How To Install the WordPress Performance Lab Plugin (And Why)

The WordPress Performance Plugin is more than an ordinary plugin. It is the first time the WordPress community has made a concerted effort – in the form of a plugin – to address key performance issues inherent in the WordPress system. In this article, you’ll learn about why you might want to try this plugin out and how to install it on your site.

• Why install the performance lab plugin
• How to install
• Performance lab feature rundown

Why Install The Performance Lab Plugin?

Deciding to self-host WordPress can save you a lot of money, and give you more control over your site. However, this also means you are responsible for managing your own site performance issues. Good web performance not only provides a better user experience but also plays an important role in search engine results.

The WordPress performance lab plugin can help you analyze your site for performance bottleneck and – in some cases – fix them on the spot. At the very least, the plugin will give you valuable insights regarding improvements you act to fix and/or present to a developer or your hosting company for assistance.

However, the plugin is only meant as a way of trying out certain performance improvements that may (or may not) be included in later versions of WordPress. It is not a one-stop web optimizer solution.

How To Install Performance Lab

Follow the instructions below to install the performance lab on your site:

1. Log into the WordPress dashboard
2. Click Plugins on the left side menu
3. Click Add New
4. Type “performance lab” in the search field
   
5. Click Install Now over the performance lab plugin
   
6. Click Activate after the installation process finishes (should only take a few seconds)

The performance lab plugin is now active on your site, and you can access it by clicking performance under settings:

Performance Lab Features

The performance lab plugin takes a “modular” approach. This means that certain features can be activated in modules or standalone units. Some of the features are also “experimental,” meaning they are not entirely stable. Remember this plugin is more for testing purposes. These are the stable features you can activate right away:

WebP Uploads	Enable support for WebP uploads to automatically convert .jpeg images to the more optimized WebP format.
WebP Support	Adds a site health check to let you know if your server supports the above WebP uploads feature.
Persistent Object Cache Health Check	Another site health check that lets you know if your site can benefit from persistent object cache storage.

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Well done! You now know how to install the WordPress performance lab plugin on your site, have a good idea of why you might want to install the plugin, and learned about some of the features you get. If you have any questions or comments please drop them below this article.