The newly formed WordPress Performance Team, which includes contributors from companies like Google and Yoast, is set to convene to plan the next steps in enhancing WordPress performance. An initial meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, November 2, 2021.
This initiative aims to address performance bottlenecks across the WordPress ecosystem, covering plugins and themes alike. There are currently 19 focus categories for improvement on the agenda.
The initial meeting will take place in the WordPress Slack group. For those without access, participation is encouraged through the announcement’s comment area.
Initial plans for the performance team meeting include:
- Leading the formation of working groups
- Coordinating the initial administrative tasks, such as setting up a Slack channel, scheduling weekly meetings, and nominating working group representatives
- Creating a mission statement for the team
- Defining areas to tackle
- Outlining the scope and roadmap
The Performance Team Meeting Agenda
The meeting’s agenda includes a welcome session, an open floor for free discussion, and a segment for defining focus areas. These areas of focus will help build a roadmap for continuous performance improvements in WordPress. A spreadsheet already lists 19 categories for improvement.
The Performance Team aims to initially limit its scope to the most impactful areas and create working groups as needed. Weekly chats will focus on these defined areas.
19 Categories for Improvement
A spreadsheet titled WP Performance Team: Focus Areas and Working Groups outlines 19 key areas for improvement:
- Images: Serve high-quality but optimized images
- JavaScript: Optimize JavaScript orchestration, including script prioritization, async/defer loading, and conditional loading
- CSS: Reduce CSS overhead through critical CSS inlining, tree shaking, and minification
- Web Fonts: Optimize web fonts orchestration to reduce multiple requests
- Themes/Plugin Requirements: Encourage better performance from plugins through automatic performance tests and flagging problematic plugins
- Other Categories: Asset caching, page caching, object caching, bootstrap, embeds, facades, SQL, redirects, CDN support, host configuration, site health, localization, measurement, hints
Helping Plugin Developers, Not Policing Them
The Performance Team aims to assist plugin developers in creating better-performing software rather than policing them. Comments within the team’s project spreadsheet focus on educating developers on best practices, such as correctly enqueueing assets.
Thierry Mueller from Google suggested introducing performance signals to help publishers understand how their plugins perform. The Performance Team is also considering creating a handbook to guide developers.
Active Performance Projects
WordPress tracks various development projects, some of which focus on performance:
- Fixing a bug in the media uploader that results in unnecessarily large image files
- Removing the lazy load attribute from images above the fold to improve performance
WordPress is Fighting Back
WordPress is taking a coordinated approach to improve performance, with the next steps to be discussed on November 2, 2021. The team is focusing on high-impact improvements in the WordPress core and assisting plugin and theme developers in optimizing their software. Contributors from Google and Yoast are on board, signifying a strong collaborative effort to enhance WordPress performance.
While other platforms like Drupal, Wix, and Duda have outpaced WordPress in performance, the new team aims to reclaim the top spot.
References
- Details of the Performance Team Kick-Off Meeting
- Review the WordPress Spreadsheet with List of Future Improvements
