Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress SEO for WordPress SEO Plugins for WordPress Using Caching to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

James Page
James Page
9,621 Points

Minifying using a CDN or plugin

If you have the option to minify using a CDN (like Cloudflare) or a plugin like W3 Total Cache (or even a theme in some instances), which one should be used? Does it cause any issues if they're all set to minify?

2 Answers

Colin Marshall
Colin Marshall
32,861 Points

If both are set to minify, it shouldn't make any difference as far as the code goes, but performance-wise I would only set one or the other to minify. If you minify something that is already minified, that's like putting a load of clean clothes through the washing machine. There is no harm done, but it's time consuming and unnecessary.

If you have CloudFlare do the minification, it will reduce some load on your server compared to doing it through W3TC, but the difference will be minimal (no pun intended).

James Page
James Page
9,621 Points

I thought that might be the case, if both are set. That's a great point about letting CloudFlare take the strain - I'll set it to take care of minifying.