FlyingPress Review With Proper Configuration In 2022

FlyingPress is a beloved cache plugin by WordPress speed expert Gijo Varghese.

Cache plugins are now more complex to select than before because most plugins offer much more than just caching, including unrelated to speed stuff. However, FlyingPress has a manageable amount of things and no complicated setup. So you can try it whether you are a newcomer or not.

Gijo operates the popular FB group, and the WP Speed Matters website provides multiple useful free WordPress speed plugins.

Here are some:

• Flying Analytics
• Flying Images
• Flying Pages
• Flying Scripts
• Swap Google Fonts Display
• Flying Fonts

Also, he created FlyingProxy, a CDN for WordPress with Cloudflare Enterprise. 

FlyingPress’s structure and interface are no-frills and uncomplicated, so even if you don’t get what it indicates, you can use it. Thanks to the simple UI. It looks pretty straightforward, but the features are effective. 

I like that UI, and there is no-nonsense optimization stuff. Some cache plugins have functions unrelated to cache or speed optimization, such as the XML-RPC, RSD link, and Htaccess stuff, Ha-ha! Read comparison: FlyingPress Vs. WP Rocket.

FlyingPress Review: My Experience

I don’t give much thought to page speed testing and scores. A speed test crawler can’t compare to a natural human eye. That’s why they’re fully automatic and, at this matter, can’t consider stuff like a human can. They are just machines.

I don’t like testing methods that highlight too many load times, cache lifetime failures, or some from outside requests like fonts, ads, and other Javascript. These items load from other servers over which we have no direct control. We can’t accept that it is our fault, and speed tests must inform that.

Whether page speed scores are critical or not, I realized considerable improvement in page metrics after using the FlyingPress plugin. With my own eyes, I experienced the site moving at lightning speed. I’ve used free and paid cache plugins, but none showed this improvement.

Disclaimer: I use aff links to FlyingPress, and I appreciate your support.

Here is my page speed performance. I used the Breeze cache and the free Cloudflare service in the first performance test. The after score using FlyingPress.

The Suitable Configuration

Websites are getting bigger while the internet gets better. Because themes, plugins, tools, ads, and other things are becoming more advanced and feature-rich. Most internet users access the web via mobile phones, which have limited processing and memory power. You must design your website for mobile.

Also, people think that search engines follow website performance as a ranking factor. But I need to find out; there are plenty of websites with super slow but featured snippets.

WordPress users today tend to like their websites to load faster. People go nuts because there are so many speed-testing tools and tutorials. Plenty of speed plugins, merging, minifying, image reduction, etc. 

The average user works hard to reduce clutter and provide an excellent user experience. FlyingPress includes everything you need to build a fast WordPress site. It features page caching, database optimization, lazy loading, font optimization, resource optimization, image compression, and many other features.

Let’s continue with the settings one by one.

1. Cache Settings

1. Cache Pages: ON (Bypass if you already cache pages with “Cloudflare APO” or another caching layer). 
2. Additional Auto Purge: – NONE is the default option. (If you continually update or publish posts and pages, “ON” it).
3. Cache Lifespan: most websites don’t require it. However, choose the 24-hour setting if you regularly update your website.
4. Exclude Pages from Caching: administrator/login pages and a few others are usually excluded from the caching. You can add more, such as a profile, payment, or additional pages.
5. Ignore Query Strings: this avoids useless page caching for query strings. I will explain this in another section.
6. Optimize for Logged-in Users: OFF; leave this alone. (If your admin end is slow most of the time on hosting or doesn’t have enough servers. Get good hosting with decent server resources).

Gijo already wrote about Ignoring Query Strings. I’ll keep this short. Query strings are usually short text or statistical strings that follow URLs. 

Here are a few examples (https://www.google.com/search?q=query+strings&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8, https://techexplains.com/?ref=xjnkl). 

If characters or digits are followed by a question mark (“?”), it is probably a query string. Query strings transmit data to a web server for a specific reason. There are considerable ways to use query strings, such as linking directly to search results, affiliates, and links directly to the selected item.

2. CSS Settings

1. Minify/Optimize CSS: ON (IMO, simple websites don’t benefit much from them. it applies to unnecessary stuff from CSS when you enable Minify).
2. Generate Critical CSS: ON  (critical CSS can resolve render-blocking by generating the critical CSS, but it can also harm the appearance of your site. Try it and see if it makes your site faster; make a backup first).
   1. Load Unused CSS: Asynchronously (CSS files are loaded asynchronously, which is the safest method).
3. Force Include Selectors: add CSS variables to your critical and used CSS, an ideal option that allows you to set CSS yourself.
4. Lazy Render HTML Elements: use this to lazy load parts of sluggish web pages. This can significantly improve page scores and load times.

People spend a lot of time reducing and combining things that aren’t even required. Kindly take another look at that on your website. Remove any unnecessary plugins, images, fonts, or other stuff. 

You can minimize your stylesheet by cutting all redundant features from your theme and plugin CSS and removing old stuff that is no longer needed.

