[tbelldesignco]

Thank you everyone for the feedback! I have made the suggested changes and I have the Privacy Policy Page updated and correctly linked and will be looking into CloudFair for more security and page caching to hopefully speed up load times. Taking out the Parallax image from the front page has helped greatly and I will be researching more optimization options for the future of the TBDC Site.

[fitkoh]

Thank you everyone for the feedback! I have made the suggested changes and I have the Privacy Policy Page updated and correctly linked and will be looking into CloudFair for more security and page caching to hopefully speed up load times. Taking out the Parallax image from the front page has helped greatly and I will be researching more optimization options for the future of the TBDC Site.

While I hate to recommend google, google analytics does have some useful features. In this discussion, the feature where it itemizes load times for every object on a given page might be handy. On the plus side, it's free. On the downside, in my experience, page loads occasionally hang on google analytics.

If you don't want google constantly poking at your site, you could activate a plugin designed to work with analytics (most of the SEO plugins do), input your analytics ID, make your diagnosis, then remove whatever you don't want, including the analytics/plugins.

Cloudflare is a really great free service. I especially like the ip6 proxy - very nice if you happen to scoop up a deal on an ip6 only box. Unfortunately, cloudflare was making strange things happen with my internal nginx proxy, that I was too lazy to fix: too many redirects, so I don't currently use it.

[edit]
While this discussion is ongoing, I took some time to examine my page speed insights on google.developers.com.

I scored good on the desktop version (90/100) but only average on the mobile version (58/100), mainly because of images not being served in "next gen format." Google recommends some plugins which can convert my images to the proper format.

I tried about a dozen such plugins and they all failed. Most of them require an api to work, and require one to sign up for an account on some proprietary service and have the converted images served from a cdn. Not my cup of tea. There are a few that supposedly work without an api, but even after the plugin "successfully" converted my images, they're still pngs and google still doesn't like them. After spending 2 hours testing I gave up and decided to just convert all my images in gimp and reupload them.

I figured I'd share this experience here 1. to save others from going through the same trouble 2. to see if anyone has experience with a image conversion plugin that actually works and doesn't require an account with a service.

[edit2] If this is getting too far off topic advise and I can find/start a topic regarding image conversion in the wordpress subforum.

[tbelldesignco]

I honestly would not be mad about putting together an image optimization tutorial with you. I could do part one about making web optimized images and how to brand your Wordpress site and you could do part two which talks about the backend optimization and SEO tools as I don't have as much knowledge as I'd like too about the subject. I am always for collaborations!

I also will look into Google and see what's up and do you have any SEO plugins for Wordpress that you recommend?

[fitkoh]

I honestly would not be mad about putting together an image optimization tutorial with you. I could do part one about making web optimized images and how to brand your Wordpress site and you could do part two which talks about the backend optimization and SEO tools as I don't have as much knowledge as I'd like too about the subject. I am always for collaborations!

I also will look into Google and see what's up and do you have any SEO plugins for Wordpress that you recommend?

While I'm always for a collaboration if it benefits all parties involved, I don't know if I would be the best fit. I'm certainly not the best at understanding how wordpress works or how to improve it. My niche has always been in creative problem solving and thinking outside the box. So while I can usually make things work in some fashion, or devise a workaround that approximates the result I'm looking for, I really don't think I'm qualified to make any statements about what's best. Especially given how wordpress has grown in recent years, the way it should be set up on the back end depends a lot on what kind of site one plans on developing.

At my experience level, I'm not comfortable making a recommendation regarding wordrpress set up. I am, however, more than happy to share what I've done and why. Use this information at your own risk    use:

All In One SEO Pack. Yoast is more popular nowadays. I can't say for sure if one is better than the other or why. All In One's been  around a long time, and it's still updated. I say, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Asgaros Forum - because I like it better than WP Foro. I really just like the way it looks, and it's easy to modify just about every part of the forum styling.

Autoptimize - got my a few points of pagespeed ranking on google. But it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. The images are still an issue I'll probably solve on my own. I wouldn't mind replacing this one if I can find one that works better.

Cryout Serious Slider - requested by my theme (Verdant)

Download Manager - because I occasionally like to share files with the general public

Revive Old Posts - an autoblogging tool that posts to facebook. A serious pain to set up, but very convenient if you have  FB page for your site.

WP Custom Admin Interface - so my backend matches my frontend (or close to it)

WP Fastest Cache - I don't know if it's the fastest, but it's very simple to set up and run.

WP Mail to SMTP  - Gives me a better chance of mail getting through. Requires some annoying set up.

WP to Twitter - like Revive Old Posts, but for twitter not FB

WP Forms - Because forms are sometimes necessary.

