be resolved another day.

Pingdom (Melbourne results)

3.2 seconds, a few false positives though.

Kingdom

I was going to test with https://www.webpagetest.org/ (from Singapore) but the service kept stalling and had too many tests before me (even from Sydney).

Wait

Address First Byte Time (todo)

If I look at the first-byte load results in the waterfall view my site is taking many seconds to deliver the first byte, this lowers the performance scores about 20%. I need to setup a CDN and or configure NGINX following this guide based on this manual configuration entry (I tried some of the Nginx settings but it appears I need to compile some performance settings into Nginx).

CDN (todo)

I am sure a Content Delivery Network (CDN) will help with the whole page deliver and first-byte times but I am trying to milk as much free as possible and limit future costs. A CDN will trigger higher monthly costs (any CDN providers want to donate a temporary pro plan for review purposes).

Misc Speed Articles

Configuring Ubuntu for Performance

Preventing applications swapping for disk (read more here)

I added this memory related setting.

This will all but prevent applications writing to disk (swap) when they are not active. I had free memory on my VM so I may as well use it.

I will monitor the free ram after reboot and play with php memory settings.

ram

Setup Lazyload for images in posts

cd /www/wp-content/plugins/
sudo wget https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/bj-lazy-load.zip
unzip bj-lazy-load.zip
# activate the plugin

Lazyload Plugin Settings

Lazyload

Placeholder Image ( Image: https://fearby.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/placeholder.jpg )

Web Performance Test from Sydney

8.4 seconds ( Score Card F A A A C, was F F F A F ).  I was getting up to 28 second load times with Net Registry C Panel servers.

Static Content is cached but Googe Ad Sence, Google Analytics, and some plugins do block the score. The front page does have some features content that has to be loaded and can’t be minified or cached much.

Sydney Results

It is obvious I need to work in the initial websitee load (DNS, CDN or SSL), there sis  3 seconds I can save here.

3 sec

Configuring PHP for Performance

todo: PHP base config.

todo: PHP caching.

Conclusion

I was expecting WP Fastest Cache to deliver faster speeds but in reality but I am getting 4 seconds faster in WordPress. I was going to configure MaxCDN but they are to expensive. Fast Velocity Minify Plugin is working a treat 🙂

I ended up ditching the shared CPanel hosted domain and setup my own server for WordPress. My site seems a lot faster now. A friend set up CloudFlare with great success, more soon. I blogged about my server setup here.

Adding browser cache and compressing and moving away from CPanel to a self-managed server helped.

The only things to try now is to use a CDN and speed up the delivery of my site and improve the First Byte Time.

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Revision History

v1.932 added lazy load information (24th Sep 2017)

v1.952 added small changes (23rd Sep 2017)

etc

DIY Scheduling automatic tweets with WordPress links and hashtags

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I have recently blogged about moving WordPress away from a CPanel managed domain to a self-managed Ubuntu server. I wanted a faster server with a free encrypted SSL certificate, no usage capacity limits (that I had on CPanel host) on server capacity and improve SEO. This guide aims to automate tweets with links to existing blog posts based on recent twitter command line research. I plan on using the Ubuntu crontab to schedule bash scripts to automate sending tweets. I plan on automating tweets with this GitHub repo: https://github.com/sferik/t every 6 hours.

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Source posts for automation

I have the Yoast SEO plugin installed in WordPress and it automatically creates a Pages and Posts sitemaps when new content is posted in WordPress. I used to choose Pages and Posts for publishing WordPress content but recently switched to using Posts only.

Here are my websites sitemaps XML files.

My Sitemap XML’s

Sitemaps

I plan on automating tweets from random pages in https://fearby.com/post-sitemap.xml

More on setting up the Twitter command line utility here.

Test tweeting from a bash file

FYI: real twitter accounts have been renamed below in all output below to @twitteraccount01 and @twitteraccount02

I created a bash file to handle the logic for automation

I tested the bash files ability to send a tweet

I made the file executable

I tested the script

The bash script sent a text message 🙂

Test Tweet

Now it is time to authorize a second twitter account with the t utility (see this guide for help creating a Twitter app and linking it to t).

