First off, I’m not asking for a specific technical fix. More a question of, should I keep trying to fix it, or is the answer really: “Upgrade your server you cheapskate?”
Since Google has prioritized website speed, particularly for mobile, I’ve seen my site’s numbers declining. Google PageSpeed gave my site really low scores (34 for mobile / 50 for desk).
(My site promotes my books. It doesn’t sell directly – no WooCommerce plugin for example – it just displays pages for my books. There’s also a blog. It’s not a huge site. Oh, and the domain is not top-level. My personal Wordpress site is on top (pesch.com, not real), and my press site is press.pesch.com, with a redirect from press.com, if that matters).
Over the last 2 days, I’ve worked with the Hummingbird plug-in to do all the things I could. I’m not a programmer, but I’m not totally ignorant either. I’ve linked the site to Cloudflare, minimized CSS and JS, added http headers, removed old and obsolete plugins, etc. That’s gotten the scores up to 51/59.
So here’s my question: Should I continue trying to improve the website, or should I get off the shared server and spend the money for a cloud-based server, or move to another hosting service, particularly one that claims it works well with Wordpress?
Am I really tuning up a VW Beetle so it runs like a Corvette when I should just buy a Corvette?
I’ve googled this, but I’m suspicious of the answers, since they usually come from sites with excellent SEO who conveniently offer affiliate links to their favorite answer.
Hence, this crowdsourcing alternative: What do WP developers say when customers come them with a situation like mine?