Port Trunking, also known as LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol), allows you to combine multiple LAN interfaces for increased bandwidth and load balancing for multiple clients. It also provides failover capabilities to maintain network connectivity if a network port fails.
802.3ad (Dynamic Link Aggregation) is the No.5 mode according to the IEEE 802.3ad specification. It uses a complex algorithm to aggregate adapters by speed and duplex settings to provide load balancing and fault tolerance but requires a switch that supports IEEE 802.3ad with LACP mode properly configured.
Note: Your switch must support 802.3ad. Note: A NAS with multiple LAN ports is required.
Follow these steps to set up your NAS.
Log into the NAS as an administrator. Go to “Main Menu” > “Network & Virtual Switch” > “Interfaces”. Click “Port Trunking”.
Click “Add” from the pop-up window.
Select the network interfaces to use and select 802.3ad for the Port Trunking Mode.
Click the settings button beside 802.3ad.
Select a HASH policy for 802.3ad: The default setting is “layer 2 (MAC)“. This is compatible with every switch but only offers load balancing by MAC address. We recommend using “Layer 2+3 (MAC+IP)” for greater performance but you will need to check that your switch supports it.
Click “Apply” to finish.
Test Results:
The test results of before and after Port Trunking is as follows.
A Gigabit Ethernet Network
One user downloading a large video file from the NAS:
One user uploading a large video file to the NAS:
Two users downloading a large video file from the NAS at the same time: The throughput of the NAS reaches 108~110 MB/s (downloading):
Two users upload a large video file to the NAS at the same time: The throughput of NAS reaches 102~104 MB/s (uploading):
Aggregating two Gigabit Ethernet Networks on the NAS
One user downloads a large video file from the NAS:
One user uploads a large video file to the NAS:
Two users download a large video file from the NAS at the same time: The throughput of NAS reaches 210~223 MB/s (downloading):
Two users upload a large video file to the NAS at the same time: The throughput of NAS reaches 200~210 MB/s (uploading):
As displayed by the test results, Port Trunking can increase bandwidth on a QNAP NAS . But please note the following:
Port Trunking cannot break the speed limit of a single Ethernet device, but it offers a sufficient amount of bandwidth for multiple users connecting at the same time. For example, if two 1Gb NICs are used for Port Trunking, the aggregated network bandwidth will be increased to 2Gb, but the network speed will remain 1Gb.
Available system resources and the maximum read/write speeds of the storage devices on the NAS will greatly influence the overall bandwidth.
Last modified date: 2022-10-05 Applicable Products QTS QuTS hero SED Usage Can I use different types of SEDs to create a SED secure storage pool? Yes, you can use different types of SEDs in the same SED secure storage pool.
Can I use SEDs in a normal storage pool? Yes, normal storage pools can contain SEDs. However, the SEDs would function as regular disks without self-encryption.
When creating a normal storage pool, make sure the option Create SED secure storage pool is deselected.
If I use SEDs in a normal storage pool, will the pool be locked after the NAS restarts? No, the system does not lock normal storage pools when the NAS restarts. SEDs in a normal storage pool function as regular disks without self-encryption.
Only SED secure storage pools are locked after the NAS restarts (unless the setting Auto unlock on startup is enabled).
SED Status Why is my SED’s disk status “Unlocked” even though I never activated its self-encrypting function? In QTS versions earlier than 5.0.1 and QuTS hero versions earlier than h5.0.1, only SEDs of the type TCG Opal are supported.
Starting from QTS 5.0.1 and QuTS hero h5.0.1, TCG Enterprise SEDs are also supported.
If you used any TCG Enterprise SEDs to create a normal storage pool when your NAS was running QTS versions earlier than 5.0.1 or QuTS hero versions earlier than h5.0.1, and then later upgraded your operating system to QTS 5.0.1 (or later) or QuTS hero h5.0.1 (or later), the NAS will now indicate their disk status as “Unlocked”. This does not affect the status or performance of the storage pool, and the SEDs will continue to function as regular disks.
If a TCG Enterprise SED has never been used in a storage pool, and the disk status has changed to “Unlocked” after you upgraded the NAS operating system to QTS 5.0.1 (or later) or QuTS hero h5.0.1 (or later), you can use the SED Erase function to reset the disk to factory default, and then activate self-encryption on the disk by setting an encryption password.
Resetting to Factory Default What can I do if I cannot find the PSID on my SED? SEDs usually have a PSID (physical secure ID) labeled on the disk. If you cannot find the PSID on the disk, please contact the disk manufacturer for assistance.
Why doesn’t the PSID work when I try to reset my SED? If you are unable to reset your SED to factory default using its PSID (physical secure ID), please contact the disk manufacturer for technical assistance.
If the disk manufacturer is unable to help you reset the SED, you can still use the SED as a regular disk.
A self-encrypting drive (SED) is a drive with encryption hardware built into the drive controller. SEDs automatically encrypt all data as it is written to the drive and decrypt all data as it is read from the drive. Data stored on SEDs are always fully encrypted by a data encryption key, which is stored on the drive’s hardware and cannot be accessed by the host operating system or unauthorized users. The encryption key can also be encrypted by a user-specified encryption password that allows the SED to be locked and unlocked.
Because encryption and decryption are handled by the drive, accessing data on SEDs does not require any extra CPU resources from the host device. Data on SEDs also become inaccessible if the SEDs are physically stolen or lost. For these reasons, SEDs are widely preferred for storing sensitive information.
You can use SEDs to create SED secure storage pools in QTS and QuTS hero, and SED secure static volumes in QTS. You can also use SEDs to create regular storage pools or volumes, but the self-encrypting function on the SEDs would remain deactivated.
Why Use SEDs?
Data storage security is an extremely important matter for many enterprises and organizations, especially when they store personal data such as credit card information and identity card numbers, or industry secrets such as product blueprints and intellectual property.
If a data leak occurs, the enterprise or organization can face serious consequences. Apart from sensitive information being exposed, a data leak can also result in customer and client damages, revenue loss, and legal penalties.
Because SEDs use hardware-based full disk encryption, both the encryption and decryption processes occur in the disk hardware. This separation from the host operating system makes hardware encryption more secure than software encryption. Moreover, unlike software encryption, hardware encryption does not require extra CPU resources. If a SED is physically stolen or lost, it becomes practically impossible to obtain intelligible information from the SED.
For these reasons, SEDs are often a specified data security requirement in bidding processes for government agencies, health care institutions, and financial and banking services.
SED Types
QNAP categorizes SED types according to the industry-standard specifications defined by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Supported SED types are listed in the following table.
To check the SED type of an installed SED, go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Disks/VJBOD and click a SED.
SED Type
Supported
TCG Opal
Yes
TCG Enterprise
Yes, in QTS 5.0.1 (or later) and QuTS hero h5.0.1 (or later)
SED Storage Creation
You can use SEDs to create SED secure storage pools in QTS and QuTS hero, and SED secure static volumes in QTS. For details, see the corresponding QNAP operating system user guide.
Action
Details
Create a SED secure storage pool in QTS
The latest version of the QTS User Guide is available at https://www.qnap.com/go/doc/qts/.You can find the relevant topic by searching “self-encrypting drives”.
Create a SED secure static volume in QTS
Create a SED secure storage pool in QuTS hero
The latest version of the QuTS hero User Guide is available at https://www.qnap.com/go/doc/quts-hero/.You can find the relevant topic by searching “self-encrypting drives”.
SED Management
SED Storage Pool and Static Volume Actions
To perform the following actions, go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Storage/Snapshots, select a SED pool or volume, click Manage, then select Actions > SED Settings.
Action
Description
Change SED Pool PasswordChange SED Volume Password
Change the encryption password.Warning:Remember this password. If you forget the password, the pool or volume will become inaccessible and all data will be unrecoverable.You can also enable Auto unlock on startup.This setting enables the system to automatically unlock and mount the SED pool or volume whenever the NAS starts, without requiring the user to enter the encryption passwordWarning:Enabling this setting can result in unauthorized data access if unauthorized personnel are able to physically access the NAS.Tip:In some earlier versions of QTS and QuTS hero, this setting is known as Save encryption key.
Lock
Lock the pool or volume. All volumes/shared folders, LUNs, snapshots, and data in the pool or volume will be inaccessible until it is unlocked.
Unlock
Unlock a locked SED pool or volume. All volumes/shared folders, LUNs, snapshots, and data in the pool or volume will become accessible.
Disable SED Security
Remove the encryption password and disable the ability to lock and unlock the pool or volume.
Enable SED Security
Add an encryption password and enable the ability to lock and unlock the pool or volume.
Removing a Locked SED Storage Pool or Static Volume
Go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Storage/Snapshots.
Select a locked SED storage pool or static volume.Note:Static volumes are only available in QTS.
Click Manage, and then click Remove.The Removal Wizard window opens.
Select a removal option.OptionDescriptionUnlock and remove pool, data, and saved keyThis option unlocks the SED disks in the storage pool or static volume, and then deletes all data. The storage pool or static volume is removed from the system.You must enter the encryption password.Remove pool without unlocking itThis option removes the storage pool or static volume without unlocking the disks. The SED disks cannot be used again until you perform one of the following actions:
Unlock the disks. Go to Disks/VJBOD, click Recover, and then select Attach and Recover Storage Pool.
Erase the disks using SED erase.
Click Apply.
The system removes the locked SED storage pool or static volume.
Migrating a SED Secure Storage Pool to a New NAS
The following requirements apply when migrating a storage pool to a new NAS.
The two NAS devices must both be running QTS, or both be running QuTS hero. Migration between QTS and QuTS hero is not possible.
The version of QTS or QuTS hero running on the new NAS must be the same or newer than the version running on the original NAS.
On the original NAS, go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Storage/Snapshots.
Select a SED secure storage pool.
Click Manage.The Storage Pool Management window opens.
Click Action, and then select Safely Detach Pool.A confirmation message appears.
Click Yes.The storage pool status changes to Safely Detaching…. After the system has finished detaching the pool, it disappears from Storage & Snapshots.
Remove the drives containing the storage pool from the NAS.
Install the drives in the new NAS.
On the new NAS, go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Disks/VJBOD .
Click Recover, and then select Attach and Recover Storage Pool.A confirmation message appears.
Enter the encryption password.You must enter this password if you are using self-encrypted drives (SEDs) with encryption activated.
Click Attach.The system scans the disks and detects the storage pool.
Click Apply.
The storage pool appears in Storage & Snapshots on the new NAS.
Erasing a Disk Using SED Erase
SED Erase erases all of the data on a locked or unlocked SED disk and removes the encryption password.
Go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Disks/VJBOD.
Select a SED disk.
Click Actions, and then select SED Erase.The SED Erase window opens.
Enter the disk’s Physical Security ID (PSID).Tip:The PSID can usually be found on the disk label.If you cannot find the PSID, contact the disk manufacturer.
Click Apply.
The system erases all data on the SED.
