Most WordPress sites are slow because of a thousand small decisions, not one big one. Here's the checklist we run on every build to land consistently under a one-second load.
Hosting and caching
Managed hosting built for WordPress, full-page caching at the edge, and a CDN in front of everything — non-negotiable starting points.
The plugin diet
Every plugin is a tax on page weight. We default to zero unless something earns its place, and we never install more than one plugin that does the same job.
Images, fonts, and the things nobody checks
Modern image formats, lazy loading below the fold, and self-hosted fonts with proper preloading. None of it is exotic. All of it gets skipped on most builds.