Page Speed Boost

Page Speed Boost is a powerful optimization tool that will help speed up your WordPress site on WP Engine. With just a few clicks, it enhances your website’s performance by compressing, caching, and optimizing resources.

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About

Page Speed Boost is a performance WordPress plugin that automatically handles optimizing the frontend of your website through:

• Page caching
• Image lazy loading
• CSS optimization
• JavaScript optimization

After purchasing and enabling on the environment of your choice via the User Portal, the WP Engine Page Speed Boost WordPress plugin will be installed automatically.

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Enable

To enable Page Speed Boost on an environment: 

1. Log into the User Portal
2. Choose Add-ons in the left menu
3. Click Manage in the Page Speed Boost box
   • Or, you can access this page directly at: https://my.wpengine.com/products/page_speed_boost

4. Click Select environments

5. Check the box(es) of the environment(s) to enable Page Speed Boost on

6. Click Preview Site next to an environment name to preview how the site will display when Page Speed Boost is enabled.

7. If there are no issues on the preview, continue to the next step. If there are issues on the site preview:
   • Expand I see a problem
   • Click Try Configuration X out of 4. This will make some changes that might work better for your site.
   • Click Preview Site again. (If the site preview is still open, refresh the page to see the changes.)
   • This process can be repeated through the available configurations until the site displays properly. Once satisfied, proceed to the next step.

8. Click Enable Selected

The plugin will be automatically installed on your selected environment(s) and no further configuration is required.

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Page Speed Boost Cache

Page Speed Boost compresses and optimizes files, then stores those in an independent cache. Purging this cache can help with visual discrepancies and displaying recent updates.

To purge Page Speed Boost cache from the wp-admin dashboard:

1. Locate Page Speed Boost in the top menu bar of the wp-admin
2. Select Purge Entire Cache
3. Click the Purge Cache button

Page Speed Boost cache can also be cleared from the User Portal:

1. Log into the User Portal
2. Choose Add-ons in the left menu
3. Click Manage in the Page Speed Boost box
   • Or, you can access this page directly at: https://my.wpengine.com/products/page_speed_boost
4. Next to the environment, click the 3 dot menu icon
5. Select Clear caches

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Troubleshooting

If you’re having issues caused by Page Speed Boost, we recommend first checking for conflicting features and plugins, as well as service limitations.

Try Another Configuration

If there are issues when enabling Page Speed Boost, several configurations are available to make changes that may work better for your site.

1. Open the Page Speed Boost page in the User Portal
2. Locate the environment and click the 3 dot menu icon
3. Click Troubleshoot environment
4. Expand I see a problem
5. Click Try Configuration X out of 4. This will make some changes that might work better for your site.
6. Click Preview Site again. (If the site preview is still open, refresh the page to see the changes.)

This process can be repeated through the available configurations until the site displays properly. Once satisfied, be sure to save the changes.

Bypass Page Speed Boost

If you’re unsure if Page Speed Boost is causing issues on your site, comparing the optimized page with its non-optimized version can help pinpoint optimization-related issues. 

• You can bypass Page Speed Boost’s cache by appending the ?nonitro parameter to a given URL (example: domain.com/page?nonitro)
• If the issue persists, it means it’s not related to Page Speed Boost.

If needed, you can quickly release the Page Speed Boost license in the User Portal by clicking the (…) dot icon on the right and selecting Release license.

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Conflicts

Conflicts between Page Speed Boost and other caching or optimization plugins may occur. As a result, you may notice visual issues or other issues on your website.

In general, Page Speed Boost can’t be used with other caching plugins that have any of the following features enabled:

• Page caching
• Image lazy loading
• CSS optimization
• JavaScript optimization

The overlapping functionalities can cause our optimization mechanism not to work at all.

Therefore, we don’t recommend using Page Speed Boost simultaneously with another optimization plugin like (but not limited to):

• Autoptimize
• a3 Lazy Load
• Asset Cleaner Pro
• Breeze
• Comet Cache by WP Sharks
• Fast Velocity Minify
• Hummingbird
• JCH Optimize
• Jetpack Boost
• Litespeed Cache
• PageSpeed Ninja
• PhastPress
• Powerpack (WPTouchPro)
• SG Optimizer
• Smush (only their lazy load option must be disabled, not the entire plugin)
• Swift Performance
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• WP Fastest Cache Premium
• WP Rocket
• WP Super Cache
• WP-Optimize (only their page caching must be disabled, not the entire plugin) 

Incompatible non-optimization plugins:

• WP-Cron Control – must be deactivated
• Buddypress – not compatible with Page Speed Boost

Exceptions

The Page Speed Boost “Incompatible plugin” warning can be ignored for the following plugins, but please do the following in each plugin:

• Jetpack – disable Lazy loader
• OptiMole – disable Lazy loader

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Limitations

Currently there are some caveats when using Page Speed Boost. As we continue to modify and improve the plugin, these may change in the future.

• Multisite
  • Page Speed Boost is not currently available for multisite configurations.
• Password Protection
  • Sites utilizing password protection cannot be fully optimized by Page Speed Boost.
  • If the website’s password protection software supports whitelisting, Nitropack IPs should be allowed to ensure full optimization can occur. Learn more here.
• Atlas
  • Page Speed Boost is not currently available for Atlas plans.
• Environments
  • Staging and Development environments won’t see the full performance improvements because those environments are primarily used for testing.
• NitroPack
  • Page Speed Boost is not currently available for NitroPack customers.