SED Status
To view the status of a SED, go to Storage & Snapshots > Storage > Disks/VJBOD and click an installed SED.
SED Status
Description
Uninitialized
The SED is uninitialized. Drive encryption is deactivated.
Unlocked
The SED is initialized and unlocked. Drive encryption is activated. Data on the SED is encrypted and accessible.
Locked
The SED is initialized and locked. Drive encryption is activated. Data on the SED is encrypted and inaccessible.
Blocked
The SED is blocked for security reasons. The drive cannot be initialized.Note:To unblock the SED, reinsert the disk or erase the disk using SED Erase. For details, see Erasing a Disk Using SED Erase.
Glossary
Gloss
Definition
Auto unlock on startup
Setting that allows the system to automatically unlock a SED secure storage pool or SED secure static volume after the NAS restarts
Encryption key
A unique, randomized cryptographic string physically stored within the hardware in self-encrypting drives (SEDs) for encrypting data written to the drive and decrypting data as it is read from the drive
Encryption password
A user-defined password for locking and unlocking a SED secure storage pool or static volume
PSID (Physical Secure ID)
A unique key usually labeled on a self-encrypting drive (SED) for resetting the drive to factory default
SED Erase
Storage & Snapshots function for erasing all data on a self-encrypting drive (SED) and removing the encryption password
This morning, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team began tracking exploit attempts targeting CVE-2022-40684 on our network of over 4 million protected websites. CVE-2022-40684 is a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in the administrative interface of Fortinet’s FortiGate firewalls, FortiProxy web proxies, and FortiSwitch Manager, and is being actively exploited in the wild¹,².
At the time of publishing, we have recorded several exploit attempts and requests originating from the following IP addresses:
206.189.231.41
172.105.131.156
45.79.174.33
143.110.215.248
159.180.168.61
194.195.241.147
45.79.174.9
45.79.174.160
134.122.38.186
104.244.77.122
45.79.174.212
2.58.82.81
194.163.135.129
173.212.205.42
172.104.6.178
38.242.217.243
194.135.83.48
134.122.44.177
207.180.241.85
75.128.217.136
107.189.4.80
Most of the requests we have observed are GET requests presumably trying to determine whether a Fortinet appliance is in place:
GET /api/v2/cmdb/system/admin/admin HTTP/1.1 Accept-Encoding: gzip User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.114 Safari/537.36 Connection: close X-Forwarded-Proto: https X-Forwarded-Ssl: on X-Forwarded-For: 75.128.217.136 Host: <redacted> Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
However, we also found that a number of these IPs are also sending out PUT requests matching the recently released proof of concept, referenced at the end of this advisory, which attempts to update the public SSH key of the admin user:
PUT /api/v2/cmdb/system/admin/admin HTTP/1.1 X-Forwarded-For: 172.104.6.178 Accept-Encoding: gzip Forwarded: for=[127.0.0.1]:8000;by=[127.0.0.1]:9000; Connection: close User-Agent: Report Runner Host: <redacted> Content-Type: application/json Content-Length: 610
While some requests are using a fake public key, which may indicate a benign vulnerability scanner, all of the requests using a valid public key are using the same public key, indicating that these requests are all the work of the same actor. An attacker able to update or add a valid public SSH key to a user’s account on a system can then typically gain access to that system as that user if they have the corresponding private key. In this case the attacker is attempting to add their own public key to the admin user’s account.
The SSH key has the following fingerprint: SHA256:GBl4Pytt+W2yEZ3zlOkAZkgtqmTPBcEZlqK4hoNOqBU dev@devs-MacBook-Pro.local (RSA)
All of the PUT exploit attempts we have seen are using the “Report Runner” User-Agent as this is a requirement of the exploit, though the exploit may also be viable with the User-Agent set to “Node.js”.
New IP Addresses attacking CVE-2022-40684 will appear on the Wordfence Intelligence IP Threat Feed in the “auth_bypass” category as the feed is updated every 60 minutes.
1. Fortinet released an advisory with additional information, including affected products and workarounds for users unable to patch. 2. Horizon3.ai initially discovered that the vulnerability was being exploited in the wild and released a proof of concept earlier today.
The WordPress 6.0.3 Security Update contains patches for a large number of vulnerabilities, most of which are low in severity or require a highly privileged user account or additional vulnerable code in order to exploit.
As with every WordPress core release containing security fixes, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team analyzed the code changes in detail to evaluate the impact of these vulnerabilities on our customers, and to ensure our customers remain protected.
The Wordfence Firewall provides protection from the majority of these vulnerabilities, and most sites should have been updated to the patched version automatically. Nonetheless, we strongly recommend updating your site as soon as possible, if it has not automatically been updated.
Vulnerability Analysis
We have determined that these vulnerabilities are unlikely to be seen as mass exploits but several of them could offer a way for skilled attackers to exploit high-value sites using targeted attacks.
WordPress allows any user that can edit posts, such as Contributors, to add a block linking to an RSS feed. While the contents of any feed imported this way are escaped, errors in retrieving the feed would be displayed on the page containing the feed. These included the error status code and content-type header. This means that a contributor-level attacker could create a page on a site they controlled that returned an error code and a malicious script in the Content-Type response header. They could then add a post containing an RSS block linking to their malicious “feed” and submit it for review. When an administrator previewed the post, the malicious script in the Content-Type header would be executed in their browser.
Unfortunately it is not possible to write a firewall rule to protect against this vulnerability as it could potentially be exploited without sending any requests to the victim site. A motivated attacker could look for existing RSS feeds on a site and attempt to compromise one of the sites those feeds were generated from. Such an attacker could potentially take over multiple sites using a single malicious RSS feed.
It is possible for users that can edit posts to inject malicious JavaScript via the Search Block’s Text color and Background color attributes. Doing so requires bypassing the filtering provided by the safecss_filter_attr function and is not trivial.
It is possible for users that can edit posts to inject malicious JavaScript via the Featured Image block. Doing so requires bypassing the filtering provided by the safecss_filter_attr function and is not trivial. A similar issue also appears to have been patched in the Navigation block, though it was not announced and may not be exploitable.
It is possible for administrator-level users to inject malicious JavaScript via the Widget Group title attribute. This is unlikely to be exploited as administrator-level users typically have a number of other ways to add arbitrary scripts to a website.
In WordPress, site owners have the ability to create posts by sending emails to the target WordPress site. These requests are processed through the /wp-mail.php file which uses wp_insert_post to add the emailed post to the target website. This functionality didn’t check what level the user was sending the request and therefore did not perform any sanitization on the submitted post data. This meant that users without the unfiltered_html capability, with access to submitting posts via email, could inject malicious JavaScript into posts that would execute whenever someone accessed the post. WordPress now sets any user submitting a post via email to the user ID of 0 which will ensure that all posts pass through wp_kses. This feature is disabled by default, so most installations likely are not vulnerable.
It is possible for administrator-level users to add malicious JavaScript to the Blog Name via the Customizer that will execute in the browser of any site visitor. This is unlikely to be exploited as administrator-level users typically have a number of other ways to add arbitrary scripts to a website.
It is possible for users with the unfiltered_html capability, including administrators and editors, to add malicious JavaScript to existing comments using the comment editor. This is unlikely to be exploited as administrator-level users typically have a number of other ways to add arbitrary scripts to a website.
It is possible to craft a search query via the media library that results in a malicious JavaScript being echoed out onto the page. As it is possible to generate a link to the media library with the search query pre-populated via the s parameter, this can be used to perform a reflected Cross-Site Scripting(XSS) attack. While this would require social engineering to exploit and crafting an appropriate payload is nontrivial, the attacker does not need to be authenticated, making this potentially the most exploitable vulnerability patched in this release. We may update our assessment if a proof of concept becomes available.
The sanitize_query function used in the WP_Date_Query class failed to sanitize all relations where it was expecting “AND” or “OR” in the query. It is possible that a third-party plugin or theme might perform a date query in an unsafe way that resulted in SQL injection, though WordPress core is not vulnerable itself. This is similar to the fixes released back in version 5.8.3.
Similar to the above XSS via wp-mail.php, the Trackback functionality of WordPress did not explicitly state the intended user identity which means that any request to wp-trackback.php would assume the identity of the user whose cookies are sent with the request. This would make it possible for an unauthenticated user to trigger a trackback assuming the identity of another user, granted they could trick that other user into performing the action. In new versions of WordPress, the identity will always be a non-existent user with the ID of 0, which represents an unauthenticated user.
This fix appears to have been necessary to safely use the wp_set_current_user( 0 ); method to patch the previously mentioned XSS and CSRF in wp-mail.php and wp-trackback.php vulnerabilities. The previous functionality may have resulted in third party plugins or themes using the wp_set_current_user function in a way that could lead to privilege escalation and users being able to perform more actions than originally intended. We may update our assessment if a proof of concept becomes available.
The post by email functionality has the ability to enable logging. This can contain a post author’s email address which can be considered sensitive information and has the potential to be publicly accessible. This feature is disabled by default, so most installations likely are not vulnerable.
The REST API endpoint for terms and tags did not perform enough validation on the user requesting information about terms and tags for a given post. This made it possible for users with access to terms and tags, such as a contributor, to determine those details on all posts not belonging to them, even when in a private status. This does not reveal critical information, and as such it is not likely to be exploited.
In cases where wp-mail was used to send multiple emails or multi-part emails within a single request, the email altBody (frequently used to provide a text alternative to HTML-formatted emails) was not cleared between messages, which could result in users receiving message contents intended for other recipients. While this would require a plugin configured to send multiple messages with altBody text and would be almost impossible to exploit on purpose, it could still lead to exposure of highly sensitive information.
It was possible to generate a link with an invalid nonce and the _wp_http_referer query string parameter set to an external site. If an attacker was able to trick a logged-in user into clicking on the crafted link, they would be redirected to the external site.
Conclusion
The WordPress 6.0.3 Security update contains a much larger number of security patches than usual. Most of these are not easy to exploit without an existing proof of concept and require an authenticated user. Additionally, the Wordfence firewall should protect all Wordfence users, including Wordfence Free, Wordfence Premium, Wordfence Care, and Wordfence Response, against most of these vulnerabilities. We urge you to verify that your site has been updated to a patched version immediately as there are vulnerabilities in this update that the Wordfence firewall cannot practically block. These vulnerabilities should be taken seriously as a skilled and lucky attacker could potentially use several of them for site takeover.
Special thanks to Wordfence Threat Intelligence Lead Chloe Chamberland for collaborating on this article. Props to Toshitsugu Yoneyama, devrayn, Ben Bidner, Simon Scannell, Marc Montpas, Alex Concha, Than Taintor, Thomas Kräftner, and Michael Mazzolini for discovering and responsibly disclosing these vulnerabilities.
Welcome to the most complete guide on WordPress speed optimization!
This is my attempt to sum up WordPress speed + core web vitals in 1 post (it’s loooong).
