After scoring A (91%) and B (84%) for PageSpeed and YSlow respectively at GTmetrix from my site revamp last week, I was glad. Yes, was – past tense. In just a couple of days fiddling and further customisation of the site, somehow, the YSlow score, though still B, dropped to 80% … a percentage more less and it’ll downgrade to C?!

The obsession continues – I couldn’t resist but to revert my attention from a couple of projects back to WillTan.com’s site performance.

So, diving deeper into GTmetrix, the highlighted factors that affect my current scores include :

• PageSpeed – Defer parsing of JavaScript (at E 52%)
• PageSpeed – Serve resources from a consistent URL – with URL still serving from fonts.googleapis.com
• YSlow – Making fewer HTTP requests
• YSlow – Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

After some research and prior experience, I’ve decided to include the Autoptimize plugin and check the following options :

• Optimize JavaScript Code
• Optimize CSS Code
• Optimize HTML Code
• Optimize Images*
• Remove Google Fonts

*Checking Optimize Images caused PageSpeed to downgrade to C. Reverted this to “uncheck” restores PageSpeed to A (95%). Anyway, image optimisation should be well taken care with ShortPixel way before my site revamp.

And a re-test at GTmetrix now yields :

Finally! YSlow scores an A and PageSpeed improved to 95%. And it also reveals that page fully load time is under 5-second with total requests reduced to 37 from previously ~80+.

Riding on the obsession momentum, the red “Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)” under YSlow caught my attention.

Hmmm, I’ve always wanted to CDN my site. Especially when my cloud hosting offers free Cloudflare CDN. I’ve used the paid premium Cloudflare on my clients’ sites seeing great results. Shall activate Cloudflare on this site to see if I can elminate the last “red”. Will be back to update on this.

Meanwhile, I’m really glad with my site performance now. Got to keep my “obsession” under control and focus back on my other projects.