Summary:

  • Goto https://apps.twitter.com/ and log in with the right Twitter account.
  • Create a new app.
  • I had to link my twitter account to a mobile number before I could create the app.
  • Set twitter app permissions: Read, Write and Access direct messages.

I ran these commands to Authorize a second twitter account in t

I can now see I have two Twitter accounts added to t

Now let’s see if we can tweet to the new twitter account (while keeping the old account linked): https://www.twitter.com/FearbySoftware

I edited the bash script to have a different message to tweet.

Success

Test Tweet

https://github.com/sferik/t suggests I can set the active Twitter account by entering the following command before tweeting

You can find linked twitter account usernames and id’s by running

I have updated the /scripts/tweetrandomblogarticle.sh  file to switch active accounts before tweeting

I ran the bash file to test sending multiple tweets from different accounts

Success

Processing the sitemaps file

At this point, I realized I have setup t on a different server than the server with sitemaps.xml. This is not a problem, I can easily download the sitemaps file onto this server with curl and process the XML with bash before tweeting.

Downloading the XML file

Now what does the XML Sitemaps file look like (Important for processing)

XML Sitemap Contents:

Processing the XML file

Here is my final bash script that manages temp files, downloads a sitemap, finds URLs in the Sitemap, chooses a random article, loads the page to get the title, finds hashtags and posts a tweet.

Final script with hashtag routine.

Hashtags

I added custom hashtags routine to the tweets body depending on the article url by adding the code below over the hashtag=”codetba” placeholder above.

Automation

This is how I scheduled the auto-tweet in the crontab (every 6 hours (0:00 6:00 12:00 18:00)).

Pros

  • Automated
  • Does what I want

Cons

  • I have to add new URLs in order to add hashtags

Hope this helps.

Need a server?

Set up a Server on Vultr here for as low as $2.5 a month or set up a Server on Digital Ocean (and get the first 2 months free ($5/m server)). I have a guide on setting up a Vultr server here or Digital Ocean server here.  Don’t forget to add a free LetsEncrypt SSL Certificate and secure the server (read more here and here).

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Revision History

v1.1 Revised (24th Sep 2017)

etc

Installing and managing WordPress with WP-CLI from the command line on Ubuntu

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Here is a really simple way to manually manage WordPress installations on Ubuntu.

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My previous WordPress (and related) guides

My Server Setup Guides

Go to https://make.wordpress.org/cli/handbook/installing/ and read the install instructions.

How to install wp-cli on Ubuntu

First read this post too install WordPress from the command line. You should install WordPress here.

Telnet to your server (SSH)

Did the file download?

Execute

Make the file executable and move it to /usr/local/bin/wp

Now you can run wp-cli by typing the following from the command line

Read the official wp-cli quick start guide https://make.wordpress.org/cli/handbook/quick-start/

Ever since I moved my WordPress to a self-managed server I have not been able to update my plugins and I have not installed an  FTP server (by choice for security reasons).

Wordpress manual update plugins page

Let’s see if we can update plugin with wp-cli

Yes, it worked

I have now updated all active plugins from one command line.

WordPress Plugins

I have been unable to update WordPress itself since I moved my website (without an FTP server).

Update WordPress

Let’s try and update WordPress with wp-cli.

Run this command.

Success

WordPress version

Awesome 🙂

Now time to create a few executable bash files to update plugins and WordPress files in future.

Update WordPress Plugins Bash Script

Contents

Make Executable

Update WordPress Bash Script

sudo nano /scripts/updatewordpress.sh

Contents

Make Executable

More Commands

More commands can be found here: https://developer.wordpress.org/cli/commands/

Information on exporting tables can be found here https://developer.wordpress.org/cli/commands/db/export/

Site Wide Search and Replace

Results

If you are updating past pages and post links do include https look for www alos

When you are ready to run the replace remove the

As always, backup your database and files before you make changes.

This was the easiest way to update my WordPress site and force existing links use https links.  Of course, you can downgrade https links if you don’t want to have https anymore.

Troubleshooting

wp needs to be run from the root folder of your web server (or it will report an error). You can specify a path location as a parameter  too ( –path=’/path/to/wordpress’)

All the following the wp command if you are logged in as root (not recommended for security reasons).

Adding “Advertisement” text above Google ads in all WordPress pages and posts, read this guide on setting up AdSense on your blog.

