Topic

Performance

Posts in this archive

18 insights

  1. Managed Hosting 8 min read

    Cloudflare in DNS-only mode isn’t doing anything for you.

    Most WordPress sites that have Cloudflare set up have it in “DNS only” mode. In that mode, Cloudflare is functioning as nothing more than a...

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  2. Data Privacy & Compliance 9 min read

    GDPR, CCPA, and the consent banner WordPress sites don’t actually need.

    The consent banner is now near-universal on WordPress sites, especially in markets exposed to GDPR or CCPA. The shared assumption is that the banner is...

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  3. Data Privacy & Compliance 7 min read

    Reporting Google Ads ROI without third-party cookies.

    Removing Google Analytics from a WordPress site (and the consent banner that came with it) raises an immediate question from the marketing team: how do...

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  4. Data Privacy & Compliance 6 min read

    Self-hosted WordPress analytics: the consent banner you can finally remove.

    Google Analytics is the cookie that’s hardest to defend on a WordPress consent banner. It’s also the easiest to replace — and replacing it gives...

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  5. Data Privacy & Compliance 6 min read

    Hosting WordPress video without YouTube’s cookies.

    A YouTube embed loads Google's tracking on every visitor, regardless of whether they play the video. Self-hosting or using click-to-load removes the cookies without sacrificing the video. Here are the three approaches that actually work.

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  6. Multilingual 9 min read

    The four decisions that determine whether a multilingual WordPress site compounds or stays a footnote.

    Multilingual WordPress sits in a tooling category that’s been settled for years: Weglot, WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress, MultilingualPress, and a handful of smaller players. Weglot is...

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  7. Platform Architecture 7 min read

    Building a faceted browse experience for WordPress content (without FacetWP).

    Content-heavy WordPress sites accumulate filterable lists: blog posts that need filtering by category and tag, products by attribute, case studies by industry, events by date...

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  8. Managed Hosting 8 min read

    WordPress managed hosting: what 100% uptime actually requires.

    Every WordPress site is a stack of moving pieces that needs continuous operational care: patches applied, versions updated, vulnerabilities closed, backups verified, certificates renewed. Skip...

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  9. Technical SEO 6 min read

    WordPress Core Web Vitals: what actually moves rankings, and what doesn’t

    Core Web Vitals are real, they are a genuine Google ranking signal, and they are almost universally misunderstood. The typical pattern: someone runs a Lighthouse...

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  10. Legacy Modernization 7 min read

    WordPress 6.7 fixed (some of) the autoload problem.

    The Options API in WordPress underwent a meaningful architectural shift across the 6.6 (July 2024) and 6.7 (November 2024) releases. Core now actively manages the...

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  11. Platform Architecture 8 min read

    When not to go headless: API-first WordPress instead.

    When the question is "should we go headless?", the answer is usually "no." But the value people are reaching for — performance, flexibility, modern frontends — is achievable without the operational overhead. Here's how API-first architecture on the WordPress monolith gets you most of the way there.

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  12. Data Privacy & Compliance 6 min read

    Self-hosted Google Fonts: the WordPress privacy upgrade you can ship in an afternoon.

    Open the network inspector on any WordPress site that hasn’t done this work, and you’ll see one or more requests to fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com in...

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  13. Legacy Modernization 7 min read

    Replacing 47 plugins with 12: a consolidation playbook.

    A common opening question on legacy WordPress engagements: “How many of these plugins do we actually need?” The site has 47 active. The honest answer...

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  14. Legacy Modernization 12 min read

    The real cost of WordPress plugin sprawl.

    Every plugin you add to WordPress doesn't just add features — it adds technical debt, performance overhead, and another vendor relationship to manage. After twenty years of cleaning up plugin debt, here's what compounds, what's recoverable, and where the real cost lives.

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  15. Legacy Modernization 5 min read

    Autoloaded options: the silent WordPress performance killer.

    Update (January 2025): WordPress 6.6 (June 2024) and 6.7 (November 2024) introduced significant changes to how the Options API handles autoloading, including new autoload values...

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  16. Platform Architecture 6 min read

    Managed hosting isn’t a substitute for WordPress infrastructure thinking.

    There’s a common misreading of what managed WordPress hosting buys you: the assumption that if the host handles the platform, you don’t have to think...

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  17. Platform Architecture 9 min read

    Why custom WordPress beats off-the-shelf — every time.

    Custom WordPress development costs more upfront than buying a template, then it pays back indefinitely. Faster, better for SEO, distinct on brand, and built to evolve. Why custom is the right call for more sites than people think.

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  18. Platform Architecture 6 min read

    Stop configuring giant plugins. Build a small one instead.

    The default WordPress problem-solving instinct goes like this: identify the need, search the plugin directory, pick the option with the highest install count and decent...

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