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WebWhim is excited to announce our latest research articles series! We’ve interviewed numerous hosting providers and plugin developers to come up with a set of six research articles to help educate both web design agencies and, more importantly, website owners about various aspect of the WordPress ecosystem. The most critical elements for delivering blazing-fast pages are a knowledgeable web design agency, proper plugins and tools, a great hosting provider, and fast CDN for international traffic. All these things need to be in place so your website can run as efficiently as possible.

PageSpeed Insights score for this webpage: mobile 99, desktop 100; speed index: 1.5s for mobile, 0.4s for desktop.
WordPress – Hello Theme – Elementor Pro – Asset CleanUp – LiteSpeed Cache – LiteSpeed Web Server

Be aware of NitroPack – Black Hat SEO speed optimisation plugin

To confuse Google speed test tools, NitroPack is postponing all JavaScript evaluation and execution. It destroys the visual appearance of pages with dynamic content and presents static content without interactive functionality. It will take extra two seconds after the first click on a mobile device’s menu button to parse JS files. Only after that unwelcome delay, your menu buttons will start responding correctly.
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Thank you for this finding! I appreciate your write-up and due diligence in getting to the bottom of it.
I’ve been discussing your article with my team. It’s really well written! We’ve felt the same.
Gijo @ WP Speed Matters
Very interesting, and I just shared this in my Facebook group. Adam @ WPCrafter

How to choose a secure and fast eCommerce platform

A skilful web designer can improve the WordPress website’s speed, making it much faster than other website building platforms. However, 94% of hacked websites are built on WordPress, with the WooCommerce plugin playing a dubious role as its major vulnerability. We discuss splitting the functions between your online store’s front-end and back-end to achieve uncompromised security on a blazing fast WordPress platform.
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How to choose a web design agency

We have benchmarked the website loading speed of 400 web service providers around Cambridge. The main lesson – do not select your web design agency without checking their own website’s page load speed. And double-check that they are not using NitroPack – Black Hat SEO speed optimisation. Learn further practical advice on ensuring blazing fast upload speed for your new website.
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Very well written and interesting. I just shared this in my speed optimisation experts slack channel. Dipak Gajjar, Open Source Contributor at WordPress
Very good article. Well researched. I liked it. John Boland, Website Designer
You did great research. I will recommend reading it if asked How to Choose a Web Design Agency. Sergey Chernuhin, WordPress Plugin Developer, Clearfy

How to choose a WordPress hosting provider

This is a hot subject with the most dishonest paid reviews in the WordPress ecosystem. Hosting is a traumatised industry with the disruptive shift toward fully standardised services provided using LiteSpeed Web server and NVMe SSD storage. Don’t go for the Cloud-based hosting services – it is the worst value for money. Consider specific recommendations provided in our separate report.
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I have studied your article – makes for a great read, good work! Dennis Nind, CEO at Brixly
This is quite a comprehensive article, and it provides great information and technical insight.
Jamie Galpin, Director of Operations at NameHero
You cover a lot of important things that others would not think to check,  great stuff!
Christopher Smith, CEO at HostXNow

Best WordPress hosting providers for US and UK

If your website has only UK visitors – then choose your hosting provider in the UK. If you serve global markets, you have to select the USA. On our list, NameHero offers the best value for money services. The company is also a winner of the Best Web Hosting Companies of 2020 award. You can secure hosting on the first-class hardware and software in the major DataCenter for less than $8 per month.
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How to choose your CDN provider

If you have visitors from outside of one specific geolocation, you will have to use the Content Distribution Network (CDN) service. Setup BunnyCDN for all your static assets and configure the delivery of HTML files via Cloudflare CDN edge cache. This combination will cost you only $1 per month and should provide a high cache hit ratio even with modest international traffic. If you are hosted on the LiteSpeed Web server, use QUIC.cloud CDN and get 10 GB of traffic for free.
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Thanks for the interesting post, which we have reviewed internally. Regarding the CDN caching, cache pre-warm is not available yet, but we intend to increase the cache length to one day soon. Kevin Fwu, Software Engineer at QUIC.cloud and LiteSpeed Technologies
The best websites are created with Google in mind. A website’s design and development need to be tailored around Google’s algorithms to rank as high as possible on the search engine. There are two main factors for this: on-page SEO (search engine optimisation) and off-page SEO.
On-page means what Google crawler discover when visiting your website: does it load fast, does it have rich content, does it look professional, do all of your links work correctly? Whereas off-page refers to backlinks that come from other sites linking back to yours – essentially telling Google, “Hey, I think we should put this one at number 1 because it is so awesome!”
Excellent content strategy is the King of on-page SEO, but it also has its Queen called technical SEO. The technical SEO term refers to improving website coding’s technical aspects to increase its ranking in Google. It was always about making a faster website that is also easier to crawl. For many years uncaring servants neglected this Queen! In their opinion, it was enough just to install the Yoast or, more recently, Rank Math and rush with the off-page optimisation activities such as content marketing and link building – powerful Crown Prince of off-page SEO strategy.
The semiconductor technologies used in CPU for mobile devices aren’t progressing quick enough to compensate for the increased bloat generated by web page development tools. “It’s time to take a stand against the speed of websites.” Google tells us, “Enough is enough. Websites are getting slower and slower every year”. So, Google has decided that it will force us,  web designers, to care more about Queen of technical SEO with her obsession for faster websites!
The hand-coded websites are now out of fashion, and their share in the overall websites is in rapid decline. They’ve been replaced mainly with more user-friendly Content Management Systems like WordPress, making it easier to maintain pages for a small business owner or individual who doesn’t have any web development skills. The democratisation brought by web page building tools causes an influx of designers without technical knowledge – and now they desperately need to be better informed to keep up with the demands of new Google algorithms!
We have put a lot of time and effort into our research to provide you with the best information possible. We offer unbiased, in-depth articles that are not easy to find on other websites. Check out some advice we think will help you get started today!
If you think we have missed something important in our articles or want to debate our technical judgment, please submit a guest blog on the subject, and we will publish it here as part of this website’s research portal!
As one of the best web design companies in Cambridge, we specialise in speed optimization. Our company has been designing graphics for over seventeen years. We work intimately with our clients to understand their needs and offer a strategy uniquely tailored to them. We provide web design services and can help you reach your online goals. We understand that people have different needs and budgets, so we tailor a comprehensive process for all clients who need to distinguish themselves online. Please visit our web design page to find out more about what we can offer your business.
Through our custom solutions, we can help your business from logo design to designing an eCommerce store. We provide many services, including technical SEO optimisation and support to companies who need to better their web hosting. With our expertise in graphic design, we are prepared to meet any other creative need that might arise.
Feel free to contact us at [email protected] if you need any help, and we’ll be happy to assist you.