Optimization Guide
Tirenoa has two places for speed settings. The Performance Wizard walks you through them in seven steps and can scan your site to suggest values. Tirenoa › Options › Performance holds the same settings, plus a few more, as a plain list you can change at any time.
Use this guide when your site is built and you want it to load faster. Finish the pages first: the wizard recommends switching off what you do not use, and it can only know that once your content exists.
In this article: Before You Start · The Performance Wizard · The Performance Options · A Sensible Order · Page Cache: Tiaro Cache · Related
Before You Start
- Measure first. The Run PageSpeed Insights button at the top of the wizard opens Google’s PageSpeed Insights for your home page in a new tab. This is a Google service; your site address is sent to Google when you use it.
- Change a few settings, look at the site as a visitor (not logged in), then continue. Switching off a feature that a page still uses breaks that page until you switch it on again.
- You need an administrator account. The wizard and the Performance options are not shown to editors.
The Performance Wizard
Open Tirenoa › Performance. In the Tirenoa dashboard menu the same screen is under Maintenance › Performance Wizard. Click Let’s Start. In each step, Find Recommendations scans your site, Apply All takes over the suggested values, Save Changes stores them and Next Step moves on.
| Step | What you decide |
|---|---|
| Features | Switch off parts of Tirenoa you do not use, such as YouTube API Scripts, Vimeo API Scripts, Google Map Scripts, Emojis Script, Legacy Widget Areas, Legacy Mega Menu, Tirenoa Slider, Forms, Off Canvas, Portfolio and FAQs. Less code is loaded on every page. |
| Icons | See which icons your pages use and choose which Font Awesome subsets are loaded. |
| Fonts | Check every font family and variant in use. The wizard counts the variants and recommends fewer than 5. You also set Font Face Rendering, Google & Font Awesome Fonts Mode and Preload Key Fonts. |
| Elements | The scan ticks only the Builder elements your site uses. Unticked elements are not loaded and are no longer available in the Builder. |
| Optimization | Image format and quality, lazy loading, video facade, and how scripts and stylesheets are delivered. |
| Finish | The caches are cleared and the screen lists remaining suggestions, for example the number of active plugins. |
Note: If your site has more than 1,000 pages and posts, the icon and element scans show a warning that they may take a while. Let them finish before you leave the step.
The Performance Options
Tirenoa › Options › Performance contains every setting from the wizard’s Optimization step and some that the wizard does not show.
| Group | Options | What they do |
|---|---|---|
| Lazy loading | Image Lazy Loading, Iframe Lazy Loading | Images and embedded frames below the visible area load only when the visitor scrolls near them. Choose Tirenoa, WordPress or None. The wizard recommends Tirenoa for images. |
| Fonts | Font Face Rendering, Preload Key Fonts, Preload Google Font Variants, Preload Google Font Subsets | Whether text shows at once in a fallback font and then swaps, and which font files the browser fetches early. |
| Scripts | Emojis Script, jQuery Migrate Script, Load jQuery In Footer, Enable JS Compiler | Remove scripts you do not need and combine the rest into one file. Leave the JS Compiler on. |
| Stylesheets | CSS Compiling Method, Combine Third Party CSS Files, Load Stylesheets In Footer, Load Media-Queries Files Asynchronously, Enable Critical CSS | How the generated styles are stored and delivered. The wizard strongly recommends the File method and recommends leaving the footer and asynchronous options off. |
| Images | Upload Image Format, WordPress Image Quality, Tirenoa Image Sizes, WordPress Big Image Size Threshold, SVG Media Upload | Format, compression and the sizes created for each upload. See the image guide. |
| Video | Enable Video Facade | YouTube and Vimeo elements show a preview and load the player only when the visitor presses play. |
| Server | Enable Gzip Compression, Clear Object Cache, Cache Server IP | Only needed on some hosting setups. Gzip works on Apache servers only; most hosts compress already. |
| Database | Maximum Post Revisions | How many old versions WordPress keeps per page or post. 0 switches revisions off. |
When Enable Critical CSS is on, a Critical CSS screen appears under Maintenance in the Tirenoa dashboard menu, where you generate it for your key pages.
A Sensible Order
- Note your current PageSpeed Insights result for the home page and one typical inner page.
- Run the wizard’s Features and Elements steps with Find Recommendations. Check the suggestions before you apply them, then save.
- In Fonts, reduce the font variants, set Font Face Rendering to Swap All and Google & Font Awesome Fonts Mode to Local, so fonts are served from your own server and no visitor data goes to Google.
- In Optimization, set Upload Image Format to WebP or AVIF, Image Lazy Loading to Tirenoa, and turn on Enable Video Facade if you use YouTube or Vimeo elements.
- Keep Enable JS Compiler on and CSS Compiling Method on File. Set jQuery Migrate Script to Disable unless another plugin needs it.
- Try Load jQuery In Footer last. If anything on the site stops working, turn it off again.
- Finish the wizard, view the site logged out, and measure again.
Note: After changing these options by hand, click Reset Tirenoa Caches at the end of the Performance options (or Reset Caches in the admin bar) so the generated style and script files are rebuilt.
Page Cache: Tiaro Cache
The settings above make each page lighter. A page cache removes the other large cost: building the page in WordPress for every visit. Tiaro Cache is the page cache plugin of the Tirenoa package. It works on LiteSpeed web servers and makes no connections to outside services.
When the plugin is active, its screen is Tirenoa › Caches. Status shows whether pages are being cached, and Test the cache requests the home page twice and reports whether the second answer came from the cache.
- Only visitors who are not logged in receive cached pages. Logged-in editors always see the live site.
- When you save a page or post, its own page and the lists it appears on are dropped and rebuilt on the next view. Changes to menus, widgets, options and layouts purge everything.
- Purge all pages on the Caches screen empties the cache by hand. The Reset Caches button in the admin bar does this too.
- Keep pages for (hours) sets how long an unchanged page is kept. Pages that contain a form are kept for ten hours at most.
- Never cache these paths excludes parts of the site, one path per line.
Note: If the status reads Inactive: this is not a LiteSpeed server, the plugin does nothing on your hosting. Ask Tiaro which caching fits your server.