Oh, We’re Getting Faster
As Adam mentioned in Monday’s article, we are revamping and drastically improving Wallet Squirrel. =)
In the last 3 months we have about doubled in traffic so we’re committing more resources to Wallet Squirrel and that means upgrading to Bluehost. Specifically, we upgraded to the Pro Plan. Yay for growing!
Why Bluehost? Well because ONE it was highly recommended by many of my blogger friends and TWO because it’s MUCH faster. We were SO slow! This is a much needed and happy upgrade.
How does switching over to Bluehost work?
- On Friday, Bluehost started copying our WordPress files from iPage.
- By Friday evening, everything was copied over.
- Then I had iPage switch the DNS over to Bluehost. This is how the internet knows which server to use when someone visits WalletSquirrel.com. It takes 24-48 hours to switch.
- By Sunday night everything was switched over!
So actually, we are NOW completely switched over on Bluehost, however we’re using this time to fine tune things like removing useless plugins, optimizing our site by image compression plugins and working with Bluehost to do everything we can to increase speed.
Can you tell if it’s faster?
Wallet Squirrel is a personal finance blog by best friends Andrew & Adam on how money works, building side-hustles, and the benefits of cleverly investing the profits. Featured on MSN Money, AOL Finance, and more!
I haven’t noticed a huge difference, but honestly I usually am multitasking when reading blogs jumping between watching whats on TV and the articles. I hope it’s faster for the audiences. How is it from a working platform?
Thanks Duncan for sharing!
We’ve noticed an increase of speed from 8 seconds, to 6 seconds and now 2.5 second load times according to some our of test. It’s starting to become really noticeable that it’s faster. Some of the biggest things were just adjusting the right plugins.
Transferring to Bluehost did only minimal improvements. Glad we did it though. Now we spent a week optomizing everything, we can focus on other things. At least this new increase in speed will increase our SEO. =)
-Andrew
It seems much more responsive when I click on something! I know for me I had to spend like 3 days and go back and compress all images and make sure things were at the optimal speed! It was a HUGE headache but so worth it! I still think my site is slow but it’s WAYYYY better!
Glad you finally moved over to Bluehost! I have had nothing but a great experience with them!
Thanks GB!
That’s what we’re noticing as well. The Bluehost “Pro Plan” along with our other enhancements seem to be working! =)
Right now we’re using tiny compression, we get like 50 images a day or month for free. So we’ll continue to optimize them. No big, we have more time than money.
Thanks for stopping by!
-Andrew
A speed check-up is on my short list of to-do’s as well! I’m with Bluehost, but I need to do some of the things you’re talking about with image compression and deleting plugins. Finding it hard to just sit down and do it! It’s one of those tasks it’s easy to push back in favor of doing something else but I need to just buckle down and do it!
Hey Right Hand Money Man!
I totally know what you mean. It’s hard to create good content for your blog, market the posts, gain promotion and then you’re like “crap, need to optimize my blog speed”. That’s basically what my life was like last week. LOL
Luckily the image compression is pretty easy (Adam is doing it) and deleting plugins is gratifying if not terrifying that you’re deleting something important. Those two things make the WORLD of difference though. Plus it’s not something you’ll have to do to often. =)
If it helps, just remember in the back of your mind “Google ranks faster blogs higher”.
Goodluck and we look forward to continuing to see your blog grow!
-Andrew
We write blogs at lightspeed and broadcast on duplex frequencies, bringing competition to it’s knees. We’re globally vocal and refusing to be local. It’s $ gUaP $ time for us my friend. Let’s get this money! 🙂