Short notes from how we think about faster WordPress in production.
Why your LCP is hiding in the hero carousel
Auto-playing sliders and oversized hero images often push your largest content paint into late network waterfalls. Swap to a single static LCP candidate, reserve height up front, and defer everything that is not the first meaningful paint.
The plugin audit that cut Time to Interactive in half
Most WordPress stacks ship twenty admin plugins that enqueue scripts on the public site. Group “always-on” front-end assets, move rare tools to must-use admin-only loads, and measure TTI before you add another marketing pixel.
When full-page cache lies: invalidation patterns that matter
Serving stale HTML after a menu change frustrates editors more than a cold cache miss. Tie purge hooks to post save, taxonomy updates, and WooCommerce stock events—then verify with a quick curl plus Cache-Status check.