It is common to see themes and plugins with excessive scripts, such as sections, modules, features, unnecessary widgets, symbols, tables, and fonts. If your site is super slow and you can’t fix it, use FlyingPress Critical CSS.

Related: Remove Powered By WordPress.

3. JavaScript Settings

1. Minify: ON (it uses the same concept as CSS to reduce the file size by removing white space and lines.).
2. Preload Links: OFF (you can improve your page score with this. However, most experts advise using this can impact CPU usage).
3. Defer JavaScript: OFF (most advise avoiding using both because doing so improves webpage scores, but it disrupts some page stuff)
4. Load Scripts on User Interaction: ON. (I like that it normally delays the loading of third-party code until the user interacts. External websites include wpdiscuz, pinit.js, translate.google, analytics, and ads.

Look at Defer’s JavaScript official guide. 👇

Hard to remove unused Java scripts manually. Most webpages load excessive scripts because JavaScript is loaded for all available features in your themes and plugins, including those you never use. You can try to remove them, but if you change their sets, you risk damaging your themes or plugins. 

If you don’t require the function of any Java script that isn’t needed for essential features, delay it. It’s most likely a good idea to avoid visible elements. 

Use it carefully if you want to play with the delays.

Load Scripts on User Interaction

That feature is handy from this plugin, primarily if you use ad networks to monetize your website because they are a significant cause of website slowdown, including Adsense. However, this feature allows us to bypass that problem.

4. Font Settings

1. Optimize Google Fonts: ON (ideal feature for combining and host Google Fonts on your servers)
2. Display Fallback Fonts: OFF (yes, it can improve page score, but it can also give off a poor impression, so go with what you prefer).
3. Preload Fonts: fill in the blank with your font URLs. It prioritizes loading fonts that are needed right away for the render. Helpful if your website contains multiple font variations.

I use two locally hosted fonts on my websites. One for the titles and one for the body text. How big or small your website is, the font has a significant speed impact. Font loading affects many factors that seriously impact how quickly your page loads. Although font locally hosting is sometimes realized old strategy. But it is still popular among speed guys.

Choose fewer fonts; one font is the fastest way. If you’re using two or more styles, deactivate any features that aren’t being used.

It’s perfect for decreasing it to just one or two fonts. Webfonts are commonly cached in web browsers. So if you’re to use a widely known Web font like Roboto, Open Sans, Poppins, and so on, visitors won’t have to re-use it because they already received it from various webpages.

5. Image Settings

1. Lazy Load: ON (lazy load is always a GTmetrix and page speed recommendation. However, some believe it makes the website seem to load slowly. But I use it).
2. Exclude Above Fold Images: 2/3 (number of images to cover up from the screen’s top).
3. Exclude Images from Lazy Load: fill in your image links; you won’t need to lazy load. (it is also practical for featured images and header images that significantly affect the graphical weight of your website. Also, it fixes the largest content issues).
4. Add Responsive Images: this optional feature will deliver scaled images to fit the actual display size. (However, you need a FlyingCDN subscription)
5. Add Attributes: ON (add missing width and height attributes to reduce layout shifts (CLS).
6. Preload Critical Images: ON (preload images for the early render, such as the logo, featured image, and other images in the above fold).
7. Disable Emoji: all browsers already have visible emojis and built-in themes.

Most cache plugins, including WP-ROCKT, do not include image optimization settings. However, this provides some valuable features that useful. Images are the primary resources for all websites, and web servers don’t need to perform much technical STUFF. However, if you make them too big, they’ll take longer to transfer and use up more space in the browser. 

In that case, images have a considerable impact on the visual load time of your website. Use smaller images; alternatively, resize images to improve accuracy. On displays, larger images appear huge, and smaller images can be scaled to fit the space. 

Not recommended to upload uncompressed photos from your digital camera. Because they are highly raw, images can be as large as 10–20 MB.

First, it should be compressed and modified. It’s like placing a 1920px wide image in a 720px space. Don’t do that; it eats up server space, web traffic, and PC power. You can use image compression plugins to compress submitted files automatically. 

The ideal approach is to always use image compression before uploading to your server. I do this because we don’t need extra image optimization plugins. Use Photoshop’s Save-to-web function to specify your desired quality and size. 

See my article, Image optimization plugins.

6. iFrame Settings

1. Lazy Load iFrames: ON (delays loading iFrames such as YouTube, maps, and other stuff that is not immediately necessary on the webpage).
2. Use Placeholder Image for YouTube iFrames: ON (once you insert a YouTube video, they create several resources, including an HTML file, one CSS file, and a larger JS file. A placeholder image can be used to substitute YouTube overlays).
3. Self-host YouTube Placeholder: ON (iFrames will be filled with the YouTube video’s thumbnail image. FlyingPress will access and cache the image and self-host. As a result, placeholder images will be delivered from your server. This feature is brilliant. I love that).

Self-host YouTube Placeholder

It is great to stop impacts from YouTube requests, and you can’t find that option in any other plugin, not even WP-Rocket. 

Iframes have upsides and downsides. Pros include being simple to use and allowing the integration of third-party content. Negatives include zero control over third-party sites, challenges to use in design and layout, and a notable impact on speed.

