Is your WordPress site as fast as it could be? Do you know how to check? Or maybe you’d like a custom WordPress theme that is even faster? Find out from our AMA guest Phillip Dews.
Phillip is passionate about WordPress web development and especially site speed. And he loves sharing what he’s learned. Come ask your questions about how to speed up your own site.
Or maybe you would like to know more about having a custom WordPress site? Find out what is involved and why a custom theme can be faster than using existing free and premium themes.
Read Phillip’s answers to 25 questions in our BizSugar Mastermind Community Town Hall anytime.
.Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here.
Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below.
Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.
Who is Phillip Dews?
Phillip has been focused on assisting individuals and SMEs to gain a professional online presence by creating bespoke and unique websites in the form of Custom WordPress Themes for over a decade.
He decided to leave his Bar Manager position in London to return home to his home city of Birmingham UK to start an online business.
Phillip created his first blog site: The Epic Blog which eventually morphed into a web design and development business.
Over the years, Phillip gained a global client base working with many different people including radio presenters and loft creators.
He has also worked with notable bloggers including BizSugar member Janice Wald of Mostly Blogging, Ryan Biddulph of Blogging from Paradise and Rebekah Radice.
Where to Connect with Philip Dews
Recently, Phillip rebranded his business and started blogging again at Phill.Blog. You can find out more about him on his about page here and:
- Follow @Philldotblog on Twitter
- Connect with him at LinkedIn
- Follow Phillip Dews in our BizSugar Mastermind Community
- Friend PhillDotBlog at BizSugar Sharing
Why Website Speed is Important
Every site owner needs to be concerned with how fast their site loads for two very important reasons:
- Page load speed is critical to having your site rank well in Google search and Google controls most of the traffic that you need.
- Your potential buyers are impatient and likely to leave if your pages don’t load fast enough, leading to less income for you.
Out of the many things Phillip is passionate about in web development, number one must be site speed. He is obsessive about it and is not happy if a site takes over two seconds to load.
When building a website from scratch, “good enough” just won’t cut it. His focus is always finding ways to get the best out of the website or blog which includes website speed.
How to Get a Blazing Fast WordPress Site
Always finding helpful, useful and insightful ideas to help people get the most out of their websites is what Phillip endeavors to do on his blog.
He has recently written two posts on improving your site’s website speed:
AMA (ask me anything) with Phillip Dews
Come by our BizSugar Mastermind Town Hall event and get answers from Phillip on everything from how to speed up your existing site to the advantages of a custom WordPress theme.
Phillip answered 25 questions asked by our members. Come by anytime to see all the advice he provided.
Members can go to this particular Town Hall Event here.
Not a member? No problem. You can join for free. Join the BizSugar Mastermind Community by clicking the button below.
Once you’re a member, click the button below to go directly to this event in our Mastermind Community Forum.
Hello Gail,
Thank you for asking me to take part in this AMA. It’s great to be part of the community and I am really looking forward to helping fellow website owners get the most out of their websites and improving page load speed.
All the best,
Phillip Dews
Hi Phillip,
You had the fastest first question of any recent AMA so hopefully this will be an extremely popular topic to discuss with our members. Thank you for agreeing to answer our questions.
Hi Phillip,
I read that when it comes to website speed and rankings, you only need to be as fast as the sites in the top of the SERPS, first few positions.
My question is:
is that true? Or does it pay to increase your site speed as much as possible? Does it offer a better ROI over time or should we focus on something else once we’re fast enough.
Thank you for doing this AMA and thank you for your reply,.
Cheers!
That is great,may be i have a opportunity to learn something.
I am really happy with articles quality and presentation.and I really enjoy reading this post. The points are clear and easy to implement. Adding value to your audience by creating quality and informative content is a unique way to stand out Thank you so much.
It’s really great. I read it and I learn new things. Thanks phillip.
One of the biggest issues I have found with wordpress and paid for themes is JS and CSS files that aren’t incredibly heavy and taking ages to load. You can try and compress, put in header etc. but generally breaks the theme. Attractive and light themes, don’t seem to go hand in hand.
Hi James,
That’s too bad. The reason that premium themes are popular is that you can see what you’re getting. I know web developers who prefer to custom code every WordPress site, but I hope some of them are better at coding than they are at design.
Often, their design leaves a lot to be desired with too little white space or too many fonts or clashing colors. I’ve also seen “custom” designs that cobbled together a bunch of plugins to try to do something they didn’t know how to code manually.
The average site owner has no way to know how good a theme or developer is. Fortunately for me, I know Will Patton who leads the team the evaluates themes for the official WordPress Directory so I can just ask him.
Hi Philllip ,
I do have question for you, The theme which you use in WordPress, does it matter when it comes to speed optimization.?
Generally yes. It all depends on what theme you are using or one that you have purchased. I am a freelance web developer and build slim and fast-loading WordPress themes from scratch so I am biased.
That being said I would avoid sites like themeforest and templatemonster for your themes. Usually these have huge and over-bloated code within them.
If you cannot afford a freelancer and want a fast loading website then I would use something like Generate Press. Also look at your hosting and whats others have said about it. Another piece of advice is to keep plugins down to a minimum
I have been working with WordPress now for over a decade but I’m starting to move away from that and building my own truly unique solutions so my clients only get what they want and need to be even faster loading and more secure.
I hope that this answers your question.
All the best,
Phillip