How I increased my SEO Speed Score from 42 to 96 for $6/month (and can now host multi-sites on one server)

Background

If you are like me, you tend to have a few ideas floating around you like to run tests with. Some might tend to linger and you keep paying webhosting fees on. Who doesn't like wasting money? 🙃

I'm also semi-technical but not a coder per se. That leaves me with simpler ways to solve hosting for my various projects. I usually will do a digital ocean droplet and install Wordpress on it.

In the past I've always struggled to get my my google PageSpeed performance score up to where it should be. For example, for my mental health app I use journeytogether.io. The site speed score sucks! 42! I tried all the stupid plugins and of course they don't help.

Problem

My problem is I needed a way to host multiple wordpress sites on a single server and increase my SEO speed score.

Doing this would allow me to save money while testing out ideas and of course help with my SEO efforts.

Solution

TLDR: DigitalOcean $6/month droplet and WordOps.

Why DigitalOcean?

DO gives me full control over my server which is helpful for managing your wordpress install. Also, it guarantees a certain amount of bandwidth for your shared server. Other normal hosting sites do not offer this I've seen. Also, for me I've been using them a long time so it is easy for me.

Best of all is the price, only $6/month! This is a low price point if you are just testing ideas out. You can scale up the size of your servers very easy too. However, if your site has a heavy stream of traffic it might be better to go with something like AWS rather than DO.

Why WordOps?

To begin with, WO is free. It uses ngnix, wordpress and another open source framework called EasyEngine. They have simple commands you use to setup and manage your sites. Let'sEncrypt SSL support baked in. If you grew up writing games in QBasic then you can do it. 👾

Best of all for google's SEO speed score, it has fastcgi nginx caching baked in. I think this is a big part of the reason for the speed left. Plus the WordOps install is very clean.

Steps - How???

Created/setup a new DigitalOcean droplet with a supported version of Ubuntu. Pointed domain name to new server IP etc.
Read through both the official WordOps install guide and a guide by upcloud
Installed WO on server
Added a firewall following these post install steps
For me, I wanted SSL (you should too) and the fastcgi ngnix caching so I used the command wo site create aameetingonline.org --wpfc -le If you want something different the guides above have all the details on it.

Results

Compare my two sites journeytogether.io and aameetingonline.org

JourneyTogether.io pagespeed score for mobile is 42 last I checked.

AAMeetingOnline.org has a mobile score of 96 last I checked.

Both use WordPress. Both use elementor for easy editing. Both use the same theme and nameplate graphics.

Now I can host multiple sites on one server for cheap and my site speed is blazing! 🔥