7. FlyingPress CDN

1. FlyingCDN: I haven’t used FlyingCDN yet, so I can’t say how good it is. FlyingCDN seems more valuable and cost-effective, enhancing images and delivering them using WebP.
2. Enable CDN: if you use a separate CDN with sub-domains, configure it. If you have Cloudflare, leave it.

Content-delivery networks copy the website’s contents to their servers so visitors worldwide can access them more quickly. You’ll be able to provide visitors with a lot of positive output. When loading images, stylesheets, scripts, fonts, and other assets for your website, CDNs can reduce the time it takes for the page to load. 

Assume your website server is in the United States, meaning all your visitors will connect to that origin server. Loading time is quick for visitors from the US. However, websites take a while to load for users in faraway regions like Asia. 

Configuring your website for CDN will send copies of all static resources to the CDN provider, then creates a copy of your files on their servers with a different hostname. All your web pages load from the domain address when users browse your website. They will cleverly transfer to the closest copy based on where they connect; all visitors are now routed to a local server rather than your servers.

Many CDN providers exist, but Cloudflare’s free plan is enough for most websites. FlyingProxy uses Cloudflare Enterprise, which is an excellent alternative because it is costly to use directly, but via FlyingProxy, you can start with as little as $10.

8. Database Cleaner

FlyingPress has a few database optimizations. I use WP-Optimize to clean my database. Many plugins leave a mess in your database when regularly installed and removed. You can remove each table from WP-Optimize. Those load with each page view and are sometimes optional for the website to feature.

FlyingPress Pricing

FlyingPress is worth more than what he’s priced. If you want friendly products and good service, do your part and contribute to a positive response. In addition, a single site license costs $42 when renewed; renewal discounts differ from others. A 14-day money-back guarantee is also offered.

Flying-Press Alternatives

I won’t mention every cache plugin because there are many, both paid and free. 

LiteSpeed Cache: top-rated free cache plugin, My favorite, with many options. The server-side cache is faster than those in the coding layer. LS’s object-caching is ideal for websites with high traffic. Numerous advanced CSS, Javascript, image optimization, database, and display auto-loading options include.

WP Rocket: I’m not a fan of “WP Rocket,” but the interface is well-designed and detailed. It still lacks features compared to other premium plugins. No image optimization. Plenty of modern plugins are simple to use and offer many more features than WP Rocket. 

W3 Total Cache: The outdated user interface, as the latest update, has overburdened you with premium addons. Their basic cache features are overly technical. Even a regular developer needs help to grasp advanced cache features. That’s also one of the reasons I’m not too fond of it—people can’t figure out how things work.

Breeze: it is a Cloudways plugin and is still in beta. It is significantly better in actual user experience. It could appear worse than other plugins, but it is easy to optimize processes when used on Cloudways or any NGINX server. However, other features, such as asset optimization, could be better. 

NitroPack: it is integrated with its cloud platform. However, load time is generally slower compared to other cache plugins. It’s also bloody expensive. For that price, you can get high-quality web hosting. I’m not even going to try. 😣

WP Fastest Cache: well-known freemium cache plugins with a primary user interface. However, other plugins perform better, look better, and have more features. The main flaw is that it lacks features and hasn’t been improved recently. 

WP Super Cache: people use this plugin because it is aggressively encouraged by the official WordPress team (Automattic). It is slower than other plugins and typically arranged in an unstructured style. 

What exactly is caching?

Caching is generally described as preserving processed requests so they can be served faster the next time they are asked. It is crucial to speed up page load times and page layout. There are multiple options, settings, and caching layer variations.

Your website will load fast and use a few resources if you set it up correctly. However, the website’s layout and functionality will fail if misconfigured.

The Full-page Cache prebuilds and keeps the entire page static so it can be used instantly. App-level (file-based) caches have the same value as server-level caches for users without server access or servers with no active add-ons.

Yes, they are slower than server-level caching. But it is still powerful and helpful since they include more impressive cache features. You can use any third-party plugin or specific web hosting server-caching features. Some hosts pull you to use their in-built caching, such as fully managed services.

If you use LiteSpeed servers, you are welcome to server-caching.

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read my FlyingPress Review. 

FlyingPress is cheap and easy to use, and the best premium plugin is currently available. I think it’s worth trying out.

It’s a top-notch creation by a skilled developer. Already challenging WP Rocket and other crap cache plugins. Yeah, the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is great because it has everything. But it is hard to set up and access the full features needed to use their server, but Flying-Press is very simple. In a few clicks, the website is on fast.

The speed of your hosting decides how quickly it can handle tasks and how many viewers it can manage. One of the most effective ways to increase speed is to switch to a reliable VPS or cloud web host. A faster server can handle more viewers than a slower one. 

It’s not effective for a little site, but for a big website, you should do it. 

Webhosting is the most critical part of a website. Don’t forget to check my hosting reviews. Web Hosting In Asia, WordPress Hostings.

If you’re new and want to try out some free stuff, look into the PhastPress asset optimization plugin. Read GeneratePress Vs. Blocksy Comparison.

Also, kindly leave your thoughts!

Sayanora!

Madushan

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