So I used the google page speed module...
Got a page speed of 79
I was previously on shared servers so was using disk caching
I moved to VPS as the share servers were quite slow... increased my page speed from 7 seconds to 0.7 however the google page speed was still 79.
I installed APC on my ubunto server and put the page, minify and database cache on... this change the google page speed to... 78.
I thought this was odd.. it was getting slower not faster...
So I further looked into this and noticed a couple of the headers were off...
mod_expires:
mod_headers:
so I switched them on... this changed the google page speed to
74...
The pages do seem to take longer to load now, I really am not sure why, but then I honestly have no clue what so ever with the caching stuff...
Thankfully I installed on my test server instead of the main one
this is the one with everything still set to disk chache: http://www.oddduckreviews.com
and this is a different server setup with the caching installed
http://beta.oddduckreviews.com
interestingly though.. even though APC or anything like that hasn't been installed on the main server or set in the settings... it still shows a page speed of 74
the other issues I have with speed are:
Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content
Leverage browser caching
which I am not sure how to do
Do you think I should uninstall W3 total cache completely and reinstall with default settings?
I honestly have no clue with what I am doing with it... I follow tutorials and just seem to get slowdown...