WP Rocket Speed Test (with & without SiteGround Static Caching)

Now that the WP Rocket caching plugin is being used on Ancient Greek Keyboard, it would be useful to know if SiteGround’s Static Caching makes a positive contribution to the site’s page load speeds. To find out, 36 speed tests were conducted with and without Static Caching.

Methods

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

Control trials were conducted using WP Rocket with default & additional settings, with SiteGround’s Static Caching turned off. These results were compared to test trials with identical settings for WP Rocket, but with SiteGround’s Static Caching turned on.

In all, 9 tests were run each day for 4 days. 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 WP Rocket (With & Without SiteGround Static Caching

Date	Time	Load Time of Control (sec)	Load Time with Static Caching (sec)
11/16/2018	17:50	1.300	1.080
		1.280	1.100
		1.280	1.310
	20:56	1.340	1.260
		1.260	1.130
		1.030	1.090
	22:45	1.140	1.360
		1.410	1.570
		1.440	1.410
11/17/2018	17:23	1.200	1.330
		1.290	1.110
		1.400	1.050
	19:44	1.050	1.090
		1.270	1.190
		1.210	1.330
	23:21	1.210	1.350
		1.370	1.470
		1.110	1.430
11/18/2018	12:37	1.210	1.330
		1.180	1.070
		1.010	1.240
	15:12	1.290	1.130
		1.140	1.120
		1.280	1.110
	20:16	1.400	1.280
		1.370	1.140
		0.967	1.070
11/19/2018	12:38	1.350	1.550
		1.530	1.250
		1.040	1.170
	19:19	1.340	1.340
		1.160	1.130
		1.390	1.100
	23:23	1.270	1.260
		1.170	1.260
		1.440	1.470
n		36	36
Average		1.254	1.241
Std Dev		0.136	0.146

Observations

Siteground’s Static Caching option improved the average load speed of this WordPress installation by 0.012 seconds (1.254 sec vs 1.241 sec).

Conclusions

SiteGround’s Static Caching option improved site speed by a very modest amount (0.012 seconds, or twelve thousandths of a second). It will therefore not be used for two reasons:

I’d like to see an improvement of 0.05 seconds or better from any speed-improving measure. Anything less may very well be due to random speed test errors.
Using Static Caching adds an additional level of complexity which must be taken into account during CSS troubleshooting. (ie: When changing the site’s styles, the webmaster must remember to both clear WP Rocket’s cache, as well as clear SiteGround’s Static Caching before refreshing the page to see the style changes).