Official Troubleshooting guide here

I had an issue where I received error messages running the wp tool, iI fixed this editing my php.ini file and changing this..

memory_limit = 128

to

memory_limit = 128M

The M made all the difference after I restarted PHP/NGINX.

to this

Thank You, Kerry Hoath for the tip on this awesome cli tool.

fyi: WordPress fixed a SQL injection vulnerability and the wp-cli tool helped me update WordPress from the CLI.

Update Themes

Update Plugins

Update WordPress Core

 

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v1.5 Updating WordPress themes, plugins or core

v1.42 added ‘cd /www’ before calling wp cli.

Deploying WordPress to a Vultr VM via command line

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Here is my guide on setting up WordPress on an Ubuntu server via the command line. Here is my recent guide on the wp-cli tool.

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Read my guide on setting up a Vultr VM and installing NGINX web server and MySQL database. Use this link to create a Vultr Account.  This guide assumes you have a working Ubuntu VM with NGINX web server, MySQL, and SSL.

Consider setting up an SSL certificate (read my guide here on setting up a  free SL certificate with Let’s Encrypt). Once again read my guide on Setting up a Vultr server. Also moving WordPress from CPanel to a self-managed server and securing Ubuntu in the cloud. Ensure you are backing up your server (read my guide on How to backup an Ubuntu VM in the cloud via crontab entries that trigger Bash Scripts, SSH, Rsync and email backup alerts).

Ensure MySQL is setup.

Ensure your server is setup, firewall enabled (port 80 and 443 enabled), NGINX is installed and working.

Check NGINX version

Check NGINX Status

Check your PHP install status to confirm your setup, put this in a new PHP file (e.g /p.php) and load it to view PHP configuration and to verify PHP setup.

Loading PHP Configuration

First I edited NGINX configuration to allow WordPress to work.

location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;
        proxy_set_header Proxy "";
}

Mostly I added this line.

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;

I restated NGINX and PHP

nginx -t
nginx -s reload
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
sudo service php7.0-fpm restart

If this config change is not made WordPress will not install or run.

Database

In order to setup WordPress, we need to create a MySQL database/database user before downloading WordPress from the command line.

From an ssh terminal type (and log in with your MySQL root password)

Create a database (choose a database name, add random text).

mysql> create database databasemena123;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Create a user and assign them to the blog (choose a username, add random text)

If your password is simple you will get this warning.

A 50+ char password with 10 digits and 10 numbers should be ok

You can now apply the permissions and clear the permissions cache.

Go to your /www folder on your server and run this command to download WordPress.

You can now move any existing temporary index files in your /www folder

mv index.html oldindex.html
mv index.php oldindex.php
p.php oldp.php

ls -al
total 8724
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 Aug 21 11:17 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 root root    4096 Aug 13 22:27 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      37 Jul 31 11:51 oldindex.html
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      37 Jul 31 11:51 oldindex.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root      19 Aug 21 11:04 oldp.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 8910664 Aug 21 11:16 wordpress.zip

Now I can extract wordpress.zip

First, you need to install unzip

Now Unzip wordpress.zip

unzip wordpress.zip

At this point, I decided to remove all old index files on my website

The unzipped contents are in a sub folder called “wordpress”, we need to move the WordPress contents up a folder.

“wordpress” folder contents.

Remove the wordpress.zip in /www/

Move all files from the /www/wordpress/ up a folder to /www/.

Now we can create and upload folder

mkdir /www/wp-content/content/

Apply permissions (or you can never upload to WordPress).

chmod 755 /www/wp-content/uploads/

I think I need to apply permissions here (to allow plugins to upload/update)

Edit the wp-config-sample.php

Add your database name to the WordPress config.

Before:

After:

Add your database username and password to the WordPress config.

Before:

After:

Go to https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ and copy the salts to your clipboard and replace this in your wp-config-sample.php

..with paste over whatever you generated (e.g)

Now save changes to wp-config-sample.php

Rename the sample config file (to make it live)

You can now load your website ( https://www.yourserver.com ) and finish the setup in the WordPress GUI.

Wordpress Setup GUI

WordPress should now be installed and you can log in.

