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Siteground Speed Test (With & Without Static Caching)

In an effort to get a sense of the effectiveness of Siteground’s Static Caching, 90 speed tests were conducted with and without Static Caching.

Methods

Each test was performed using Pingdom.com’s Website Speed Test, using the San Jose, California location option. Each test was conducted with the HTTP URL rather than the HTTPS URL.

In all, roughly 9 tests were run each day for 10 days. (Although 3 tests were omitted on August 19th, and were made up for on August 24th.) Load time results were recorded, and averaged at the end of the study.

Results

The following HTML table was generated by the Tableizer Excel to HTML conversion site:

Site Load Speed With & Without Siteground Static Caching

Date Time No Static Caching Load Time (sec) With Static Caching Load Time (sec)
8/13/2018 11:40 2.45 1.37
1.38 1.35
1.16 1.33
18:06 1.35 1.18
1.28 1.18
1.40 1.17
22:56 1.48 1.43
1.36 1.21
1.17 1.15
8/14/2018 13:05 1.70 1.43
1.47 1.24
1.74 1.42
19:41 1.52 1.14
1.34 1.38
1.34 1.18
22:30 1.18 1.15
1.38 1.19
1.14 1.13
8/15/2018 16:30 1.51 1.18
1.22 1.12
1.19 1.13
19:53 2.62 1.22
1.18 1.92
1.76 1.36
22:25 1.39 1.13
1.14 1.35
1.39 1.41
8/16/2018 10:40 1.32 1.14
1.14 1.14
1.15 1.11
13:13 1.19 1.17
1.36 1.17
1.33 1.19
17:56 2.43 1.40
1.16 1.44
1.15 1.13
8/19/2018 14:32 1.69 1.19
1.12 1.14
1.28 1.13
17:28 1.19 1.16
1.39 1.41
1.44 1.38
8/20/2018 10:54 1.85 1.45
1.38 1.42
1.18 1.38
15:55 1.25 1.23
1.20 1.38
1.21 1.15
18:48 1.37 1.44
1.15 1.27
1.17 1.18
8/22/2018 12:47 1.49 1.16
1.27 1.33
1.15 1.17
17:16 1.26 1.34
1.13 1.18
1.35 1.37
20:45 1.37 1.18
1.32 1.15
1.35 1.13
8/23/2018 10:55 1.69 1.42
1.37 1.33
1.17 1.17
13:47 1.19 1.21
1.26 1.34
1.35 1.27
16:28 1.63 1.16
1.27 1.35
1.30 1.37
8/24/2018 12:09 1.45 1.39
1.45 1.36
1.46 1.44
15:22 1.19 1.17
1.44 1.12
1.35 1.12
18:18 1.30 1.26
1.17 1.21
1.36 1.42
20:36 1.14 1.18
1.20 1.34
1.67 1.39
8/25/2018 10:33 1.50 1.38
1.39 1.15
1.19 1.19
12:48 1.20 1.18
1.38 1.20
1.18 1.32
15:35 1.65 1.14
1.40 1.13
1.21 1.12
n 90 90
Average 1.37 1.26
Std Dev 0.27 0.13

Siteground’s Static Caching option improved the average load speed of this WordPress installation by 0.11 seconds (1.26 sec vs 1.37 sec).

Static Caching also halved the variability of load speeds (the standard deviation of load speeds with Static Caching was 0.13 vs 0.27 without).

Conclusions

Siteground’s Static Caching option appears to work, and will be used on Ancient Greek Keyboard from now on. (NB: Remember to turn this off when doing CSS work!)

In addition, future speed tests will use a smaller sample size (about 36, instead of 90) in order to reduce testing time.

Finally, it should be noted that these load times were obtained prior to activation of social media button plugins, and may not represent current load times. However, the relative difference between load times with & without Static Caching is expected to remain the same.


