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Low Humming Bird score

Hi there,

I have carried out the recommendations, regarding hummingbird for my site however my score is still low. Ive compressed all images yet it hasn’t made much of a difference, could you please advise what I should do.

Thanks

W

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 15:27:37
  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Wayne!

    I hope you’re well today and thank you for your question!

    While Hummingbird is a great optimization tool, it sometimes may require a bit of additional configuration and may also indicate the need to perform some additional optimization tasks that can only be done manually. That depends on a specific case and since there’s so many possible setups, it’s virtually impossible to “automatize everything”. However, it does give some specific tips that, together with PageSpeed Insights test, can tell a bit more on what to do :slight_smile:

    That being said, I’ve checked your site and reviewed its configuration and there’s a couple of things that could and should be done. Let me explain below.

    1) Image optimization

    You mentioned that you have already optimized images with WP Smush Pro. However, if you go to Hummingibird Dashboard and click on “Improve” button next to image optimization score, you’ll be given a list of images that are detected as requiring further optimization. There are actually 3 “types” of these images, if you look closer on the list:

    – images marked as needing “Compression” (not “Compress and Resize”, just “Compress”:wink: and coming from your domain; these images could actually be optimized even more. You’d want to review the list of them and some of them might need to be bulk smushed using “Directory smush” feature if they are not in Media Library

    – image marked as “Compress and Resize” and coming from your domain; that’s a bit more “tricky” part. That message means that the given image doesn’t fit its container. In other words, an image of e.g. 300x500px size might be used on site and displayed within “div” HTML element of size eg. 200x300px. This is something WP Smush cannot deal with yet as it works on “file level”. The solution here is to look up those images from the list, find out where they are used on site on what’s the size of their containers (that can be achieved with Inspect Element browser tool), then manually resize them to correct dimensions

    – images marked as “Compress and Resize” but coming from external sources; this is something that, unfortunately, cannot be improved much as you’d need to have full access to these images and also you’d need to compress/resize them manually (e.g. using some photo editing software) as no plugin can manipulate images/resources on external locations.

    2. “Enable compression” recommendation

    There are three resources mentioned. One is coming from YouTube so it has to be ignored. The other two are from your site and it looks like it might be prevented from being compressed. It seems to be coming from the theme (http://……. /wp-content/themes/woodmart/style.min.css). What I would recommend here would be a) double-check theme (and related framework) settings to see if there are any “gzip compression”/”CSS/JS” minification settings and if so, make sure that they are all disabled so theme wasn’t trying to optimize resources. Then, Hummingibird (see next two points) should take care of it.

    3. I would also recommend disabling the “Async JavaScript” plugin; it’s attempting to defer JS scripts loading in order to improve performance but that’s also what Hummingbird is supposed to do so it’s most likely interfering here.

    4. Once it’s done one of the most important parts comes and that’s Hummingibird Minifcation configuration. If you go to “Hummingbird -> Minifcation” page you’ll notice that there are some buttons next to each file. First one is “Minify” and that seems to be already set up as it should.

    You would, however, want to follow this procedure:

    a) enable “combine” button for first file on the list

    b) check if site’s working fine (if nothing breaks after that)

    c) if not, disable “combine” button for that file and skip to the next file; otherwise, keep it enabled and proceed with the next file

    d) repeat that “enable-check” sequence for all files on the list

    e) then do the same procedure (steps a-d) for “Footer” button for all files and then with “Force load this after page load” for JS files

    I realize it’s a daunting task and more of a “trial & error” procedure rather than “science” but it’s the only way to really well fine-tune these settings. That should not only improve performance but also improve the score quite nicely.

    Best regards,

    Adam

  • Wayne Hilton
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Thanks Adam,

    Really appreciate the help this was getting a little stressful!

    Ill go through the sequence you advised. Got to admit Im some what nervous from (4) Onward in case I break the site. Theres a few people working on the site and Id hate to cause an issue…..

  • Wayne Hilton
    • WPMU DEV Initiate

    Thanks Adam,

    Really appreciate the help this was getting a little stressful!

    Ill go through the sequence you advised. Got to admit Im some what nervous from (4) Onward in case I break the site. Theres a few people working on the site and Id hate to cause an issue…..

    Also Adam Where is – “Force load this after page load” for JS files?

    Is there a possibility to pay someone to do this?

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello @wayne48010!

    Got to admit Im some what nervous from (4) Onward in case I break the site. Theres a few people working on the site and Id hate to cause an issue…..

    There is some chance that during the process the site will partially break but I’m afraid that’s impossible to avoid. It would be best to notify those other people upfront that you’ll be making some changes within a given time frame. Fortunately, those changes are not permanent so even if anything goes wrong, it’s usually enough to simply revert last action or, worst case scenario, disable the minification option. Everything should get back to the initial state then (though there might be a need to clear cache on site).

    Also Adam Where is – “Force load this after page load” for JS files?

    When you go to the “Hummingibird -> Minification” page, with minification already enabled, you need first to click on an “Advanced” icon, next to “Clear Cache” button above the file list. Only then you’ll see all these additional buttons (Combine, Footer, “Force load this after page load”:wink: and the one in question is only for JS files (it’s not there for CSS files), last in a row for each file, right before the blue toggle (which you actually shouldn’t use in this case).

    Is there a possibility to pay someone to do this?

    Give it a go please and if you experience any troubles that you won’t be able to overcome by simply changing settings, let me know and I’ll try to optimize that for you. Please note though: you as an admin are the most right person to do this as you know your site well. If I would be doing this – or anyone else – there’s a chance that I might (not intentionally of course!) simply miss some aspect of the site that stopped working fine.

    However, like I said, those changes are not permanent so if anything goes wrong way, I’ll be happy to assist you further with this.

    Best regards,

    Adam