I’ve constantly updated it to reflect new changes ever since I first published this 10 years ago. You have updates to things like core web vitals, plugin changelogs, and Cloudflare Enterprise happening every day. While site speed has gotten complex, the basics have stayed the same: use lightweight themes/plugins on fast servers (ideally with a performant cache plugin/CDN).
Why this tutorial is different:
First, my recommendations on tools/plugins/services are arguably better than what other people tell you to use. I’m very transparent about SiteGround’s slow TTFB and cache plugin, Kinsta’s overpriced service + lack of resources, NitroPack being blackhat, RocketCDN’s poor performance, and Elementor/Divi being slow. I’ve also written extensive reviews/tutorials on nearly every major host, cache plugin, CDN, and core web vital you can find in my nav menu.
Which is the 2nd reason it’s different: configuration guides! I have tons of them. Need help configuring FlyingPress, LiteSpeed Cache, or Perfmatters? Want to improve TTFB or LCP? Or maybe you’re wondering which Cloudflare settings to use. I have detailed guides on all those.
If you have suggestions on making this tutorial better (or you have a question), drop me a comment. I’m all ears. I’m not for hire because I spend so much time writing these guides 🙂
Chrome Dev Tools – the coverage report shows your largest CSS/JS files and where they’re loaded from (plugins + third-party code are common culprits). So many parts of speed and web vitals are related to CSS/JS and it’s best to tackle it at the source. Removing things you don’t need is better than trying to optimize it.
KeyCDN Performance Test – measure TTFB in 10 global locations. This is mainly improved with better hosting and using a performant CDN with full page caching (like APO or FlyingProxy). It also shows DNS lookup times and TLS which can be improved with a fast DNS (i.e. Cloudflare) and configuring their SSL/TLS settings.
PageSpeed Insights – most items come down to reducing or optimizing CSS, JS, fonts, images, TTFB, and above the fold content. For example, preload your LCP image and exclude it from lazy load, then move large plugins/elements below the fold so they can be delayed. Focus on recommendations in PSI’s opportunities + diagnostics sections, and monitor your core web vitals report in Search Console.
CLS Debugger – see your website’s layout shifts (CLS) on mobile/desktop in a GIF.
WP Hive – Chrome extension that lets you search the WordPress plugin repository and see whether a plugin impacts memory usage and PageSpeed scores, but only measures “out of the box settings” and not when content is added to the frontend.
Wordfence Live Traffic Report – see bots hitting your site in real-time. AhrefsBot, SemrushBot, compute.amazonaws.com and other bots can be blocked if you’re using their service. Since most bot protection services don’t block these service’s bots, you’ll need to do this manually with something like Cloudflare firewall rules.
WP-Optimize – see which plugins add database overhead and remove old tables left behind by plugins/themes you deleted. Does a better than job cache plugins with scheduled cleanups because it can keep a certain number of post revisions while removing junk (cache plugins delete them all, leaving you with no backups).
cdnperf.com + dnsperf.com – you can these as baseline for choosing a DNS/CDN provider, but it doesn’t include StackPath’s CDN (removed from cdnperf and used by RocketCDN), QUIC.cloud’s CDN or CDN (used on LiteSpeed), and other services.
Waterfall Charts – testing “scores” isn’t nearly as effective as measuring things in a Waterfall chart. Google’s video on optimizing LCP is a great resource and shows you the basics. You can find one in WebPageTest, Chrome Dev Tools, and GTmetrix.
Diagnostic Plugins – the speed plugins section lists all plugins mentioned in the guide. It includes diagnostic plugins like Query Monitor (this is probably best for finding bottlenecks), WP Server Stats, WP Hosting Benchmark, and WP Crontrol.
2. DNS
A slow DNS causes latency which is part of TTFB (and TTFB is part of LCP).
Whoever you registered your domain through is who you’re using for a DNS. GoDaddy, NameCheap, and even Amazon Route 53 (used on Kinsta) don’t perform well on dnsperf.com. Better options include Cloudflare, QUIC.cloud, or Google (if using Google Domains). I usually recommend Cloudflare since it’s free and can be used on any setup by changing nameservers.
3. Hosting
Rocket.net with their free Cloudflare Enterprise will outperform any “mainstream host” since you get 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM, NVMe storage, Redis, and Cloudflare’s full page caching + Argo Smart Routing. I use them and average a <150ms global TTFB (or click through my posts).
Combining a good host/CDN is arguably the best way to improve TTFB (using a host with improved specs on top of Cloudflare Enterprise hits 2 birds with 1 stone).
Mainstream hosts (like SiteGround, Hostinger, and WPX) don’t have a lot of CPU/RAM, use slower SATA SSDs, and are shared hosting with strict CPU limits which force you to upgrade plans. Cloud hosting is faster, but Kinsta still uses SATA SSDs with low CPU/RAM, PHP workers, and monthly visits (Redis also costs $100/month). Cloudways Vultr HF is who I previously used, but again, they start with only 1 CPU + 1GB RAM on slower Apache servers, PHP-FPM, and GZIP.
Here are Rocket.net’s:
All plans use 32 CPU cores + 128GB RAM with NVMe (faster than SATA), Redis (better than memcached), LiteSpeed’s PHP, and Brotli (smaller compression than GZIP). They have no PHP worker limits since only about 10% of traffic hits your origin due to their Cloudflare Enterprise.
SiteGround
Hostinger
Kinsta
Cloudways Vultr HF
Rocket.net
Hosting type
Shared
Shared
Cloud
Cloud
Private cloud
Storage
SATA
SATA
SATA
NVMe
NVMe
CPU cores
Not listed
1-2
12
1
32
RAM (GB)
Not listed
.768 – 1.536
8
1
128
Object cache
Memcached
x
Redis ($100/mo)
Redis (Pro)
Redis
Server
Nginx
LiteSpeed
Nginx
Apache
Nginx
PHP processing
FastCGI
LiteSpeed
FastCGI
FPM
LiteSpeed
Compression
Brotli
Brotli
Brotli
GZIP
Brotli
CPU limits
Very common
Low memory
Low PHP workers
Average
None
Why you need Cloudflare Enterprise
Because you get Enterprise features like 270+ PoPs, prioritized routing, full page caching, HTTP/3, WAF, and image optimization. 3 problems with most CDNs are their small network (PoPs) and no full page caching or image optimization. For example, WP Rocket’s RocketCDN uses StackPath which was removed from cdnperf.com and doesn’t include image optimization with a mediocre Tbps speed of 65+. SiteGround’s CDN only has 14 PoPs. QUIC.cloud CDN (for LiteSpeed) and BunnyCDN are good, but they still don’t beat Cloudflare Enterprise. Sure, you can pay $5/mo for Cloudflare’s APO, but you’re still missing out on all other Enterprise features.
3 popular hosts with Cloudflare Enterprise
Rocket.net’s Cloudflare Enterprise is free, setup automatically, and uses full page caching (unlike Cloudways). And unlike Kinsta’s, Rocket.net has Argo Smart Routing (specifically good for WooCommerce sites), load balancing, and image optimization. Rocket.net CEO Ben Gabler also used to be StackPath’s Chief Product Officer and went as far as building Rocket.net’s data centers in the same locations as Cloudflare’s. And unlike both hosts, Rocket.net doesn’t limit PHP workers (there’s no CPU limits) and monthly visit limits are 10-25 times more than Kinsta’s.
Cloudflare Enterprise (Kinsta)
Cloudflare Enterprise (Cloudways)
Cloudflare Enterprise (Rocket.net)
CDN PoPs
270
270
270
Prioritized routing
✓
✓
✓
Full page caching
✓
x
✓
HTTP/3
✓
✓
✓
WAF
✓
✓
✓
Argo smart routing
x
✓
✓
Load balancing
x
✓
✓
Image optimization
x
✓
✓
Automatic configuration
x
x
✓
Price
Free
$5/mo (1 domain)
Free
Problems with mainstream hosts
I’ve written some pretty bad reviews about SiteGround’s slow TTFB, CPU limits, and why SG Optimizer does a poor job with core web vitals (they also control several Facebook Groups and threaten to sue people who write bad reviews). Hostinger writes fake reviews and is only cheap because you get less resources like CPU/RAM. Kinsta and WP Engine are way too expensive for how many resources, PHP workers, and monthly visits you get. Along with major incidents like WPX’s worldwide outage and SiteGround’s DNS getting blocked by Google for 4 days (both WPX and SiteGround denied responsibility). One thing is clear: most mainstream hosts appear to be more interested in profits than performance. Please do your own research before getting advice.
Getting started on Rocket.net
Step 1: Create a Rocket.net account and you’ll be prompted to add a coupon. Sign up with coupon OMM1 to get your first month for $1 (renews at $30/mo or $25/mo when paying yearly). If you sign up with my coupon or affiliate links, I get a commission which I seriously appreciate.
Step 2: Request a free migration. They did this the same day and let me review my website before it was launched with no downtime. For the record, their support is better than Kinsta’s and you can reach out to Ben Gabler or his team (via phone/chat/email) if you have questions.
Step 3: Upgrade to PHP 8.1 and ask support to install Redis (they use Redis Object Cache). These are the only things I did since Cloudflare Enterprise and backups are both automatic.
Step 4: Retest your TTFB in SpeedVitals and click through your pages to see the difference. You can also search their TrustPilot profile for people mentioning “TTFB” where they’re rated 4.9/5.
I was previously on Cloudways Vultr HF which was great, but their Cloudflare Enterprise doesn’t use full page caching (yet) and is $5/mo with annoying challenge pages. Even if their Cloudflare Enterprise was identical, Rocket.net still outperforms them with better specs like more CPU/RAM, Brotli, and LiteSpeed’s PHP (plus better support, easier to use, and usually pricing). While Cloudways is a big improvement than most hosts, you’re already spending $18/mo for Vultr HF’s lowest 1 CPU plan with Cloudflare Enterprise. At that point, the extra $7/mo you’d be spending at Rocket.net is worth it. Rocket.net’s dashboard is also much easier.
For small sites on a budget, NameHero’s Turbo Cloud plan is similar to Hostinger between LiteSpeed, cPanel, and pricing. However, NameHero’s Turbo Cloud plan has about 1.5x more resources (3 CPU + 3GB RAM) with NVMe storage. NameHero’s support/uptimes are also better shown in TrustPilot reviews. This is one the fastest setups on a budget… you get a LiteSpeed server + LiteSpeed Cache + QUIC.cloud CDN, and email hosting. The main con is their data centers are only in the US and Netherlands. If these aren’t close to your visitors, make sure to setup QUIC.cloud’s CDN which has HTML caching (ideally the paid plan which uses all 70 PoPs).
4. Page Builders
Elementor/Divi are slower than Gutenberg/Oxygen.
Since multiple PSI items are related to CSS/JS/fonts, many people are replacing them with lightweight alternatives. The last thing you want to do is use a slow page builder then install a bunch of “extra functionality plugins” which add even more CSS/JS. Don’t fall into this trap. If you don’t want to ditch your page builder completely, there are still ways you can optimize it.
