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223

Enteries Received

122

# of Participants

WordPress Performance Contest Winners 2019

Shay Toder

Improving performance is my passion. I’m a freelance Website Speed Optimization Expert & SQL DBA. I enjoy helping others in speeding up their sites. My motto is “Doing good is good for business”.

Shay Toder

Michael Bourne

WordPress Developer. Beer Lover. Travel Fanatic.

Michael Bourne

Saksham Kumar

Tech by day, writer by night, I’m a freelance WordPress designer, developer, SEO, & a content marketer. I’ve worked with companies small & large, designed & developed 100s of webpages, turning boring sites into industry leaders that get results. I love listening to Coldplay, reading and traveling.

Saksham Kumar

Chance to Standout As The WordPress Performance Guru

Winners of Cloudways WordPress Performance Contest 2019 will be placed on this leaderboard so they can brag about their winning.

Interested participants were required to submit their entries through a form shared in a blog post and on several social media channels. Participants were advised to fill out the form and submit it before 31/05/2019. These forms were evaluated and only the shortlisted participants were contacted for the contest.

Selected contestants received the credentials for their un-optimized WooCommerce store which they needed to fix and optimize for performance. Each contestant got the same copy of an un-optimized version of WordPress site hosted on a server on the Cloudways platform which he/she needed to optimize within the time specified. Each contestant was allowed to work on their WordPress website for a period of 5 days and at the end of the fifth day, they were required to submit an evaluation form. Submitting this form was mandatory and failure to do so could lead to disqualification.

Specification of the WooCommerce Store

  • Built with WooCommerce 3.5
  • Running on PHP 7.1
  • MySQL 5.6
  • HTTP/2 Enabled
  • PHP FPM Running
  • Products added using Alidropship Woo plugin.

Contest Rules

  • No entry will be entertained except through the official sign up form.
  • Only the shortlisted participants will be contacted.
  • Cloudways reserves the right to disqualify any participant and is not liable to give any kind of justification.
  • Contestants can seek help but they need to explain precisely what and how they did to achieve their final score.
  • Contestants can not change or alter theme’s files or remove existing plugins or activate/deactivate the existing plugins. However, new plugins can be added.
  • Contestants cannot remove the number of products and the images of each product.
  • The contest will run for five days and by the end of the fifth day, the evaluation form needs to be filled by each contestant and submit it.
  • The contestants who failed to fill the evaluation form on the given deadline might get disqualified.

Eligibility Criteria

Anybody could participate in this contest. There was no minimum expertise required to participate in this contest. In fact, we encouraged everybody who uses WordPress whether for development, blogging, eCommerce, and agencies to participate in this contest.

However, it would have been useful if participants had prior knowledge on the below topics.

  • Self-hosted WordPress.
  • WordPress structure like its versions, plugins, and themes.
  • Updating core files, plugins, and themes.
  • Troubleshooting common WordPress errors
  • Image optimization.
  • Use of caching and a basic understanding of site performance.
  • Basic understanding of usingwebsite speed test tools

First Prize

$150 worth of hosting credit

Second Prize

$100 worth of hosting credit

Third Prize

$75 worth of hosting credit

All three winners will also receive the EXCLUSIVE Cloudways Swag!

Want To Know About Upcoming WordPress Contest 2020?

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