Other posts in this series:

  1. Siteground Speed Test (With & Without Static Caching)
  2. Speed Test of Swift Performance Lite plugin
  3. Caching Plugin Speed Tests: Swift Performance Lite vs. W3 Total Cache
  4. Speed Test: W3 Total Cache With Autoptimize
  5. Speed Test of WP-Rocket plugin (default settings)
  6. Speed Test of WP-Rocket plugin (additional settings)
  7. WP Rocket Speed Test (with & without SiteGround Static Caching)
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3

Further WordPress SEO Setup, Styling

  1. More settings completed on All-In-One SEO Pack plugin.
  2. Left margin changed on blog entry lists.
  3. Added Greek meander divider to Category, Archive & Author pages on Ancient Greek Keyboard.
  4. Hid some widgets on Category, Archive & Author pages.
  5. Changed text on Add To Cart button (to Buy Product).

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2

WordPress SEO Plugin Changed, Fixed Bingbot Blocking Error, Styling For Handheld

  1. Changed file permissions on WP-CONFIG.PHP.
  2. Deleted Yoast SEO plugin & installed All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. The reason for the change was that the creators have crippled the latest version of Yoast SEO — it no longer allows the site owner to NOINDEX specific pages in its XML sitemap. Since the Cancelled Transaction, Checkout, and Thank You pages should not be indexed, Yoast SEO was unsuitable for this site’s needs.
  3. Monitored page indexing on Google. Indexed pages reached 7 on the first evening, then fell to 2 a couple of days later (probably due to delayed propagation across Google’s servers). As of today, the number of indexed pages was 8.
  4. Plugin mistakenly was blocking Bingbot. Contacted plugin support & problem was resolved.
  5. Submenus on handheld devices were not displaying due to theme update. Was unable to use CSS to target the issue. Therefore, created a second menu for use on handheld devices only.
  6. Floated the hamburger menu on handheld to the left.
  7. Media attachment pages on Ancient Greek Keyboard were being indexed by Google, which is apparently bad for SEO. Changed Media Attachment settings in All-In-One SEO plugin, then set up redirects for media attachments with code in Child Theme > FUNCTIONS.PHP.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8 (Site brought live)

WordPress Site Brought Live, SEO Plugins Activated & Set Up, Styling

  1. Deactivated the Coming Soon plugin.
  2. Set ROBOTS.TXT to allow search engine indexing (ie: Unchecked “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” in settings.)
  3. Activated Yoast SEO plugin.
  4. Set XML sitemap to not index Cancelled Transaction, Checkout, and Thank You pages. (Really? This setting page could not be found in the plugin’s administration area a few days later!)
  5. Added site to Google Webmaster Tools. Uploaded verification file, verified & submitted Yoast-generated XML sitemaps.
  6. Activated statistics plugin on Ancient Greek Keyboard.
  7. Edited styles to center text on 404 Error pages.
  8. Edited styles to change button color to navy.
  9. Within 3-4 hours of adding the site to Webmaster tools, 5 pages had already appeared on Google’s search engine.
  10. Added meta descriptions to a few indexed pages.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7

WordPress Security, Limits On Number Of Post Revisions

  1. Site security work.
  2. WP-CONFIG.PHP edited to limit number of page & post revisions to 5 (in order to keep the database to a reasonable size).
  3. Removed HTACCESS rule preventing others from viewing Ancient Greek Keyboard site. (Although at this point, all they could see was the Coming Soon page.)
  4. Researched sFTP.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6

Final WordPress Shopping Cart Adjustments

  1. Set real product prices & shipping costs on all “Add To Cart” buttons.
  2. Tested all “Add to Cart” buttons on Ancient Greek Keyboard site.
  3. Deleted first WP automatic blog post.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW

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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5

WordPress Styling & Site Security

  1. Minor styling on sidebar widget spacing.
  2. New transparent favicon with Theano Didot font created & uploaded.
  3. Created Ancient Greek Keyboard site image for use on PayPal’s site before & after checkout. PayPal allows this image to be 480 px wide X 90 px high. Some confusion here because PayPal allows the merchant to upload a logo image, but this is only viewable by the merchant when logged into PayPal.

