WordPress, Blogging & Tech Tutorials | Web Training Wheels

How Will Google’s Core Web Vitals Affect Your WordPress Site?

Core Web Vitals are the 3 key metrics that Google believes indicate healthy performance for your web site.

Whether you agree with their selection of metrics or not, soon you will not really have a choice.

Unlike their previous PageSpeed metrics, which did not impact ranking at all, Core Web Vitals will eventually be used as a ranking signal.

Today, we’re building on this work and providing an early look at an upcoming Search ranking change that incorporates these page experience metrics. We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience.html

Improve your WordPress site with the Site Health Tool

Audience: Beginners

Tutorials

The Site Health tool was introduced in WordPress 5.2. It’s designed to give you, the site owner, some valuable information about your site and server performance. It’s also useful in the event you have to contact the support team for your theme or a plugin you’re using.

How To Make a WordPress Test Site In 4 Small Steps, For Free

Audience: Beginners, Intermediate

Tutorials

Last Updated on May 23, 2020.

One way to ease the stress of an upgrade, or to experiment with any changes you may want to make on your site, is to create a sandbox, or testing site. The video below shows you how you can easily do that using free tools.

How To Make a WordPress Test Site In 8 Small Steps

Audience: Beginners, Intermediate

Tutorials

Last Updated on January 20, 2025.

Every time a new version of WordPress is released, some people will experience compatibility problems with their sites. These can be minor and easily resolved, or they can be more tricky to diagnose. Either way, especially for non-developers, such problems are a little scary, particularly if they make your website inaccessible or unusable. One way to ease the stress of an upgrade, or to experiment with any changes you may want to make on your site, is to create a sandbox, or testing site. The video below shows you how you can easily do that using free tools.

How to Preload Key Requests in WordPress

Audience: Developers, Intermediate

Speed Optimization

Last Updated on April 15, 2026.

Preload key requests is an “opportunity” that you may see recommended by PageSpeed.

What triggers this message?

PageSpeed will show you this message when there are necessary files to render (display) your page which are referred to 3 levels deep in your code.

Create Custom WooCommerce Layouts with Beaver Builder

Audience: Developers, Intermediate

Ecommerce on WordPress

In this series about customizing WooCommerce product pages, Beaver Builder is the next tool we’re looking at. I previously wrote about PootlePress’ WooBuilder Blocks.

Beaver Builder is an established page builder plugin with its own interface which replaces the default WordPress editing screen. There’s a free version and a premium version along with numerous free and paid add-ons from various 3rd party developers.

Using the core Beaver Builder plugin you can choose to enable the builder for your Product pages, but word to the wise, this isn’t going to get you very far. In this mode the builder doesn’t fully take over the whole editing experience so you can’t actually change the product layout. I spent a fair amount of time beating my head against this wall before I found this guide. Keep that handy as you embark on this mission.