Don’t forget to update your options – /wp-admin/options-general.php

I would reccoment you review the options to prevent comment spam – /wp-admin/options-discussion.php

Also if you are using the twentyseventeen theme consider updating your header image (remove the pot plant) 0 /wp-admin/customize.php?theme=twentyseventeen&return=%2Fwp-admin%2Fthemes.php

Signup for a Vulr server here for as low as $2.5 a month or a Digital Ocean server ($10 free credit/2 months, signup for G Suite email on google here and read my guide here.

Read this guide on using the wp-cli tool to automate post install.

I hope this helps.

 

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v1.1 added wp-cli tool

Moving WordPress to a new self managed server away from CPanel

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I recently moved my domain from a C-Panel hosted domain (and Email to Google G Suite (my guide here)) to a self-managed Digital Ocean domain (my LetsEncrypt Guide here, my Digital Ocean guide here, my AWS setup guide here, my Vultr setup guide here) and needed to transfer my WordPress site.

Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.

Domain names for just 88 cents!

I had issues with a CPanel domain on the hosts (Uber/Netregistry) as they were migrating domains and the NetRegstry chat rep said I needed to phone Uber for support. No thanks, I’m going self-managed and saving a dollar.

 

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I backed up my old WordPress site files with FTP (and my database (sql export) on my old site and zipped it up and uploaded it to a public location as I did not want to setup FTP on my new site. More info on this here.

This downloaded mg 1GB backup zip.

I install unzip onto Ubuntu.

I unzipped the WordPress instance with Unzip (my blog lives under a blog folder).

I created an /index.html to redirect people to the blog folder.

<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1; url=http://simon.fearby.com/blog/">
</head>
<body>Loading <a href="http://thesubdomain.thedomain.com/blog/">http://thesubdomain.thedomain.com/blog/</a></body></html>

I updated my NGINX configuration to ensure WordPress worked.

I checked my databases with mysql (command line) to ensure MySQL was up.

mysql -u root -p
Enter password: ************************************
mysql> SHOW DATABSES;

I uploaded https://www.adminer.org/ to my site. I opened my wp-config.php and got db and username and created the user and assigned it to the database in Adminer.

I had a SQL backup of my site buy from experience I had not modify the SQL file before importing it (replace MyISAM with InnoDB).

You can read more about me previously moving a CPanel domain with email to a self managed VPS and Gmail.

I tried to import my 7mb sql file into the database with Adminer.

But it kept timing out (I suspect PHP upload limits were set to 2MB).

I fond my php.ini files (4 of them). No PHP file was found when I ran which PHP command was run and opened that folder.

I had to make the following PHP.ini changes to allow the larger file size restore uploads with the Adminer utility (default is 2mb).

I had to make the following changes to nginx.conf (to prevent 404 errors on the database upload)

I navigated to the WordPress and all was good (even had SSL as I set that up on the new server)..\\

Conclusion

I now have a faster WordPress on a server I manager with SSL.

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v1.1 NetRegistry info

Add Google AdWords to your WordPress blog

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Google says “Turn your passion into profit. AdSense is a free, simple way to make money online by placing ads on your website.” How hard is it to setup Google AdSense on your WordPress site?

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First, you will need to create a Google AdSense account here and add your site to Google AdSense. Don’t forget to add your account and payment type here.

Ad Sense

You will need to add a bit of HTML script from Google to your site to verify you own the domain you are adding ads too.  Lucky for me my theme Genesis allows me to paste code straight into the header and footer sections for my site.

Ad Sense

Google AdSense steps are quite clear and will let you know what you need to do (I monitor this from my phone).

Ad Sense

After your site is verified (automatically) you will have to wait up to 1 week for Google to review your site. You will receive an email when Google has approved your site.

Ad Sense

Then you are ready to log in to Google Adwords page and create an Advertisement style that matches your site. Now you can create your first ad type in the Google AdSense screen.

Ad Sense

I created a “Text and Display Ads”.

Ad Sense

I then entered a name and chose “Automatic Size” and “Responsive”, feel free to add your own colors here and customize.

From the Google Adsense page go to My Ads, Content then Ad Unit, Now you can click get the code.

I can use this code to place auto responsive ad’s on my web pages.

