Technical requirements

To use GTmetrix later in this chapter, you should sign up for a free account. You can do so here: https://gtmetrix.com.

Optimizing a website for performance can be a little technical so some website hosting companies will do some of the work. They might do the following:

• Automatically install plugins
• Use server-level technology to cache information
• Offer their own content delivery networks (CDNs) to make it faster to serve static assets such as JavaScript, CSS, and images

Because a website host could entirely change how you optimize your site you should wait to optimize your site until you’ve chosen a host and launched your site.

Furthermore, some website hosts will prevent some plugins that conflict with their own technology. As an example, my host, Pressable, prevents me from installing WP Fastest Cache because it already has technology that automatically caches my website.

You can typically find a list of disallowed plugins...