Divi/Elementor add extra CSS/JS/fonts to your site.
Adding more page builder plugins can slow it down more.
GeneratePress (what I use), Kadence, Blocksy, Oxygen are faster.
If using Elementor, try the settings under Elementor → Experiments.
Same thing with Divi (Divi → Theme Options → General → Performance).
If using Astra Starter Sites, use a template built in Gutenberg (not Elementor).
Use CSS for your header/footer/sidebar (instead of bloated page builder code).
Elementor has a theme customizer setting to host fonts locally + preload them.
If you don’t use Elementor font icons, disable them or use custom icons instead.
If you don’t use elementor-dialog.js for popups, disable it (i.e. using Perfmatters).
Many page builder plugins are module-based, so disable modules you don’t use.
Simplify your design by using less widgets/columns (here’s a YouTube video on it).
If you preload critical images in FlyingPress or Perfmatters, this excludes above the fold images from lazy load and preloads them to improve LCP. However, it doesn’t work with Elementor image widgets (go through your page builder + cache plugin documentation).
Background images aren’t lazy loaded by default because they’re loaded from a separate CSS file. Some cache plugins support a lazy-bg class you can use to lazy load backgrounds.
A performant CDN with HTML caching (and other CDN features) can be the difference maker. While cdnperf.com is a good baseline, there are other things to consider.
Start by looking at their network page (you’ll see BunnyCDN’s network has more PoPs and faster a Tbps than StackPath). Also look at the features (for example, RocketCDN only serves files from the CDN and nothing else while other CDNs do a lot more than just “serving files.” Cloudflare’s dashboard has hundreds of optimizations to improve speed, security, and CPU usage. Aside from choosing a good CDN, make sure to also take advantage of everything it offers. Or just use a service like FlyingProxy/Rocket.net that integrates Cloudflare Enterprise.
Cloudflare – it’s hard to beat Cloudflare with 270+ data centers and all the robust features. Open your Cloudflare dashboard and use the recommendations below to configure settings.
Free Cloudflare Features I Recommend Using
CDN – in your DNS settings, find your domain and change the proxy status to Proxied (orange cloud). This is needed for several Cloudflare features to work.
TLS version – set minimum TLS version to 1.2 and make sure TLS 1.3 is enabled.
Firewall rules – often used to block access to wp-login, XML-RPC, and “hacky” countries. Firewalls block attacks along with unwanted requests to the server.
Bot protection – block spammy bots from hitting your server. I would also check your Wordfence live traffic report to see bots hitting your website in real time and manually block bots like AhrefsBot + SemrushBot if you don’t use them. Bot fight mode can add a JS file to your site (invisible.js) and cause PSI errors (so test this).
Brotli – this only works if your host supports Brotli, otherwise GZIP will be used.
Early hints – while the server is waiting for a response, preload/preconnect hints are sent to the browser so resources load sooner, reducing your server think time.
Browser cache TTL – 1 year is good for static sites (my blog is mostly static so this is what I use) or use 1 month for dynamic sites. This is recommended by Google and can fix serve static assets with an efficient cache policy in PageSpeed Insights.
Crawler hints – helps search engines efficiently time crawling and save resources.
Cache reserve – improves cache hit ratio by making sure specific content is being served from Cloudflare even when the content hasn’t been requested for months.
Workers – deploy code on Cloudflare’s edge servers (try the playground). Workers are serverless with automatic scaling + load balancing. Obviously involves coding knowledge and can reduce LCP by 80%. It can also be used for external cron jobs.
Cache everything page rule – most common page rule which caches HTML and improves TTFB, but I recommend APO or Super Page Cache for Cloudflare instead.
HTTP/3 – not true HTTP/3 but still a nice feature (test your site using HTTP/3 test).
0-RTT connection resumption – good for repeat visitors, latency, mobile speed.
Hotlink protection – saves bandwidth by stopping people from copying your images and using them on their own website while they’re hosted on your server.
Zaraz – offload third-party scripts to Cloudflare like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, chatbots, and custom HTML. But test your results against delaying these.
Monitor bandwidth/analytics – the more bandwidth you offload to Cloudflare the better. This should lighten the load on your server while reducing CPU usage.
Paid Cloudflare Features
APO – caches HTML which can improve TTFB in multiple global locations.
WAF – block unwanted requests, improve security, and reduce CPU usage.
Argo + Tiered Cache – route traffic using efficient paths with Tiered Cache.
Image optimizations – I prefer these over plugins. Between all 3 (image resizing, Mirage, Polish), you don’t have to use a bloated image optimization plugin and they usually do a better job. You have features like compression/WebP and they also have mobile optimizations like serving smaller images to reduce mobile LCP.
Signed Exchanges – improves LCP when people click links in Google’s search results via prefetching which Google says can lead to a substantial improvement.
Load Balancing – creates a failover so your traffic is re-routed from unhealthy origins to healthy origins. Can reduce things like latency, TLS, and general errors.
Cloudflare Enterprise – majors benefits include prioritized routing, more PoPs, Argo + Tiered Cache, full page caching, image optimization, and other features depending where you get it from. The easiest/cheapest way is to use a host with Cloudflare Enterprise or FlyingProxy (I recommend Rocket.net’s who even built their data centers in the same locations as Cloudflare). It’s just more thought out than Cloudways/Kinsta. You could also consider using Cloudflare Pro which has some of these features. It requires more configuration but gives you more control.
Take advantage of different caching layers your host offers
BunnyCDN – Gijo suggests Cloudflare + BunnyCDN which is what I’ve used for a long time. If you’re using FlyingPress, FlyingCDN is powered by BunnyCDN with Bunny Optimizer + geo-replication. It’s also cheaper than buying these directly through BunnyCDN and easy to setup.
QUIC.cloud – use this if you’re on LiteSpeed. You’ll want to use the standard (paid) plan since the free plan only uses 6 PoPs and doesn’t have DDoS protection. It has HTML caching which is similar to Cloudflare’s full page caching and is also needed for LSC’s image/page optimizations.
RocketCDN – uses StackPath which was removed from cdnsperf.com and has less PoPs, slower Tbps, no image optimization, no HTML caching, and no other features besides serving files from a CDN. Also isn’t “unlimited” like WP Rocket advertises since they will cut you off at some point.
SiteGround CDN – not a lot of PoPs/features and you have to use their DNS to use it (which if you remember, was blocked by Google for 4 days). I personally wouldn’t trust this with my site.
6. Cache Plugins
Let’s summarize 5 popular cache plugins in 10 lines or less.
FlyingPress – optimizes for core web vitals and real-world browsing better than the last 3. When a new core web vital update comes out (like fetchpriority resource hints), Gijo is almost always first to add it. Awesome features not found in most cache plugins: preloading critical images lets you set the number of images usually shown above the fold to exclude them from lazy load while preloading them. FlyingPress can also lazy render HTML elements, self-host YouTube placeholders, and it has a lazy-bg helper class for lazy loading background images. FlyingCDN uses BunnyCDN with Bunny Optimizer + geo-replication (great choice). The remove unused CSS feature is faster than WP Rocket’s since it loads used CSS in a separate file (instead of inline) which Perfmatters agrees is faster for visitors. Really, the main thing it doesn’t have is server-level caching. I moved from WP Rocket to FlyingPress and saw a big difference in speed.
SG Optimizer
WP Rocket
FlyingPress
Server-side caching
✓
x
x
Delay JavaScript
x
✓
✓
Remove unused CSS
x
Inline
Separate file
Critical CSS
x
✓
✓
Preload critical images
x
x
By number
Exclude above the fold images
By class
By URL
By number
Lazy load background images
x
Inline
Helper class
Fetchpriority resource hint
x
x
✓
Lazy render HTML elements
x
x
✓
Add missing image dimensions
x
✓
✓
YouTube iframe preview image
x
✓
✓
Self-host YouTube placeholder
x
x
✓
Host fonts locally
x
x
✓
Font-display: swap
x
✓
✓
Preload links
x
✓
✓
CDN (beyond Cloudflare)
SiteGround CDN
StackPath
BunnyCDN
CDN PoPs
14
60
93
CDN Tbps
N/A
65
80
Dynamic caching
✓
x
x
CDN geo-replication
x
x
✓
CDN image optimization
✓
x
✓
CDN image resizing for mobile
x
x
✓
Documented APO compatibility
x
x
✓
LiteSpeed Cache – also does a great job optimizing for web vitals and real users, but different than FlyingPress. Mainly because it should only be used on LiteSpeed, it’s free, and it has faster server-side caching. However, the settings can be complicated. While some settings are similar to FlyingPress like loading used CSS in a separate file and lazy loading HTML elements, it has its own unique features such as localizing third-party resources, ESI, guest mode, LQIP, and HTML caching through QUIC. Use LSC if you’re on a LiteSpeed host. Anything else, I’d use FlyingPress.
WP Rocket – removing unused CSS is slower for visitors and RocketCDN isn’t a good CDN. WP Rocket doesn’t self-host fonts (or even recommend it) or video placeholders. Excluding above the fold images from lazy load and preloading them individually is tedious. Still no image optimization or documented APO compatibility. While Gijo releases many new features and updates FlyingPress to address core web vital updates, it seems WP Rocket has fallen behind. Two good things about WP Rocket are automatic delaying of JavaScript and documentation.
SiteGround Optimizer – great for caching, not for web vitals. Lacks way too many features and has a history of compatibility issues the developers blame on third-party plugins/themes if you check support threads. My advice is to only use it for caching, disable everything else, then use FlyingPress or WP Rocket (just make sure page caching is only enabled in 1 plugin and disabled in the other). Of course, SiteGround will glorify their cache plugin even when it’s clearly inferior.
NitroPack – don’t use this! The only reason you get better “scores” is because it moves elements off the main-thread so they can’t be detected in speed testing tools. This leads to great (but false) scores and it doesn’t actually do a good job making your website load faster compared to other plugins. Google “NitroPack blackhat” and you’ll find plenty of articles on it.
7. Other Caching
Cache plugins are just 1 layer.
Check whether your host supports object cache (Redis/memcached), OPcache, and HTTP accelerators like Varnish/FastCGI. Most do but they need to be enabled or set up manually.
You also have CDN caching which is its own layer. All these are meant for different things and you should ideally use most (if not all) them. People get scared they’re using too much caching, but as long as you’re only using 1 type of layer (not both Redis + memcached), it’s a good thing.
OPcache – enable in your host (can help reduce CPU usage).
Browser cache – enable in your cache plugin (stores files in browsers).
HTTP accelerators – enable in your host (probably Varnish or FastCGI).
Object cache – Redis generally uses memory more efficiently than memcached and is good for large/eCommerce sites. Once it’s enabled in your host, you’ll connect it your site using a plugin (i.e. LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, SG Optimizer, WP Redis). Check your host’s documentation/support on which plugin is best. For example, Rocket.net requires you to install the WP Redis plugin while Cloudways requires you to install the Redis addon.