I should have embedded this code into my WordPress theme but I decided to place the code manually into each of my posts (in text mode).

This is how a Google AdWords Ad looks in this post (below the first paragraph).  Very smart that Google chose to serve an AdWords company Ad in my post about Google Ad Words.

Here are my earnings 10 minutes after adding my first ad to my blog ($0 as expected).  I plan on using any revenue to speed up this website as the host is very slow.

Ad Sense

If you like this post please click my Ad’s.  I will update my revenue numbers here in the future.

Thanks to Emma who runs a great blog and encouraged me to blog years ago and big thanks to my wife Alison who ran a blog for years (way before me with loads more visitors).

Payment

It appears you can’t add a payment method or add a payment method until you reach $100 earned.

It looks like earnings will be paid monthly if you meet the target. Payment placeholders are available at https://play.google.com/store/account#  I guess new payment methods can be added here.

AdSense Mobile app.

I use the AdSense mobile app



FYI: For me, Estimated revenue on the mobile app is in Australian dollars and estimate revenue at https://www.google.com/adsense/ is in USD.

Searching reveals that estimated revenue will be evaluated at the end of the month and the final amount will be reduced.

Content

Make content relevant to the reader to gain revenue. I guess I need to look at Google Analytics and blog more of what people want.

SEO

Don’t forget to ensure your sites SEO is working as expected. Also, a slow website will have poor SEO  so consider a faster private VM from Vultr or Digital Ocean.

Ad Glossary

  • Page RPM – Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.
  • Page CTR – The page click through rate (CTR) is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.
  • Impression CTR – An impression is counted for each ad request that returns at least one ad to the site. It is the number of ad units (for content ads) or search queries (for search ads) that showed ads.
  • Cost Per Click – The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC for any ad is determined by the advertiser; some advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than others, depending on what they’re advertising.
  • Impression RPM – The impression revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is the average earnings per one thousand impressions.
  • Page ROM – Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.
  • Coverage – Coverage is the percentage of ad requests that returned at least one ad. Generally, coverage can help you identify sites where AdSense isn’t able to provide targeted ads.
  • Maximum CPC Bid – A bid that you set to determine the highest amount that you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad.
  • CPM Bid (Cost Per 1000 Impressions) – CPM bidding means that you pay based on the number of impressions (times your ads are shown) that you receive on the Google Display Network. Starting this year, CPM bidding will be replaced by viewable CPM bidding.

How costs are calculated in AdWords.

Read the Google AdSense Glossary and help here.

Ad Sense Rules

Ad Sense Beginner’s Guide – Stay compliant with our policies.

Summary:

  1. Don’t click your own ads.
  2. Don’t ask others to click your ads.
  3. Don’t include any prohibited site content, including adult content, violence or excessive profanity, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) or copyrighted material.
  4. Don’t modify the AdSense code.
  5. Do follow our Webmaster Quality Guidelines.
  6. Do provide a good user experience.
  7. Don’t place more ads than content on any page.
  8. Don’t place images near ads in a way that may mislead users into thinking that the images are associated with the ads.

Google Webmaster guidelines.Payment

Payment

You will be unable to receive payment until you verify your address.

If you are on a 14-day free trial you will need to setup billing before the trial expires

Tips

  • Do add the show ad’s code to WordPress over manually adding to pages or posts.
  • You can only add one script to your page once (e.g Header or Footer (not Both)) or multiple ad banners will be visible and only one will be clickable.

Bonus

Read my guide on managing WordPress via the command line where I automatically (with one command line added the word Advertisements) to over 80 post and pages.

sudo wp search-replace '<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com' 'Advertisement:<br /> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com'
sudo wp search-replace '<script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com' 'Advertisement:<br /> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com'

Update June 2019

Google is now demanding you add a /ads.txt file to your site (with this format).

I added the following to mine

google.com, pub-9241521190070921, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

I used this site to validate my ads.txt file

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Draft: v1.91 June 2019 ads.txt info

Why choose a WordPress website over a static HTML site edited with Dreamweaver.

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All websites files on the internet live on a web server and web site content is mostly made up of HTML and graphic files. When customer’s access your website the web server sends raw HTML to the customer’s web browser. The web browser then reads the HTML, downloads additional assets and regenerates the webpage on the screen/device.

