Comment on Google PageSpeed Insights Results by SEO Dave.

PageSpeed Insights Yes a CDN can help, I’ve avoided using a CDN because they can be a pain to setup and requires Stallion Responsive users to use something that’s quiet technical to get working.

You’ve installed W3 Total Cache and used my import settings, without the import settings file you would have spent hours tinkering with the caching options. Expecting a user to install a caching plugin and provide an import file is complicated, but not excessively so.

Expecting a user to install a CDN which many you have to pay for is excessive. Using a sub-domain CDN is something I’ve considered since it means not having to pay for a CDN and you will have control over the content (still under your domain- cdn.stallion-theme.co.uk sort of thing).

So far I’ve been developing the Stallion Responsive package to not require a CDN for very good results.

Run my homepage through http://www.webpagetest.org/ and my results are very good:

PageSpeed Test Results

Most of the issues under “Leverage browser caching of static assets: 77/100” are related to off site resources (social networks again) we have no control over. The ones on my site I’m looking for solutions. I know why these are an issue (new feature added to Stallion Responsive 8.1) and will try to find a solution:

WARNING - (60.0 minutes) - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/social-bio.php?author=1
WARNING - (60.0 minutes) - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/social.php?author=1

W3 Total Cache in theory has a way to set the cache time for dynamic URLs, but means turning an important option off. Swings and roundabouts.

Not sure why I get this one, it should have an expire time.

FAILED - (No max-age or expires) - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/

The CDN results “Use a CDN for all static assets: 34/100” are where a CDN would help.

These I could definitely put on a CDN.

FAILED - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/images/ico/rss.gif
FAILED - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/images/ico/facebook.png
FAILED - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/images/ico/twitter.png
FAILED - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/images/ico/google-plus.png
FAILED - https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/images/ico/youtube.png

But most of the others from this site I wouldn’t want to add to a CDN, especially not one off site. I don’t want my images taken offsite, this will have a negative impact on Google image search, my content will be loading images from another domain.

That would be OK with the social media button images above (they are social profile link images and have no SEO value), but I wouldn’t want this image https://stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-seo-themes.jpg on another domain. Would be OK on a sub-domain, for example cdn.stallion-theme.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wordpress-seo-themes.jpg hence considering a sub-domain CDN option.

Note that with a CDN it’s for static resources like images and scripts (CSS and JS files), all it does is add the resource to another domain (sub-domain is another domain) which means browsers (and Google) can load the resources faster (in theory) by using more connections at the same time.

Regarding your social network issues.

A slower Google PageSpeed Insights Tool results is the price you pay for having social media like and share buttons on your site.

So far not found a consistent way to remove them, could possibly load some in an iFrame, but not all which would make it messy. Current solution is only use the important social networks. If your content is unlikely to be shared on Reddit, don’t add Reddit.

Because social network like buttons require the social networks javascript files etc… which are not hosted on your website, we have no control over browser caching etc… So any Google PageSpeed Insights issues related to off site resources are out of our hands. We can’t force Facebook to increase the caching time of a script they use :-)

David