Performance

Jetpack offers a range of features to improve the site loading time and make it easier for visitors to find and consume your site content.

The Jetpack plugin includes default features to make certain elements of your site site run faster. In addition, we also have the Jetpack Boost and WP Super Cache plugins to help optimize how the site files are generated and loaded. These features help improve the site performance which in turn will aid your site reach better SEO.

Performance Settings

In the WP Admin dashboard, under Jetpack → Settings, you will find the Performance tab where you can turn on or off the performance options included in the Jetpack plugin.

Jetpack Search

Jeptack Search leverages Elasticsearch Query API to make it easier and quicker for your visitors to find relevant content on your site. It offers the option to narrow down search results through filters (by categories, tags, dates, custom taxonomies, and post types), and integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce.

In addition, the Instant Search option uses an overlay to display search results from which visitors can search for new queries and see updated results without having to reload the page.

For more details about Jetpack Search feature, please visit this guide.

Site Accelerator

The Jetpack Site Accelerator feature helps load pages faster by allowing Jetpack to optimize your images and serve your images and static files (like CSS and JavaScript) from our global network of servers.

It includes two options:

• Image load times – This leverages our Image CDN, we copy your photos and host them from our servers, therefore, alleviating the load on your server and providing faster image loading for your readers.
• Static file load times – We host static assets like JavaScript and CSS shipped with the WordPress core, Jetpack, and WooCommerce plugins from our servers as a content delivery network (CDN), which helps alleviate the load on your server.

For more details about the Site Accelerator feature, please visit this guide.

VideoPress

Use Jetpack VideoPress to show videos on your site with optimized play back and the benefit of saving server space at your web host.

By uploading videos with VideoPress, your files will be hosted on the WordPress.com’s cloud infrastructure. They will be be stored in multiple servers across the globe to ensure quick delivery no matter where your audience is.

VideoPress also supports adaptive streaming, it allows videos to play back faster by automatically adjusting video quality based on bandwidth and display size, but the viewer can still choose the quality they’d like in the menu.

To learn more about other VideoPress options, please visit this guide.

Jetpack Boost Plugin

The Jetpack Boost plugin speeds up your WordPress site and improves web vital scores for better SEO.

Boost offers optimization features such as:

• Optimize CSS Loading, also known as Critical CSS. This moves important styling information to the start of the page, which helps pages display your content sooner, so your users don’t have to wait for the entire page to load. This can be done manually with the free tier and automatically with the paid plan.
• Cache Content, to store and serve preloaded content to reduce load times and enhance your site performance and user experience.
• Defer Non-Essential JavaScript, to run non-essential JavaScript after the page has loaded so that styles and images can load more quickly.
• Concatenate JS, and Concatenate CSS, to group scripts by their original placement, which are then concatenated and minified to reduce site loading time and reduce the number of requests.

You can also make the most out of Jetpack Boost by using its options to improve delivery and images:

• Image CDN, this will deliver images from Jetpack’s Content Delivery Network. It’ll also automatically resize your images to an appropriate size, convert them to modern efficient formats like WebP, and serve them from a worldwide network of servers. The paid Boost plan also provides control over the quality of the images to optimize the site speed even more.
• Image Guide, this feature helps you discover images that are too large. When you browse your site, the image guide will show you an overlay with information about each image’s size.
• Image Size Analysis, this tool will generate a report of all improperly sized images with suggestions on how to fix them.

To learn more about Jetpack Boost, please visit this guide.

WP Super Cache Plugin

Typically, when someone visits a page on a WordPress site, the requested page gets compiled on the server. This is generally fine, but if your site has a lot of traffic, your server resources will be more solicited and may cause slow down of the site.

To alleviate the usage of server resources and reduce databases requests, you can use a caching plugin which will save a page once requested. This way, next time someone visits the site, the cached page will be served directly instead of getting compiled again.

If you intend to utilize basic caching features, the Jetpack Boost plugin offers a suitable caching option. However, for more advanced caching needs, we recommend using the WP Super Cache plugin, which is made by our parent company, Automattic, and works with Jetpack. You can read more about configuring it on the WP Super Cache wiki.