Nimble Builder and website performance 🚀
Nimble Builder is designed to load fast, in particular on mobile devices. Even when using basic cache server configuration, the plugin can help you get an A grade on a performance test like GT Metrix.
Web pages built with Nimble Builder can include commonly heavy assets without degrading performances too much. Like Google fonts, Font Awesome icons, sliders, images and video background, all of which usually have a negative impact on page load time. To achieve this, Nimble Builder optimizes the critical rendering path by deferring the loading of non-critical assets after the page is painted by the browser.
The plugin includes a set of straight forward performance options allowing you to take control of many parameters impacting page load performances. Those options are located in the customizer > Nimble Builder > Site Wide Options.
Advanced object cache
For users of cache plugins allowing object cache, Nimble Builder allows you to take fully advantage of this cache by adding the following PHP constant to your wp-config.php file : define( 'NIMBLE_OBJECT_CACHE_ENABLED', true );
When Nimble Builder detects this PHP constant, it will add all the content created with Nimble Builder to WP object cache, making it instantly available for a persistent object cache plugin.
Use case : nimblebuilder.com
The following screenshots show results with GT Metrix, Pingdom, and Google page speed tool on the home page of nimblebuilder.com ( built with Nimble Builder of course ⭐️). At the time of testing, the page included a slider, a video background, Google fonts, Font Awesome icons and many images.
The tested page uses the latest default WP theme. Since this page uses a Nimble Builder header and footer, we have removed ( WP developers would say dequeued ) the unessessary theme assets like the main stylesheet and some javascript files.
To leverage server caching, we use the free W3 Total Cache plugin, with basic settings for page cache, minification, browser compression.
Featured image credits : wikimedia.org