    However, for a logo viewable by customers during checkout, the image must be uploaded to the Media Library & its URL must be added to one of the settings in the shopping cart plugin. (NOTE: PayPal will only display a customized site image if it’s served from an HTTPS site)

  4. Additional security with HTACCESS.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW

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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4

Setup For PayPal, Favicons, Apple Touch Icons

  1. Previous day’s blunder: Forgot to add a # sign in the CSS when targeting a CSS ID for one of the sidebar widgets, and erroneously attributed the failure to change the widget’s style to the host’s caching system.
  2. Changed most business information on PayPal business account to that of ancientgreekkeyboard.com.
  3. Revised product title on all shopping cart buttons.
  4. First test purchase.
  5. Gravatar created on new WordPress.com account.
  6. Created new administrator with new gravatar & site email.
  7. Fixed widget style for Single Blog Posts (ie: product listing and cart should appear under the blog navigation in the sidebar).
  8. Created favicon. Site logo is too detailed to see on a 16 px X 16 px image, so used π (for παλαιός: old, ancient). Experienced a little trouble finding a site that converts PNG favicons to ICO. Must explicitly ask Google to search for this.
  9. Apple touch icons created, uploaded and HTACCESS code added.
  10. Screenshot of site with Child Theme styles enabled & added to the Child Theme folder.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW

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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3

Site Security, WordPress Shopping Cart Setup, Styling

  1. Blocked all other IPs with HTACCESS until the Ancient Greek Keyboard site was ready to go live.
  2. Added short product description & product image for side navbar widgets.
  3. Added product name for all “Add To Cart” buttons.
  4. Experienced more difficulty with final styling of side navbar widgets due to caching. Must turn off caching in cPanel with the Supercaching tool for style changes to be applied.
  5. Activated several plugins and matched their settings to that of the development site.

Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW
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Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2

Live WordPress Site Synchronized To Development Site

  1. Logged into WP.
  2. Matched live site settings (on AncientGreekKeyboard.com) to that of development site.
  3. Additional HTACCESS security.
  4. Installed Storefront theme.
  5. Deleted all other themes.
  6. Uploaded Child Theme with HTTP URLs commented out.
  7. Uploaded background images to Media Library.
  8. Stylesheet updated to use live site’s background images (ie: so that site does not use development site images).
  9. Installed & activated WP Google Fonts plugin & set H1 tags to Caesar Dressing font.
  10. Experienced caching problem while trying to style the top logos. Later discovered this was a host caching issue, and had to be fixed with cPanel.
  11. Copied & pasted all pages from development site to live site.
  12. Set menu & submenus.
  13. Uploaded & inserted media to pages (ie: so that pages load images from HTTPS source).
  14. Deleted unneeded plugins & installed required plugins.
  15. Discovered several countries were trying to access the site within the last 24 hours despite ROBOTS.TXT request not to index the site.
  16. Activated HTML sitemap plugin.
  17. Set up HTML Sitemap page. Did not index 14 (Cancelled Transaction), 16 (Checkout) and 27 (Thank You) pages.
  18. Activated Contact Form 7 plugin & set up Contact form.
  19. Set up widgets.

In retrospect, it would take less time to use the Duplicator plugin or the Migrator tool from cPanel to copy the development site over to the live site.

(Though the advantage of manual migration is that problems can be more easily dealt with one at a time. And for a small site, the process is not too unwieldy.)


Other posts in this series:

  1. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 1
  2. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 2
  3. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 3
  4. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 4
  5. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 5
  6. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 6
  7. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 7
  8. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Day 8: (Site brought live)
  9. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 2
  10. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 3
  11. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 4
  12. Week 5: Speed optimization tests
  13. Manual eCommerce Site Setup On SiteGround: Week 6
  14. How to convert a non-WWW WordPress site to WWW