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Optimizing Site Speed with Ezoic
How-To/Instructional

Optimizing Site Speed with Ezoic

Last Updated over a week ago
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Introduction
Steps
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Introduction

Optimizing your website's speed is crucial for providing a seamless user experience and improving your site's performance. With Ezoic, you can leverage powerful tools and features to enhance your site's speed effectively. This article will guide you through the step-by-step process of optimizing site speed using Ezoic. From integrating and utilizing Ezoic's caching capabilities to setting up Leap for advanced optimizations, you'll find everything you need to ensure your website runs faster and more efficiently. Follow these instructions to maximize your site's speed and deliver a better experience for your visitors.

Steps

1. Cloudflare / Nameserver Integration:

  • Ensure that you are using Cloudflare or Nameserver integration methods. This is essential for utilizing both caching and Ezoic's CDN.

 

2. Turn on Caching

 

 

3. Ensure caching is speeding up your website by checking the caching data report in Big Data Analytics

  a. Make sure that you’re looking at the date range after the date Ezoic caching was turned on. Here is the direct link to the report within Big Data Analytics.

  b. If you only see “cache off” or “cache miss” then it’s not working - review all the possible reasons why.

Here are the definitions of the different caching terms inside of the Ezoic Caching Big Data Analytics report:

Cache hit = Ezoic is caching the pageview

Cache miss = Ezoic could not cache the pageview

Cache off = Ezoic cache is unavailable or turned off for this pageview

 

Why do some visitors register as a “Cache Miss”?

Ezoic will always obey your pre-existing caching rules upon integration to avoid breaking elements of your website and causing it not to function the way it’s supposed to.

This is why if something from your old speed optimization setup is still active, Ezoic will default to that setup to maintain the original integrity of your website.

 

How to reduce “Cache Misses” in Ezoic Caching

The most common causes of “Cache Misses” are other caching plugins, extensions, settings at your host, or external CDNs.

To reduce the number of Cache Misses on your website, you should turn off those additional caching plugins, and then go to your Caching App to change the following settings in the “Update Cache Value Settings” (as seen below):

  • Force Caching by Device Type = set to “ON”
  • Override Cache-Control Headers = set to “ON”
  • Ignore Cache-Control: no-cache = set to "ON"

Please note that Override Cache-Control Headers can break site layouts if your site needs specific headers. On your website, you will have cache control headers that are usually set by a plugin, service, or technology such as your host. This can cause your website to be cached in a way that is not optimal for your website or your users. By setting this option to "ON", Ezoic's caching application overrides third-party cache control headers to provide users with optimal caching and improve site speed.

In addition, the Force Caching by Device Type setting ensures that all devices experience the optimal caching settings. Often, plugins have a setting that is not known to be enabled that differentiates caching rules by device type, causing "cache error/cache disabled" to appear in this cache report.

Below is a screenshot of the Ezoic caching report, which can be found by navigating to: Ezoic's Analytics > Site Speed tab > Caching > Ezoic Caching

If Ezoic caching is working properly, you will generally see this in your Ezoic Caching report:

  • Cache Hits - High percentage of pageviews
  • Cache Miss - Low percentage of pageviews
  • Cache Off - Few to no pageviews with Cache Off

 

Still experiencing caching issues (cache miss)?

Many external scripts or plugins that are designed to “speed up a website” implement mechanisms that prevent Ezoic from implementing the best practices above, even though the overrides are enabled.

The best way to handle this is by disabling any caching plugins or site speed technologies enabled on your site. Generally, all can be replaced by the free features provided by Leap.

It’s also possible that your host has a built-in CDN enabled. Sometimes, this can be disabled by logging into your host and toggling off the CDN or caching features from your website dashboard. You can also contact your host and ask if they are able to do this manually.

 

4. Turn on Free Leap Features

Setting up Leap:

1. Enable Leap

 

 

2. Choose "Set Up For Me" or "Set Up Myself"


If you choose "Set Up For Me", the site will be placed in the Leap queue where our Site Speed Specialists will then optimize the site.       

a. "Set Up Myself" will look like this. Click "Get Started".

 

3. Enable the Leap settings that work for your site and click "Next".

 

a. You will then be directed to this page where you can "Go to Preview". 

b. Please make sure you see the green circle that says "SiteSpeed Preview" on the site. Each new page you visit will render a new preview. Loading times may vary, but a few minutes is normal. 

c. In order for you to get out of preview mode in Leap, you can either click the red "Exit" button shown in the previous screenshot or use the "Clear Preview Version" button in the dashboard.

 

4. Double-check the “Preview” to ensure ads, content, and images look normal and are displaying correctly. Then, activate the site version by clicking "Activate"

 

Troubleshooting common issues with Leap

 Thumbnails from WordPress look strange on the home screen:

1. Exclude “post-thumbnail” under the “Script delay and images”

a. Images > Advanced Settings > Lazy Load Images > Exclusion Rules

 


b. Script Execution > Advanced Settings > Script Delay > Exclusion Rules 

2. Turn off lazy-loading plugins and/or lazy-loading features implemented by caching plugins.

 

Known plugins that can cause Leap to be slower

 Plugins such as Autoptimize, ShortPixel, EWW Image Optimizer, Imagify, etc. are not needed when using Leap and may actually slow down your site if left on, due to conflicts with Leap. Fortunately, Ezoic can perform all the features of these plugins and much, much more.

Additional optimization features implemented by caching plugins such as WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, LiteSpeed, Swift Performance Cache, SG Optimizer, etc. must also be turned off (note that caching can be left on unless you are WordPress integrated, in which case this should also be turned off unless you are using one of the three italicized plugins).

 

How to Troubleshoot issues for a single page

 If you are having issues with just a single page, you can use the “Exclude Pages” functionality in Leap to exclude pages from Leap:

 

For forms or iframes not loading:

  1. Turn off Lazy Load Iframes by URL or page
  2. Exclude pages with embedded forms

 

Revenue and Leap

With some websites, speed can be a trade-off with revenue. Here’s where you can start to find a balance if Leap is conflicting with your site after trying various configurations:

  1. Turn off Script Delay (first option)
  2. Turn off Pre-Connect (second option)

Note: Once you’ve activated a version of the Leap, you should wait at least 24 hours to get the most accurate score on PageSpeed Insights or other speed measurement tools.

Need Further Assistance?

If you need further assistance optimizing site speed with Ezoic, please log in via https://support.ezoic.com/ to make use of our dedicated resources for support. We're here to help!

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