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WordPress Leaderboard

WordPress Performance Contest 2020

Winners, contest details, and prizes.

200+

Entries Received

50+

# of Participants

WordPress Performance Contest Winners 2020

Faizan Shaikh

Founder of Quvor. Web Performance Enthusiast. Full Stack Web Developer.

Faizan Shaikh

Peter Molnar

I am a WordPress developer, founder and lead developer at Swift Performance. I am working as a paramedic in my spare time.

Peter Molnar

Shay Toder

WordPress Page Speed Optimization Expert. 1st place winner in Cloudways’ WordPress Performance Contest 2019. Teaching web developers of all levels how to improve page speed while providing personal guidance in my online course.

Shay Toder

Donny Wahyudi

I’m the owner of Pagespeed that is like an obsession to me. For me, every website should load fast. I love reading and learning something new while listening to circa survive and my chemical romance.

Donny Wahyudi

Chance to Standout As The WordPress Performance Guru

Winners of Cloudways WordPress Performance Contest 2020 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 10/07/2020. 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 4.0
  • Running on PHP 7.2
  • MySQL 5.6
  • HTTP/2 Enabled
  • PHP FPM Running
  • Products added using Alidropship Woo plugin.
Note: The final specifications may vary and will be shared with the participating contestants beforehand.

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. However, plugins can be deactivated and new plugins can be added as a replacement to keep the features intact.
  • 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

Amazon gift card worth $500.

Second Prize

Amazon gift card worth $300.

Third Prize

Amazon gift card worth $100.

All three winners will also receive the Cloudways Digital Certificate and an evergreen mention on our Leaderboard!

All participants will receive $25 worth of hosting credit.

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