CDN cache – APO is not the same as a cache everything page rule or the Super Page Cache plugin. QUIC also does HTML caching, then there are services that include Cloudflare’s full page cache like Rocket.net’s Cloudflare Enterprise, FlyingProxy, and SiteGround Optimizer. The key thing is that you’re caching HTML somewhere as it can significantly improve TTFB.
Take advantage of different caching layers your host offers
8. Plugins
Watch out for plugins that:
Add CSS/JS to the frontend – use the Chrome Dev Tools coverage report to see which plugins add CSS and JS. This includes plugins that inject third-party JavaScript or fonts.
Increase CPU usage – common with plugins that collect “statistics” like Wordfence’s live traffic report, Query Monitor, and Broken Link Checker. But can really be from any plugin. WP Hive tells you if a plugin increases memory usage when browsing the WP plugin repo.
Add database bloat – use WP-Optimize to see which plugins (or specific plugin modules) add the most database overhead. This is explained more in this guide’s database section.
Load above the fold – slow plugins are bad enough, but loading them above the fold is even worse. When plugins load below the fold, you can delay them (i.e. comment plugins).
Use jQuery – Perfmatters has a script manager setting to show dependencies. Once it’s enabled, head to the script manager → jQuery and it shows you all plugins using jQuery. Felix Arntz wrote an article on how removing jQuery can reduce JavaScript by up to 80%.
Security – no security plugin (Cloudflare, firewall, etc).
Sliders – Soliloquy or MetaSlider (but ideally no sliders).
Analytics – call me crazy but I only use Google Search Console.
SEO – Rank Math or SEOPress (but most SEO plugins use jQuery).
CSS – need custom styling or even a table of contents? Just use CSS.
Backups – hosting backups or a lightweight alternative like UpdraftPlus.
In Query Monitor, the “queries by component” section shows your slow plugins. You can also use my list of 75+ common slow plugins. Finally, delete all plugins you’re not using (as well as their database tables in WP-Optimize), and disable plugin features/modules you’re not using.
Plugin
Category
Memory Impact
PageSpeed Impact
All In One SEO
SEO
x
x
Broken Link Checker
SEO
x
✓
Disqus
Comments
✓
x
Divi Builder
Page Builder
x
x
Elementor
Page Builder
x
x
Elementor Premium Addons
Page Builder
✓
x
Elementor Pro
Page Builder
x
x
Elementor Ultimate Addons
Page Builder
✓
x
JetElements
Page Builder
x
x
Jetpack
Security
x
x
NextGEN Gallery
Gallery
x
x
Popup Builder
Popup
x
x
Site Kit by Google
Analytics
x
✓
Slider Revolution
Slider
x
x
Social Media Share Buttons
Social Sharing
✓
x
WooCommerce
WooCommerce
x
x
Wordfence
Security
x
✓
wpDiscuz
Comments
x
x
WPML
Translate
x
x
Yoast SEO
SEO
x
✓
9. CSS + JavaScript
Probably the #1 reason for poor core web vitals.
New Optimizations
Remove unused CSS – WP Rocket’s method of loading used CSS inline is slower for visitors but better for scores. You should ideally use FlyingPress, LiteSpeed Cache, or Perfmatters for this which loads used CSS in a separate file so it can be cached and doesn’t increase HTML size. You should only be using 1 plugin for this. If you’re not using an optimization plugin that does this, try DeBloat or PurifyCSS.
Remove Gutenberg CSS – if you don’t use Gutenberg’s block library (i.e. you’re using classic editor), you can remove Gutenberg’s CSS which is loaded by default.
Asset unloading plugins – remove CSS/JS (or entire plugins) from specific pages/posts where they don’t need to load. Common examples are only loading contact forms on the contact page, only loading social sharing plugins on posts, and disabling WooCommerce plugins where they’re not used. You can also disable specific files like jQuery and elementor-dialog if you don’t use them. I recommend Perfmatters especially if you’re using WP Rocket or SiteGround Optimizer because it has many optimizations not found in these plugins. Be sure to use test mode and dependencies in your script manager settings. For a free plugin, try Asset CleanUp.
Critical CSS – loads above the fold CSS immediately which improves LCP. Most cache plugins do this while others (like SG Optimizer) don’t. If you make changes to stylesheets or custom CSS, regenerate critical CSS so it’s current with your site.
Load CSS/JS non render-blocking – both deferring JavaScript and critical CSS help serve resources non render-blocking. Make sure they work in your cache plugin and exclude files from defer if they break your site. Or try Async JavaScript.
Don’t combine – should almost always be off especially on big sites or on HTTP/2.
Optimizations Covered In Other Sections
Page builders – Elementor/Divi add extra CSS/JS which can be optimized with their built-in performance settings, coding your header/footer/sidebar in CSS, disabling Elementor fonts/dialog, lazy loading background images in CSS, etc.
Plugins – just look at the screenshot below (plugins are obviously a major factor).
Third-party code – hosting files locally, delaying JavaScript, and using a smaller GA tracking code can reduce its size or delay so it doesn’t impact initial load times.
Font Icons – disable these if you don’t use them or use Elementor’s custom icons.
WooCommerce – disable scripts/styles on non-eCommerce content and disable Woo plugins where they don’t need to load (many load across the entire website).
This is anything on your site that has to pull info from a third-party domain (like Google Fonts, Google Analytics tracking code, or an embedded YouTube video). It’s a common reason for JS-related errors in PSI. Luckily, most of it can be optimized especially if it’s shown below the fold.
Step 1: Host files locally – some third-party code can be hosted locally (see the table below). LiteSpeed Cache can localize resources, FlyingPress can host fonts/YouTube thumbnails locally, Perfmatters does fonts and analytics, and WP Rocket does nothing.
Third-Party Code
URL(s)
Plugins To Host It Locally
Google Fonts
fonts.gstatic.com
Most optimization plugins, Elementor, OMGF
Google Analytics
google-analytics.com
Flying Analytics, Perfmatters
Gravatars
gravatar.com
Simple Local Avatar
YouTube Thumbnails
i.ytimg.com
FlyingPress, WP YouTube Lyte
Step 2: Delay JavaScript – for third-party code that can’t be hosted locally, delay its JavaScript if it’s loading below the fold (you can also delay plugins loading below the fold). WP Rocket does this automatically while other cache plugins make you add files manually. If your cache plugin doesn’t support this, use Perfmatters or Flying Scripts. In these, you’ll set a timeout period and can increase this if you’re not seeing good results. You can try offloading third-party code to Cloudflare Zaraz, but I prefer delaying its JS.
Step 3: Prefetch or preconnect everything else – for all third-party code that can’t be hosted locally or delayed, add a DNS prefetch resource hint. Preconnect is usually only used for CDN URLs (not needed for Cloudflare), and third-party fonts (should be hosted locally). Or YouTube if you can’t eliminate requests using video optimizations in step #13.
Google Analytics – Perfmatters + Flying Analytics can use a minimal analytics tracking code that’s just 1.5 KB. Perfmatters can also prevent a Doubleclick request by disabling display features, but both these should only be used if you don’t need certain data in GA.
Avoid overtracking – one of the most common “mistakes” I see is sites using too many tracking tools: Analytics, Tag Manager, Heatmaps, Pixel, etc. Do you really need them all?
11. Fonts
Probably your largest files after CSS/JS.
Your GTmetrix Waterfall chart shows font load times, number of requests, and whether they’re served locally or from a third-party domain like fonts.gstatic.com or use.fontawesome.com. Be sure to keep tabs on your Waterfall chart as you make optimizations. Fonts can also cause FOIT and FOUT which cause layout shifts. A few simple tweaks can make your fonts load much faster.
Reduce font families, weights, icons – try to only use 1 font family and only load the weights you actually use. Disable Font Awesome and Eicons if you don’t use them (Elementor has a tutorial on this). Some fonts also have larger file sizes than others.
Use WOFF2 – the most lightweight/universal format which is faster than .ttf and .otf.
Host locally – if your fonts are being served from fonts.gstatic.com, host them locally.
Preload – fonts should be preloaded when they load above the fold or used in CSS files. Most cache/optimization plugins require you to manually add font files (and if there’s a crossorigin option like in Perfmatters, it should be used for fonts). Elementor hosts fonts locally and preloads them under Theme Customizer → Performance. PSI used to tell you which fonts to preload in “preload key requests” but I don’t think they do this anymore.
Add font-display: optional – if you need to “ensure text remains visible during webfont load,” add font-display: optional to your font’s CSS. This is recommended by Google for the fastest performance while preventing layout shifts. It delays loading text up to 100ms. As of writing this, most plugins only support swap found in Elementor, Perfmatters, and most cache plugins. To use optional, you need to add it manually to your font’s CSS, use WP Foft Loader, or use swap until your optimization plugin supports optional. Preloading fonts that use font-display: optional completely eliminates layout shifts (FOIT) from fonts.
System fonts – system fonts generate 0 requests and are obviously best for speed, but even for someone who obsesses over performance, I’d rather have a better looking font.
Use custom Icons for Elementor – replace Font Awesome and Eicons with custom icons.
Serve Google Fonts from Cloudflare Workers – I’ll leave this here if you want to dive in.
12. Images
There are 7 PSI items related to image optimization, and that doesn’t even cover everything.
Preload critical images and exclude them from lazy load – above the fold content should load immediately which is a big factor of LCP. Instead of delaying images with lazy load, you want the browser to download them immediately by using preload. The easiest way to do this (by far) is “preload critical images” in FlyingPress or Perfmatters. Instead of manually excluding/preloading above the fold images on every single page/post (because they’re usually different), you will set the number of images usually shown above the fold. In my case, it’s 3. This will preload your top 3 images while excluding them from lazy load. Currently, FlyingPress is the only cache plugin I know that supports fetchpriority which is recommended by Google to set things like your LCP image to “high priority.” Props to Gijo.
Exclude above the fold images from lazy load and preload them
LCP image – your most important image to optimize for lower LCP (shown in PSI).
Background images – page builders serve background images in their CSS and won’t be lazy loaded, leading to ‘defer offscreen images’ errors. Some cache plugins have a lazy-bg helper class, Perfmatters has a CSS background images setting, and WP Rocket makes you move them to inline HTML. Check the documentation in your cache/image optimization plugin on how to lazy load them. You can also use Optimal or add a helper class yourself.
Image CDNs – I use Cloudflare for image optimization but Bunny Optimizer and QUIC are good too. They usually do a better job than plugins (and it’s 1 less plugin on your website).
Resize images for mobile – make sure your image optimization plugin (or image CDN) serves smaller images to mobile which should also improve your LCP on mobile. This is the “image resizing” feature in Cloudflare, or you could use ShortPixel Adaptive Images.