I've been using All In One Security and Firewall, which I thought was the bees knees up until a couple days ago. It has lots of great features and is probably really great for site security, but I managed to lock myself out of wordpress because of recaptcha issues so I've got that one offline and am currently exploring other options.

When choosing a plugin, what I usually prefer (if I can find it)

No api/registration/account information required to make the plugin work
Simple set up
Doesn't break anything.

[tbelldesignco]

While I hate to recommend google, google analytics does have some useful features. In this discussion, the feature where it itemizes load times for every object on a given page might be handy. On the plus side, it's free. On the downside, in my experience, page loads occasionally hang on google analytics.

If you don't want google constantly poking at your site, you could activate a plugin designed to work with analytics (most of the SEO plugins do), input your analytics ID, make your diagnosis, then remove whatever you don't want, including the analytics/plugins.

Cloudflare is a really great free service. I especially like the ip6 proxy - very nice if you happen to scoop up a deal on an ip6 only box. Unfortunately, cloudflare was making strange things happen with my internal nginx proxy, that I was too lazy to fix: too many redirects, so I don't currently use it.

[edit]
While this discussion is ongoing, I took some time to examine my page speed insights on google.developers.com.

I scored good on the desktop version (90/100) but only average on the mobile version (58/100), mainly because of images not being served in "next gen format." Google recommends some plugins which can convert my images to the proper format.

I tried about a dozen such plugins and they all failed. Most of them require an api to work, and require one to sign up for an account on some proprietary service and have the converted images served from a cdn. Not my cup of tea. There are a few that supposedly work without an api, but even after the plugin "successfully" converted my images, they're still pngs and google still doesn't like them. After spending 2 hours testing I gave up and decided to just convert all my images in gimp and reupload them.

I figured I'd share this experience here 1. to save others from going through the same trouble 2. to see if anyone has experience with a image conversion plugin that actually works and doesn't require an account with a service.

[edit2] If this is getting too far off topic advise and I can find/start a topic regarding image conversion in the wordpress subforum.

While I'm always for a collaboration if it benefits all parties involved, I don't know if I would be the best fit. I'm certainly not the best at understanding how wordpress works or how to improve it. My niche has always been in creative problem solving and thinking outside the box. So while I can usually make things work in some fashion, or devise a workaround that approximates the result I'm looking for, I really don't think I'm qualified to make any statements about what's best. Especially given how wordpress has grown in recent years, the way it should be set up on the back end depends a lot on what kind of site one plans on developing.

At my experience level, I'm not comfortable making a recommendation regarding wordrpress set up. I am, however, more than happy to share what I've done and why. Use this information at your own risk    use:

All In One SEO Pack. Yoast is more popular nowadays. I can't say for sure if one is better than the other or why. All In One's been  around a long time, and it's still updated. I say, if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

Asgaros Forum - because I like it better than WP Foro. I really just like the way it looks, and it's easy to modify just about every part of the forum styling.

Autoptimize - got my a few points of pagespeed ranking on google. But it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. The images are still an issue I'll probably solve on my own. I wouldn't mind replacing this one if I can find one that works better.

Cryout Serious Slider - requested by my theme (Verdant)

Download Manager - because I occasionally like to share files with the general public

Revive Old Posts - an autoblogging tool that posts to facebook. A serious pain to set up, but very convenient if you have  FB page for your site.

WP Custom Admin Interface - so my backend matches my frontend (or close to it)

WP Fastest Cache - I don't know if it's the fastest, but it's very simple to set up and run.

WP Mail to SMTP  - Gives me a better chance of mail getting through. Requires some annoying set up.

WP to Twitter - like Revive Old Posts, but for twitter not FB

WP Forms - Because forms are sometimes necessary.

I've been using All In One Security and Firewall, which I thought was the bees knees up until a couple days ago. It has lots of great features and is probably really great for site security, but I managed to lock myself out of wordpress because of recaptcha issues so I've got that one offline and am currently exploring other options.

When choosing a plugin, what I usually prefer (if I can find it)

No api/registration/account information required to make the plugin work
Simple set up
Doesn't break anything.

Right on thank you! I am using SEO Pro currently, I used it for another project and forgot I still have the extended license for it. Thank you for the info I will be sure to comb back through this and look at what I can replace for more optimized plugins.

[tbelldesignco]

I've successfully moved my portfolio over to VPS 8 and everything is running beautifully! It's a blessing in disguise sometimes when your web host closes their doors. The pages are optimized, loading faster and I am going to be able to integrate some of my user accounts between the main TBDC website and the TBDC Development site, which is still a work in progress. Please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think. I have a little more work to do on it to get everything back to where it was, but you can also see a status of systems at https://tbelldesign.co/service-status/.

Once again a big thank you to @cubedata and the folks here at Post4VPS for the amazing server and I can't wait to get more client work up and start using it to it's fullest potential!