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This guide compares using WordPress and building your own HTM website and editing the site with a HTML editor like Dreamweaver.

There are a number of standards for HTML syntax and rules for making accessible webpages.  If you do not meet the latest standards your website will be ranked a lot lower in Search engines or even be blocked.

If you are technically minded you can have fun learning HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for nice layouts, JavaScript and JQuery for interactive widgets along with SQL and PHP for building pages that load and save data to databases.  If you are building a static HTML website, you should use the mobile responsive Bootstrap HTML framework. You can buy in a bootstrap theme or design your own site using sites like layout-it.

Google tips for web developers: search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf (cached here).

  • Create unique, accurate page titles
  • Make use of the “description” meta tag
  • Improving Site Structure
  • Improve the structure of your URLs
  • Make your site easier to navigate
  • Optimizing Content
  • Offer quality content and services
  • Write better anchor text
  • Optimize your use of images
  • Use heading tags appropriately
  • Dealing with Crawlers
  • Make effective use of robots.txt
  • Be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
  • SEO for Mobile Phones
  • Notify Google of mobile sites
  • Guide mobile users accurately
  • Promotions and Analysis
  • Promote your website in the right ways
  • Make use of free webmaster tools

Dreamweaver CC and Expression Web are the go to HTML web editing tools along with my favourite code editor Sublime Text 3.

HTML editors:

Dreamweaver CC
Dreamweaver CC
Sublime Text 3
Sublime Text 3

 

Ok so what about the non technical people, how can they setup and edit a website easily.

This is where WordPress CMS saves the day 🙂

wordpress

WordPress is a free CMS that you can download from http://www.wordpress.org or host on WordPress Servers at http://www.wordpress.com.  WordPress saves you from having to learn HTML and all the other technical bits.  You can access your site using WordPress from a desktop computer, tablet or mobile device (no need to install HTML editing software).

WordPress powers over 25% of all websites on the internet and is the most popular content management system. Shopify and SquareSpace have less than 1% market share.

Check out some sites running WordPress: https://wordpress.org/showcase/

 

WordPress Extensions

You can choose from thousands of free and commercial themes and thousands of free and commercial plugins. I have guides on Building a WordPress website from scratch and choosing a theme and essential plugins.

wordpress_org_01

WordPress Support

WordPress has great support, forums and documentation, there are loads of free lessons for the beginner through to writing posts and beyond.

 

WordPress Mobile

WordPress apps are available on iOS and Android mobile devices so you can add and edit on the road.  There is nothing stopping you adding and editing ALL content on a WordPress website from a mobile device. You could be at an event and create a post, take photos and submit a new page to your site all from your phone.

wp-ioswp-android

You can download the WordPress apps from https://wordpress.org/mobile/

 

Using WordPress.

WordPress offers a “WYSIWYG” editor for pages and posts. I use WordPress and this is what I see when I am editing this article.  wordpress_editing_now

Media Manager

WordPress comes with a simple media manager (for uploading graphics and attachments) and it is quite simple use.wordpress_editing_media

Pro’s and Con’s

WordPress needs some pre requisite software and has some limitations so here is a breakdown of the pro’s and con’s.

Pro’sCon’s
WordPress
  • Needs securing from the start.
  • Needs occasional updating.
  • Limited flexibility to modify a theme.
  • Best to choose a mobile/compliant theme at the start.
  • Security concerns with out dated plugins or versions of WordPress.
Static HTML
  • Does not need prerequisite software (if the content is basic).
  • Best for simple non interactive sites.
  • Cheaper.
  • Can be faster.
  • You need to design and develop a lot o the site by hand.
  • A lot of web servers don’t allow unencrypted FTP connections ( encryption support lacking in some versions of Dreamweaver and other FTP apps).
  • Hard to add database support.
  • You need to be on the ball with coding standards.
  • harder to hand over support to a different person.
  • Security concerns if you roll your own database support.
  • Dreamweaver CC costs $19 a month

 

Where to next

The real trick is setting up and clean WordPress installation with a nice theme (preferably commercial) and building in your sites pages/content and securing the site.

You can use my guide here to build a local WordPress installation or you can deploy straight onto a compliant web host.

Good luck.

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