Properly size images – resize large images to be smaller. My blog is 765px width so I crop/resize blog images to that size (the Zoom Chrome Extension is handy for getting the perfect dimensions when taking screenshots). I always recommend creating an “image dimensions cheat sheet” so you know the size of your blog, featured, sidebar images, etc.
WebP – faster than JPEG/PNG and most image optimization plugins or CDNs can do this.
Compression – Lighthouse test images at 85% so that’s usually a good compression level.
CSS sprites – combines multiple small/decorative images into 1 image so it only creates 1 request. My old homepage used a CSS sprite and it was very fast. You can do it for sections like “featured on” where you show a bunch of logos. You would use a CSS sprite generator.
Specify dimensions – most cache plugins can “add missing dimensions” otherwise you would need to add a width/height to the image’s HTML or CSS. This prevents layout shifts.
Downgrade quality on slow connections – services like Cloudflare Mirage + Optimole serve low quality images on slow connections until a faster connection can be accessed.
Hotlink protection – stops people from using your images when they’re hosted on your server and saves bandwidth. Common with sites using high quality images or if people copy your content. Can be enabled in your host or by using Cloudflare’s hotlink protection.
Low quality images placeholders (LQIP) – if you’re using QUIC.cloud on LiteSpeed, these can prevent layout shifts but you need to make sure you’re doing it right or it will look bad.
13. Videos
Unless videos are optimized, they will probably be the slowest thing on a page.
While most cache plugins lazy load videos and replace iframes with a preview image, FlyingPress and WP YouTube Lyte are some of the only plugins that optimize placeholders.
Lazy load videos – done in cache plugins, Perfmatters, or try WP YouTube Lyte.
Replace YouTube iframes with preview images – the iframe (which is the heaviest element of the video) is only loaded once your visitors actually click the play button.
Self-host YouTube placeholders – FlyingPress and WP YouTube Lyte can self-host placeholders to prevent i.ytimg.com requests shown in your “third-party code” report.
Preconnect – if you’re not able to make the optimizations above and you still have third-party domains loading from YouTube, you can preconnect domains from youtube.com, i.ytimg.com, and Roboto which is currently being used as the font in the YouTube player.
View your “longest main-threads tasks” report in PageSpeed Insights and optimize those files. LCP includes 4 sub-parts and Google’s YouTube video is a nice resource for optimizing each one.
Most LCP recommendations are scattered in this guide, so I’ll just go over them briefly.
Exclude above the fold images from lazy load – you should never lazy load, delay, or defer anything that loads above the fold because this content should load immediately, which is why you should also use preload hints to help browsers download them faster.
Prioritize above the fold images – preload above the fold images (or use fetchpriority). PSI shows your largest contentful paint image which is the most important to optimize.
Reduce CSS, JS, font sizes – a big part of reducing load time is reducing their file sizes.
Reduce TTFB – 40% of LCP can usually be improved with a better hosting + CDN setup.
Eliminate render-blocking CSS/JS – render-blocking resources add delay (see video).
Use font-display: optional – if fonts aren’t loaded properly, they can also add delay.
Lazy render HTML elements – allows browsers to focus on the above the fold content.
Preload, preconnect, prefetch – hints browsers to download specific resources faster.
Increase cache expiration – also mentioned by Google (Cloudflare browser cache TTL).
Choose the right cache plugin/settings – some have better optimizations than others.
Enable Signed Exchanges (SXGs) – this is found in Cloudflare (Speed → Optimization).
Use Cloudflare Workers – Google Engineer used Workers to improve LCP by about 80%.
Move plugin content, ads, animations below the fold – that way, they can be delayed.
16. CLS
Layout shifts happen when things jump around while the page is loading.
You can use Google’s layout shift debugger to see these in a GIF. PSI also has an “avoid large layout shifts” item showing you which sections on your website contribute the most to CLS. Even with these recommendations, it’s hard to know why the section is causing a layout shift.
Change font-display to swap or optional – do this if you see “ensure text remains visible during webfont load.” As shown in section #11, font-display: optional is the best method.
Problems with loading CSS asynchronously – this is a setting in cache plugins that can add layout shifts caused by FOUC (flash of unstyled content). Ideally use the “remove unused CSS” method instead. If this breaks your site and you default back to loading CSS asynchronously, make sure you exclude problematic files causing FOUC, ensure critical CSS is working, and always regenerate critical CSS after updating stylesheets/custom CSS.
Preload fonts – preloading fonts eliminates layout shifts when they use display: optional.
Specify dimensions of images, videos, iframes, ads – the first 3 are easy (make sure a width and height are specified in images). Ads and other dynamic content should have reserved space by placing it in a div code. The width/height should be the ad’s largest size.
Use CSS transform in animations – not a fan of animations but here’s documentation.
Use separate mobile cache (when it makes sense) – if your mobile site is different than desktop and you’re not using a separate mobile cache, it can cause layout shifts. However, you’ll need to check your cache plugin’s documentation on when to use (and not use) this.
Change cookie notice plugin – search your plugin’s support thread. It’s been reported some cookie plugins cause layout shifts. I recommend Gijo’s solution or this Cookie plugin.
17. Preload, Prefetch, Preconnect
These help browsers download high priority resources faster.
They prioritize above the fold content (preload + fetchpriority). Preload is also used in Cloudflare’s Early Hints and for downloading internal pages in the background so they load faster when visitors click them (link preloading + Flying Pages). Prefetch + preconnect help establish early connections to third-party domains if resources aren’t already being delayed.
Preload – commonly used for above the fold images (this can also be a WebP image) but can also be used for CSS/JS (i.e. the block library), videos, audio, Cloudflare workers, and other files.
Fetchpriority – similar to preload only assigns a priority (low, high, auto). For example, if you have a large LCP image, you would assign that image’s priority to “high.” But if you have an image carousel that’s loading above the fold, you could assign the images with a low priority. FlyingPress is the only plugin I know currently supporting fetchpriority shown in the changelog.
<img src="lcp-image.webp" fetchpriority="high">
Link preloading – there’s 2 main types: preloading links in the viewport so internal links in the immediate content load faster when clicked (supported by Flying Pages and FlyingPress). And “link preloading” where users hover over any internal link (or touch it on mobile), and the page will download in the background so by the time they actually click it, it appears to load instantly (found in cache plugins like WP Rocket). While neither improves scores, both improve perceived load time. Just be careful… preloading too many pages in the background will increase CPU usage especially if you have something like a WooCommerce store with internal links in images. If visitors are hovering over product images, this will cause lots of pages to download. Not good!
DNS Prefetch – this helps browsers anticipate third-party domains by performing a DNS lookup, but usually not needed since third-party domains should be hosted locally or delayed.
Preconnect – establishes early connections to important third-party domains. Common with CDN URLs and third-party fonts like fonts.gstatic.com, use.fontawesome.com, and use.typekit. Most cache plugins add preconnect automatically when you add a CDN URL or when enabling “Google Font Optimization” (or a similar setting), but you’ll want to check their documentation.
You can use Perfmatters or Pre* Party if your optimization plugin doesn’t support a specific resource hint
18. Database
There’s usually 3 problems with using your cache plugin to clean your database:
It can’t take database backups.
It can’t remove database tables left behind by old plugins.
It deletes all post revisions, but you may want to keep a few.
That’s why I recommend WP Optimize for database cleanups. Go through your database tables and look for tables that are not installed or inactive. You can delete these if you don’t plan on using the plugin (or theme) again since they will usually store info in the database for future use.
Certain plugin modules/features can also add lots of overhead especially if they collect data. Rank Math’s Google Analytics module adds lots of overhead, so consider disabling this Rank Math module and getting your analytics data directly from the Google Analytics website instead.
For ongoing database cleanup, WP-Optimize removes everything most cache plugins do, but it lets you keep a certain amount of post revisions so you have backups (I recommend 5-10). You can also connect UpdraftPlus which takes a database backup before scheduled optimizations.
19. Background Tasks
Background tasks can bog down your server and increase CPU usage.
These are common with cache plugins (preloading + automatic cache clearing), plugins that collect stats or create autoloads, and even WordPress core (Heartbeat, autosaves, pingbacks). Many of these can be disabled, limited, or scheduled during non-peak hours using a cron job.
Control Preloading – the preloading in cache plugins is infamous for increasing CPU usage (WP Rocket’s preloading, LSC crawler, SG Optimizer’s preheat cache, etc). The first step is changing settings to only preload important sitemap URLs (i.e. page-sitemap.com + post-sitemap.com) instead of the full sitemap. Next, you can increase the preload interval.
Only preload important sitemap URLs (not the full sitemap)
Automatic cache clearing – there are specific actions that trigger your entire cache to be cleared (and when the cache lifespan expires). Instead of constantly clearing cache with these actions, disable automatic cache clearing and use a cron job to clear it at a specific time (once at night). It’s best to use a cron job for both cache clearing + cache preloading.
Disable WP-Cron – using an external cron to schedule tasks like the 2 items above helps reduce CPU usage. The first step is to add the code below your wp-config.php file. Next, setup a real cron job in your host, Cloudflare, or using a third-party service like EasyCron. Some hosts have specific instructions for adding a cron job, so check their documentation.
Scheduling tasks using cron jobs for 5-10 minutes can reduce CPU usage
Remove unused CSS – decrease WP Rocket’s batch size and increase the cron interval.
Link preloading – some cache plugins can “preload links” which sounds like a good idea because when users hover over a link, that page downloads in the background to make it load faster by the time users actually click it. But if your website has lots of links (such as a WooCommerce store with links in the product images), you’ll want to leave this setting off.
Plugins – think of Query Monitor, Wordfence’s live traffic report, and backup/statistic plugins (they all run background tasks). You might be able schedule these, disable specific features in plugins, or delete the plugin completely. Plugins/themes can also leave behind autoloaded data when you delete them which can be cleaned up in the wp_options table.
Autosaves – when you’re editing a post, WordPress autosaves a draft every minute. You can use a simple line of code (or Perfmatters) to increase this to something like 5 minutes.
define('AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 300); // seconds
Heartbeat – called every 15s and can usually be disabled in the frontend/backend, then limited in the post editor since you probably want to keep features there (like autosaves).
Pingbacks – disable pingbacks since you don’t want a notification every time you add an internal link. You may want to leave trackbacks on to help notify blogs you linked to them.
Post revisions – stored every time you hit save, publish, or update and accumulate over time. You can limit revisions in some optimization plugins, manually with code, or use WP-Optimize to run scheduled database cleanups while keeping a certain number of revisions.
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 10 );
Plugin data sharing – disable in plugins to save a little resources, sorry plugin developers!
Bots – blocking spam bots and using Cloudflare’s crawler hints saves resources from bots.
Comment spam – I use Antispam Bee and blacklist these words in the Discussion settings.
Hosting features – WP Johnny has nice tips on disabling unused services in your hosting account like the DNS, email, FTP/SFTP, proxies, or other services if you’re not using them.
