A couple questions for my website features (optimization) and a hosting feature

  • I’m currently trying to finalize the building of my very first WordPress site. As I started to search for a host, and learn more about other facets of a website, I started to have doubt if my current site structure and focus are acceptable especially from the optimization and cost effective POV. So I’m hoping i can get some advice from those who are more experienced.

    My site is a membership site where most site content are created by frontend users (members). They’ll all have a profile (which will have a profile photo) and publish posts (which will have a featured image) from frontend.

    This means there’ll be lots of photos on site. While some posts will be displayed in several sliders on a single page, and post grids on another single page (created by WPBakery Page Builder), the majority of the posts will be displayed on my theme’s category archive pages. And those pages have a big 870 x 600px featured image on the top with 9 other smaller images below it.

    1.
    That 870 x 600px photos seem real large and as my site grows, these photos will add up, plus those smaller ones. So is it a good idea to use this theme? Will it use too much resources after being live on the server?

    I’m hoping to keep it because I’d picked this one out of many others. And if I keep it, what caching plugin would be a better pick for my site – W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache?

    2.
    Should I enable Varnish or not because I’d heard some warning about Varnish may cause some issue?

    When it comes to CDN, will a free Cloudflare CDN be good enough ?

    3.
    I also encourage my members to embed video (from YouTube or any other video hosts) in their posts. Will that be a good idea? Will it slow down my site, use a lot of resources on the server after having lots of them? If I should choose between more photos and more embedded videos, which one is a better idea? Can I keep both?

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Jan Dembowski. Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not an Everything else WordPress topic
    • This topic was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Jan Dembowski.
Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • Moderator Jan Dembowski

    (@jdembowski)

    Forum Moderator and Brute Squad

    Side note: I deleted the part about hosting and the fee. Any talks about that will get the topic closed as it will become a spam magnet.

    Thread Starter thegreen

    (@thegreen)

    Thank you for the side note and keeping my thread. i really appreciate that.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    1. This depends on the file space you get with your web hosting.

    2. Try it. There are some things that can mess up Varnish caching, so see if you get any noticeable speed improvement. CDN: Again, try it and see if you get any noticeable speed improvement.

    3. I encourage my clients to put their videos on a video service like YouTube so the content is streamed from a network optimized for it, not as a web server.

    Thread Starter thegreen

    (@thegreen)

    I encourage my clients to put their videos on a video service like YouTube so the content is streamed from a network optimized for it, not as a web server.

    Understood. With many embedded videos on site, YouTube or not, will that cause significant resources consumption on the server, especially when compared to using photos? In other words, with all things being equal, which one is cheaper? Has anyone already tested this out and can shed some light on this, please? Thank you so much.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    The question is whether you want to serve images or videos, not which is “cheaper”. Videos on youtube are “no weight” on your server, as YT is storing the files, serving the stream, etc.

    Thread Starter thegreen

    (@thegreen)

    All points are well understood.

    The question is whether you want to serve images or videos, not which is “cheaper”.

    When you have a zero-budget website and it’s your first website and you got to set everything up the way you like, it is crucial I set it up the way that is most cost-effective, and in my language, the most inexpensive way to operate.

    The benefit of using embedded video and have them (e.g. YouTube) to host it instead of myself hosting it was already understood before this thread. But being the first-timer running a website, I don’t know which one is “cheaper” once it’s running in real time on a live server, with all things being equal. With many experienced wordpress veterans here, I was hoping to get some useful insight on this specific issue.

    I know which one i prefer but if it’s going to cost me significantly more, I still have the choice to switch it around by work around the design of my website – since i have not yet published it and have all the luxury to change however i want.

    Which was the whole point of this thread.

    So the question here is indeed which is “cheaper”.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    Using YT pushes all the load away from your server onto You Tube, their servers and their network. There’s nothing in this related to dollar costs.

    Thread Starter thegreen

    (@thegreen)

    sounds great! Then I’ll try to focus on videos, instead of photos. Thanks a lot, Steve ??

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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