Complex WordPress sites, made fast again
A real case study: a complex WordPress and Divi site that had become slow and unstable, rebuilt to load in under a tenth of a second without changing the design or losing a single feature. And a service other web designers and agencies can call on for exactly this kind of work.
A fast-looking site that had quietly become slow
The site looked the part, but its main listing pages had ballooned to around 7 MB of page code and were taking over 11 seconds of server time before a visitor saw anything. Turning on caching to mask it only made things worse, and enquiries had started to slip.
of page code on the main listing pages, most of it invisible, duplicated styling regenerated on every single visit.
Before
of server time on the heaviest page before a visitor saw anything. On mobile, that is a lifetime.
Before
every attempt to cache the site to hide the slowness broke sliders, filters and the pop-up enquiry forms.
Before
Around 6.4 MB of that 7 MB was redundant CSS the page builder regenerated for every item in the list, and re-injected on every filter click. That is why caching kept breaking, and why more hosting would not have fixed it. It was not a hosting problem you can buy your way out of. It was a build problem that had to be found.
The same site, rebuilt to load in under a tenth of a second
Nothing about the design or the features changed. The pages were made to do the same job with a fraction of the weight, then cached safely so visitors get them almost instantly.
Main listing page weight
Megabytes downloaded · lower is better
Time before the page appears
Seconds of server time · lower is better
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Main listing page weight | 7.03 MB | 1.01 MB (-86%) |
| Server time to first byte | 11.2s | under 0.1s |
| Typical visitor load (cached) | 6 to 11s | ~0.03s |
| Image library | 2.40 GB | 0.13 GB (-94%) |
| Video | 437 MB | 84 MB (-81%) |
| Design & every feature | n/a | Pixel-identical, all working |
Measured before and after on the same pages. Client details kept private; every figure is real, not estimated.
Measured, pixel-checked, and signed off by another web professional
Automated before and after comparisons confirmed the design is completely unchanged.
Filters, sliders, pop-up forms and CRM routing all retested in a real browser and working.
Applied cleanly with a full backup and staging first, so nothing was left to chance.
“I can't recommend Rod highly enough. As a web designer, I'm comfortable handling most WordPress work myself, but I recently had a site that had developed some fairly complex performance and optimisation issues that were beyond my level of expertise. Rod was fantastic from start to finish. He took the time to properly investigate what was happening rather than just applying quick fixes, clearly explained the issues he found, and then worked through them methodically. The difference he has made to the site is amazing. It is significantly faster and more stable, and he managed to achieve that without compromising the design or functionality of what is quite a complex website. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Rod to other designers, businesses or anyone needing help with a complex website.”
The person you call when the performance work gets hard
Most of this work comes from designers who are more than capable with WordPress but have run into a performance or optimisation problem outside their usual workflow. I'm not here to take your client. I work with you, behind the scenes if you prefer, solve the technical problem properly, and hand it back faster and stable.
Where I usually come in
WordPress performance FAQs
Got a WordPress site that has become slow?
A slow website doesn't always need rebuilding. Send it over for a free performance review and I'll tell you honestly what's going on and what it would take to fix it.