Bloat removal plugins – using plugins like Unbloater + Disable WooCommerce Bloat help.
20. Mobile
Poor mobile scores in PSI is a common issue. Most desktop optimizations transfer over to mobile so start with “general optimizations” first. Otherwise, here are mobile-specific tips.
Resize images for mobile – image CDNs and adaptive image plugins do this.
Reduce latency – use a faster DNS, faster TLS versions, and Cloudflare’s 0-RTT.
Replace sliders/galleries with static images – use responsive editing to do this.
Remove unused CSS/JS – Perfmatters can disable unused CSS/JS by device type.
Don’t use AMP – lots of challenges and most WordPress users agree not to use it.
Fix mobile layout shifts – Google’s layout shift debugger tests mobile layout shifts.
Use mobile caching – enable this in your cache plugin or use one that supports this.
Know when to use separate mobile cache – check your cache plugin documentation.
Downgrade image quality on slow connections – try Cloudflare Mirage or Optimole.
Check your responsiveness – even if you use a responsive theme, check this manually.
Add a “load more comments” button on mobile – helps if you have lots of comments.
Most image CDNs serve smaller images to mobile (but not RocketCDN)Disable specific files/plugins from loading on mobile in Perfmatters
21. WooCommerce
WooCommerce sites often have more plugins, scripts, styles, and are more resource-hungry than static sites. You will need to optimize your website even more if you want good results.
Hosting – wphostingbenchmarks.com ran tests for multiple WooCommerce hosts, although I think there are much better options than the ones tested (I would personally lean towards something like Rocket.net, GridPane, RunCloud). Obviously very important.
Remove WooCommerce admin bloat – Disable WooCommerce Bloat is good for this.
Cloudflare Argo + Tiered Cache – specifically good for speeding up dynamic requests.
Redis – also specifically good for WooCommerce (especially Redis Object Cache Pro).
Go easy on WooCommerce Extensions – just like other plugins, be minimal with these.
Unload WooCommerce plugins – Woo plugins are infamously bad with loading across your entire site. Use your asset unloading plugin to disable them where they’re not used.
Use Cloudflare firewall rules (i.e. only access wp-login from your IP).
Disable file editing to prevent hackers from editing theme/plugin files.
Follow security-related social media accounts like Cloudflare/Wordfence.
Check for known vulnerabilities before updating things (especially plugins).
23. PHP Version
Only 7% of websites use PHP 8.
Come on y’all, you already know higher PHP versions are faster and more secure. Google “update PHP version [your host]” and you’ll find instructions. If updating breaks your site, just revert back to your older version (or remove incompatible plugins that aren’t maintained well).
PHP version used by WordPress sites (source: WordPress stats)
24. Make Sure Optimizations Are Working
You set things up, but are they working? Make sure they are.
Caching – cache plugins should have documentation to check if the caching is working.
Redis/memcached – LiteSpeed Cache’s connection test and most Redis plugins tell you.
Confirm Redis is working (screenshot is in LiteSpeed Cache)
CDN Analytics – how many requests are you blocking from bots, hotlink protection, and WAF? What is your cache hit ratio (hopefully around 90%)? CDN analytics are very useful.
Dr. Flare – Chrome Extension to view tons of Cloudflare stats like your cache hit ratio, uncached requests, non-Cloudflare requests, how much % was reduced by Polish/Minify.
CDN rewrites – are your files actually being served from your CDN? Check your CDN Analytics, Dr. Flare, or view your source code to make sure files are being served from the CDN when using a CDN URL, like this: cdn.mywebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/logo.png. If you’re using BunnyCDN, you may be able to serve more files from BunnyCDN by adding your CDN URL to your cache plugin on top of using BunnyCDN’s plugin. It worked for me.
APO – verify Cloudflare’s APO is working by testing your website in uptrends.com then making sure headers exactly match with what Cloudflare shows in the documentation.
Confirm APO is working by checking headers
Asynchronous CSS – if you’re using this, cache plugins should also have documentation.
External cron jobs – check the logs in your hosting account to make sure these are firing.
Waterfall charts – after each optimization, you should ideally check its impact using a Waterfall chart (better than running another PageSpeed Insights test and testing scores).
Clear cache – you may need to clear cache or regenerate critical CSS to see your changes.
Obviously you don’t need all these especially if you’re using a cache/optimization plugin that already does some of these, Cloudflare image optimizations, or you can code things manually.
Plugins like Perfmatters have great documentation.
Gijo Varghese and WP Johnny also put on quality articles.
My other articles (if you liked this one, I have plenty more).
Hire Help
BDKamol – Pronaya mainly works with Gutenberg, WooCommerce, and Genesis. He’s been helping me for over 10 years even when I launched my first website and had no visitors. He points me in the right direction and was a key part in launching my new blog, helping me with things like custom coding, CSS styling, theme/plugin recommendations, etc. Pronaya lives in Bangladesh and his communication (and my trust in him) are 100%.
WP Johnny – he’s a busy guy but you can try hiring him and his team. I was lucky enough to have him help me remove my page builder (which I regret using in the first place and should have known better). While the work is great, it can take awhile to get things done.
WP Fix It – hired them once to improve issues related to core web vitals. While I was very happy with the work, they closed my tickets without notice saying the project was done, even when I told them I would pay more since truly fixing the issues required more work.
27. My Setup
This will cost about $500/year.
It assumes you already have a lightweight theme (i.e. GeneratePress/Kadence) and pay yearly for Rocket.net since you get 2 months free. It also assumes you’re using Rocket.net’s lower $25/mo plan (I pay $50/mo for the Business plan). For my site, this is the best setup I’ve found.
My blog costs around $800/year which is a lot cheaper than I was paying (mainly because hosting gets expensive as you scale). Scaling on Rocket.net is reasonable since monthly visits and RAM are both 10x Kinsta’s and there’s no PHP worker limits since only about 10% of traffic hits the origin (due to Ben Gabler’s Cloudflare Enterprise setup who I suggest reaching out to).
LiteSpeed is also solid and can be cheaper since LiteSpeed Cache is free and email hosting is often included. Check out NameHero, ChemiCloud, and Scala (they seem to have good specs and TrustPilot reviews). RunCloud, GridPane, and JohnnyVPS are probably best for larger sites.
Cloudways is who I was using. I still think they’re better than most hosts but it gets expensive with all the add-ons, they use Apache servers, and Cloudflare Enterprise + Breeze need work.
This is flagged when you have a short cache expiration for images, fonts, media, scripts, and stylesheets. Google fails the audit if the cache expiration is under 180 days (259200 minutes). This simply means you need to adjust your cache expiration for those files to 180 days or over.
In most cases, you will login to your hosting account and adjust the static cache expiry (or similar) to 180 days. However, this can be quite a long time that visitors won’t see an updated version of those files. If you change these files frequently, a longer cache lifespan may not be best and you may want to make it shorter (even if it’s flagged). Google warns you about this.
I’ll cover a few other ways to serve static assets with an efficient cache policy in WordPress specifically for Cloudflare, other CDNs, Google Analytics, WP Rocket, and third-party scripts.
Login to Cloudflare and go to Caching → Browser Cache TTL, then set it for “6 months.”
3. Other CDNs
Most other CDNs let you change the browser cache expiration.
For example, in BunnyCDN, go to Pullzone → Your Website → Cache → Browser Cache Expiration. In this case, there is no option for 180 days. You can either set it for 1 year or “match server cache expiration.” You’ll need to make sure your server uses the correct cache expiration.
4. WP Rocket
WP Rocket has documentation on how their browser caching works.
This code is automatically added to your .htaccess file when you activate WP Rocket. But you will notice the browser cache expiration for images, fonts, and other files is 4 months (about 2 months short of Google’s 180 day requirement). It means you’ll need to change it to 180 days.
# Expires headers (for better cache control)
ExpiresActive on
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
# cache.appcache needs re-requests in FF 3.6 (~Introducing HTML5)
ExpiresByType text/cache-manifest "access plus 0 seconds"
# Your document html
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 0 seconds"
# Data
ExpiresByType text/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/xml "access plus 0 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/json "access plus 0 seconds"
# Feed
ExpiresByType application/rss+xml "access plus 1 hour"
ExpiresByType application/atom+xml "access plus 1 hour"
# Favicon (cannot be renamed)
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 week"
# Media: images, video, audio
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType image/webp "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType video/ogg "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType audio/ogg "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType video/mp4 "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType video/webm "access plus 4 months"
# HTC files (css3pie)
ExpiresByType text/x-component "access plus 1 month"
# Webfonts
ExpiresByType font/ttf "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType font/otf "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType font/woff "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType font/woff2 "access plus 4 months"
ExpiresByType image/svg+xml "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/vnd.ms-fontobject "access plus 1 month"
# CSS and JavaScript
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
Edit your .htaccess (you can use Htaccess File Editor if you don’t know how). Change the expiration from 4 months to 180 days. You may only want to do this for file types being flagged.
WP Rocket also suggests to check with your host to make sure they don’t block WP Rocket’s rules and that Mod_expires is enabled.
5. LiteSpeed Cache
To serve statics assets with an efficient cache policy using LiteSpeed Cache, go to LiteSpeed Cache Settings > Browser. Enable browser cache and the browser cache TTL should be left as default (31557600 seconds). If you still see errors, check if your host or CDN is overriding this.
6. W3 Total Cache
If you need to serve static assets with an efficient cache policy in W3 Total Cache, go your Browser Cache settings and change the Expires header lifetime to at least 15552000s (180 days). Make sure the cache expiration in your hosting and CDN settings aren’t overriding this.
7. Google Analytics
Google Analytics can also cause errors when serving static assets with an efficient cache policy.
If Google Analytics is appearing in PageSpeed Insights for this recommendation, CAOS Analytics lets you host analytics locally and adjust the cookie expiration period. WP Rocket’s Google Tracking Addon hosts it locally but doesn’t give you other options for the tracking code.
Install the CAOS Analytics plugin.
Go to Settings → Optimize Google Analytics → Advanced Settings → Cookie Expiry Period.
Set it to 180 days.
I recommend checking out other features in the CAOS Analytics plugin. Using a minimal analytics tracking code and serving it from your CDN can be beneficial for WordPress speed.
8. Google Fonts
Just like you hosted Google Analytics locally to control the cache lifespan, you can do the same thing with Google Fonts.
But they need to be hosted locally on your server (not pulling from fonts.gtstatic.com). You can do this by downloading your fonts directly from the Google Fonts website (remember to be minimal with font families and weights), converting them to WOFF2 format using a tool like Transfonter, then adding them to your CSS. Alternatively, you can also try the the OMGF plugin.
Once fonts are hosting locally, follow step #4 to set the cache expiration to 180 days for fonts.
9. Third-Party Scripts
Third-party code isn’t hosted on your server, so you can’t optimize it.
Google Analytics and fonts are an exception since they can be hosted locally, and therefore, you can control the cache expiration. But serving static assets with an efficient cache policy is not possible for AdSense, YouTube, Google Maps, and other third-party scripts that you might be getting errors for. Although, there may be other ways to optimize them like delaying JavaScript.
10. Purge Files And Retest
Once you’re done changing your cache expiration, remember to purge files and retest your WordPress site. Ideally you’ll have 100% for serve static assets with an efficient cache policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I serve static assets with an efficient cache policy in WordPress?
Change your browser cache expiration to 180 days (or 259200 minutes). This is typically done in your hosting account, cache plugin, or CDN.
How do I serve static assets with an efficient cache policy using WP Rocket?
Edit your. htaccess file and locate the browser cache expiration code added by WP Rocket. Change the expiration from 4 months to 6 months for files flagged in Lighthouse, which are usually images or fonts.
How do I serve static assets with an efficient cache policy using Cloudflare?
Login to Cloudflare and go to Caching > Browser Cache TTL and change it to 6 months.
How do I serve static assets with an efficient cache policy using W3 Total Cache?
In your W3 Total Cache settings, go to Browser Cache and change Expires header lifetime to 180 days (15552000 seconds). Check your server and CDN to make sure they’re not overriding this setting.
Fortinet recently patched a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in their FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager projects (CVE-2022-40684). This vulnerability gives an attacker the ability to login as an administrator on the affected system. To demonstrate the vulnerability in this writeup, we will be using FortiOS version 7.2.1
POC
Let’s examine the inner workings of this vulnerability. You can find our POC here. The vulnerability is used below to add an SSH key to the admin user, enabling an attacker to SSH into the effected system as admin.
FortiOS exposes a management web portal that allows a user configure the system. Additionally, a user can SSH into the system which exposes a locked down CLI interface. Our first step after familiarizing ourselves with the system was to diff the vulnerable firmware with the patched firmware.
Firmware Examination
We obtained a VMware zip file of the firmware which contained two vmdk files. First, we examined the vmdk files with virt-filesystems and mounted them with guestmount:
Interestingly, attempting to decompress the xz files fail with corruption errors:
$>xz --decompress *.xz
xz: bin.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: migadmin.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: node-scripts.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: usr.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
Its unclear if this is an attempt at obfuscation, but we find a version of xz in the sbin folder of the firmware. We can’t run it as is, but we can patch its linker to point to our system linker to finally decompress the files:
$>xz --decompress *.xz
xz: bin.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: migadmin.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: node-scripts.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
xz: usr.tar.xz: Compressed data is corrupt
$>find . -name xz
./sbin/xz
$>./sbin/xz --decompress *.xz
bash: ./sbin/xz: No such file or directory
$>file ./sbin/xz
./sbin/xz: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /fortidev/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=eef5d20a9f8760df951ed122a5faf4de86a7128a, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped
$>patchelf --set-interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 sbin/xz
$>./sbin/xz --decompress *.xz
$>ls *.tar
bin.tar migadmin.tar node-scripts.tar usr.tar
Next, we untar the files and begin examining their contents. We find /bin contains a large collection of binaries, many of which are symlinks to /bin/init. The migadmin folder appears to contain the frontend web code for the administrative interface. The node-scripts folder appears to contain a NodeJs backend for the administrative interface. Lastly, the usr folder contains a libaries folder and an apache2 configuration folder.
The Patch
We apply the same steps to firmware version 7.2.2 to enable diffing of the filesystems. In the bin folder, we find the large init binary has changed and in the node-scripts folder we find the index.js file has changed:
index.js diff
This diff shows that the httpsd proxy handler explicitly sets the forwarded, x-forwarded-vdom, and x-forwarded-cert headers. This gives us a hint as to where to start looking for clues on how to exploit this vulnerability.
HTTPSD and Apache Handlers
After some searching, we discover that the init binary we mentioned earlier contains some strings matching the headers in the NodeJs diff. This init binary is rather large and appears to have a lot of functionality including Apache hooks and handlers for various management REST API endpoints. To aid in our research, we SSH’d into the system and enabled debug output for the httpsd process:
fortios_7_2_1 # diagnose debug enable
fortios_7_2_1 # diagnose debug application httpsd -1
Debug messages will be on for 5 minutes.
fortios_7_2_1 # diagnose debug cli 8
Debug messages will be on for 5 minutes.
While investigating the forwarded header, we find an apache access_check_ex hook that parses the header, extracts the for and by fields, and attaches them to the Apache request_rec structure. You can see that the for field allows us to set the client_ip field on the request record’s connection.
forwarded header parsing
Additionally, we see a log message that mentioned which handler is used for a particular request.
After searching for the handler string, we find an array of handlers in the init binary:
hander array
After investigating some of the handlers, we find that many of them make a call to a function we named api_check_access:
api_check_access
We were immediately drawn to api_check_access_for_trusted_source which first checks if the vdom socket option is trusted, but then falls through to a function we called is_trusted_ip_and_user_agent.
is_trusted_ip_and_user_agent
You can see that this function checks that the client_ip is “127.0.01” and that the User-Agent header matches the second parameter. This function gets called with two possible parameters: “Node.js” and “Report Runner”. The “Node.js” path seems to perform some additional validation, but using “Report Runner” allows us to bypass authentication and perform API requests!
Weaponization
The ability to make unauthenticated request to the the REST API is extremely powerful. However, we noticed that we could not add or change the password for the admin user. To get around this we updated the admin users SSH-keys to allow us to SSH to the target as admin. See our original announcement.
Summary
To wrap things up here is an overview of the necessary conditions of a request for exploiting this vulnerabilty:
Using the Fowarded header an attacker is able to set the client_ip to “127.0.0.1”.
The “trusted access” authentication check verifies that the client_ip is “127.0.0.1” and the User-Agent is “Report Runner” both of which are under attacker control.
Any HTTP requests to the management interface of the system that match the conditions above should be cause for concern. An attacker can use this vulnerability to do just about anything they want to the vulnerable system. This includes changing network configurations, adding new users, and initiating packet captures. Note that this is not the only way to exploit this vulnerability and there may be other sets of conditions that work. For instance, a modified version of this exploit uses the User-Agent “Node.js”. This exploit seems to follow a trend among recently discovered enterprise software vulnerabilities where HTTP headers are improperly validated or overly trusted. We have seen this in recent F5 and VMware vulnerabilities.
Fortinet on Monday revealed that the newly patched critical security vulnerability impacting its firewall and proxy products is being actively exploited in the wild.
Tracked as CVE-2022-40684 (CVSS score: 9.6), the flaw relates to an authentication bypass in FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager that could allow a remote attacker to perform unauthorized operations on the administrative interface via specially crafted HTTP(S) requests.
“Fortinet is aware of an instance where this vulnerability was exploited, and recommends immediately validating your systems against the following indicator of compromise in the device’s logs: user=’Local_Process_Access,'” the company noted in an advisory.
The list of impacted devices is below –
FortiOS version 7.2.0 through 7.2.1
FortiOS version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6
FortiProxy version 7.2.0
FortiProxy version 7.0.0 through 7.0.6
FortiSwitchManager version 7.2.0, and
FortiSwitchManager version 7.0.0
Updates have been released by the security company in FortiOS versions 7.0.7 and 7.2.2, FortiProxy versions 7.0.7 and 7.2.1, and FortiSwitchManager version 7.2.1.
The disclosure comes days after Fortinet sent “confidential advance customer communications” to its customers, urging them to apply patches to mitigate potential attacks exploiting the flaw.
If updating to the latest version isn’t an option, it’s recommended that users disable the HTTP/HTTPS administrative interface, or alternatively limit IP addresses that can access the administrative interface.
Update: The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added the Fortinet flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, requiring federal agencies to apply patches by November 1, 2022.
Details and proof-of-concept (PoC) code for the vulnerability are expected to become publicly available in the coming days, in a move that could enable other threat actors to adopt the exploit to their toolset and mount their own attacks.
“Vulnerabilities affecting devices on the edge of corporate networks are among the most sought after by threat actors because it leads to breaching the perimeter, and CVE-2022-40684 allows exactly this,” Zach Hanley, chief attack engineer at Horizon3.ai, said.
Posted by Diego Zavala, Product Manager (Android), Christiaan Brand, Product Manager (Account Security), Ali Naddaf, Software Engineer (Identity Ecosystems), Ken Buchanan, Software Engineer (Chrome)
Explore passkeys on Android & Chrome starting today
Starting today, Google is bringing passkey support to both Android and Chrome.
Passkeys are a significantly safer replacement for passwords and other phishable authentication factors. They cannot be reused, don’t leak in server breaches, and protect users from phishing attacks. Passkeys are built on industry standards and work across different operating systems and browser ecosystems, and can be used for both websites and apps.
Passkeys follow already familiar UX patterns, and build on the existing experience of password autofill. For end-users, using one is similar to using a saved password today, where they simply confirm with their existing device screen lock such as their fingerprint. Passkeys on users’ phones and computers are backed up and synced through the cloud to prevent lockouts in the case of device loss. Additionally, users can use passkeys stored on their phone to sign in to apps and websites on other nearby devices.
Today’s announcement is a major milestone in our work with passkeys, and enables two key capabilities:
Developers can build passkey support on their sites for end-users using Chrome via the WebAuthn API, on Android and other supported platforms.
To try this today, developers can enroll in the Google Play Services beta and use Chrome Canary. Both features will be generally available on stable channels later this year.
Our next milestone in 2022 will be an API for native Android apps. Passkeys created through the web API will work seamlessly with apps affiliated with the same domain, and vice versa. The native API will give apps a unified way to let the user pick either a passkey or a saved password. Seamless, familiar UX for both passwords and passkeys helps users and developers gradually transition to passkeys.
Signing in to a website on an Android device with a passkey
For the end-user, creating a passkey requires just two steps: (1) confirm the passkey account information, and (2) present their fingerprint, face, or screen lock when prompted.
Signing in is just as simple: (1) The user selects the account they want to sign in to, and (2) presents their fingerprint, face, or screen lock when prompted.
Signing in to a website on a nearby computer with a passkey on an Android device
A passkey on a phone can also be used to sign in on a nearby device. For example, an Android user can now sign in to a passkey-enabled website using Safari on a Mac. Similarly, passkey support in Chrome means that a Chrome user, for example on Windows, can do the same using a passkey stored on their iOS device.
Since passkeys are built on industry standards, this works across different platforms and browsers – including Windows, macOS and iOS, and ChromeOS, with a uniform user experience.
We will continue to do our part for a passwordless future
We have worked with others in the industry, including Apple and Microsoft, and members within the FIDO Alliance and the W3C to drive secure authentication standards for years. We have shipped support for W3C Webauthn and FIDO standards since their inception.
Today is another important milestone, but our work is not done. Google remains committed to a world where users can choose where their passwords, and now passkeys, are stored. Please stay tuned for more updates from us in the next year as we introduce changes to Android, enabling third party credential managers to support passkeys for their users.
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