Hello! Welcome to Super Speedy Plugins, the home of WordPress performance solutions. Our motto is simple yet impactful: “Never worry about WordPress performance ever again.”
The man behind this venture is Dave Hilditch, a seasoned software architect who’s been coding since he was just 6 years old on his C64. Over the years, Dave’s passion for coding and performance optimization has remained unwavering. This commitment laid the foundation for Super Speedy Plugins in 2016.
Super Speedy Plugins began with a specific goal in mind: to optimize performance for large affiliate WooCommerce websites. Spotting the recurrent performance bottlenecks on many websites, Dave decided to create a solution to this widespread problem. His aim was straightforward – to help website owners reach their full potential by improving their online performance.
Since then, Dave has been the driving force behind Super Speedy Plugins, helping countless WordPress website owners boost their speed and efficiency and get more bang for their buck. He offers services like custom feature-development for our plugins, performance optimization, and personalized technical support. This ensures that every WordPress website Dave works on is primed for optimum performance.
Beyond his extensive knowledge and experience, Dave brings a personal touch to Super Speedy Plugins. He values transparency, quality, and a customer-first approach. Every project, every interaction is about ensuring the success of your website and your satisfaction with the process.
Super Speedy Plugins is more than just a suite of performance services and products; it’s a testament to Dave’s dedication to continuous learning and innovation. He is always adapting, refining his services, and introducing new solutions to stay ahead of the digital performance curve.
In essence, Super Speedy Plugins is Dave’s life’s work, born out of a genuine love for coding and a desire to solve real-world problems. Here, your WordPress website’s performance is the top priority, and we’re excited to help you achieve it.
Welcome to Super Speedy Plugins – your partner in WordPress performance optimization.
Come chat to me any time on our speed-obsessed Discord Server
– Dave Hilditch –
Founder, Super Speedy Plugins
Dave explaining how to make your WordPress website leaner, meaner and greener at the Megaron concert hall in Athens in 2022
Dave introducing his new performance-focused business, Super Speedy Plugins, at WordCamp Brighton, way back in 2016!
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Self Managed WordPress
I started using WordPress, WooCommerce and Datafeedr when me and a friend were experimenting with building a fitness affiliate website called fitness saver. We actually started getting good SEO traction but then Google Panda was released and our site got hammered – they focused on stopping ‘thin affiliate sites’. That’s when I came up with the idea of Price Comparison Pro to scrape live prices and compare them from different merchants so we could keep users engaged on the site and bypass the Panda rules. From here, I ended up building www.affiliatewebdesigners.com and then soon discovered the ‘size limits’ everyone talked about with WooCommerce. Back then, and even still now, people were saying that WooCommerce had a limit of 5,000 products before it would go slow and everyone I spoke to said it’s just not possible. Those are the kinds of words that get me inspired to break the rules and prove that it really is possible. With my background in database optimisation for Skyscanner, I knew that 5,000 items is teeny tiny for a well designed database and in fact, because of the way b-tree indexes work there really is no limit (other than storage) to how large your database can be while still being fast. So I built Super Speedy Plugins to focus on delivering what I thought would be a single plugin to fix WordPress and WooCommerce performance.
I have ADHD, so I get distracted easily if something doesn’t perform quickly. Because of this I hate slow stuff. Back at the beginning of Super Speedy Plugins my ADHD probably made the business suffer a bit due to missing support calls etc, but I have since redesigned the entire support system to be Dave-friendly. I guess the other thing is I’m more concerned with function over form which probably contributes quite a bit to the slow uptake of our plugins. I also have spent practically no time on marketing because I just love building and fixing stuff and solving problems
I think I’m highly logical when it comes to solving problems, but probably not all that logical when it comes to choosing what to focus on next. Logically, I should have built ONE plugin and focused my efforts on that until it was perfect and then used that money to build the other plugins. Instead, I illogically ended up making 9 or 10 plugins which are all slowly inching towards awesomeness! Logically, I should have got funding from people I know but I really wanted to build this entire thing myself. Not logical, even though people think I’m highly logical.
I added a ticketing system, then removed it when people started flooding my tickets with questions which were answered on the website. I added a live chat system, then removed it when people were constantly messaging me privately about stuff that was answered inside the plugins or on the website. Eventually I moved to Discord where public-chat rules and I feel far better answering questions that other people can search through and benefit from. We’re now running AI over our Discord chat history to help us build out our KB and FAQ articles.
HOW DO YOU HANDLE THE EMOTIONAL PRESSURE AND CHALLENGES THAT COME WITH RUNNING A BUSINESS LIKE SUPER SPEEDY PLUGINS?
I stress about refunds the most. At one point in about 2020 I was getting a lot of refund requests and it stressed me out. That’s been fixed now through a combo of fixing all the bugs in the plugins and having a great Discord support-chat system. Other than that, I stress about breaking promises I’ve made because I’m not getting things completed fast enough so I try my best not to make promises so much and try to be as realistic as possible about timelines. Regarding challenges, for me – the tougher a challenge, the easier it is for me to get excited about it. Once I’ve conquered the hard part, the tough part for me is fleshing out all the easy parts like creating options interfaces for plugin admins.
I hate profiteering and price gouging. From the start of Super Speedy Plugins, I offered very generous lifetime deals, and once I’d established base one-site license prices, I haven’t increased them. I also hate adverts, so you’ll never see any on my websites, although I do plan to start advertising performance tips to people who have visited Super Speedy Plugins.
Probably most of all, I value honesty. I recommend various plugins and services on Super Speedy Plugins, and where possible, I take up their affiliate deals. However, if the plugin or service I believe is best doesn’t have an affiliate deal, I won’t recommend an alternative just because it does. I always recommend what I genuinely think is the best product or service for a client’s situation, regardless of whether it makes me more or less money.
I don’t see this as a balancing act. Providing solutions and solving problems comes first, every time – this is what makes me happy. If I can profit from that too, that’s a bonus.
I don’t focus on “keeping things ethical.” That seems like a strange way to frame a question. I have my beliefs, I know what I like to do, and I know how I can help people. Helping others makes me happy—it’s something that happens naturally, not something I strive to ensure.
Regarding data safety, we don’t store much private customer data. The main thing we handle is credentials to access their websites. I always advise my customers to follow the practice I use myself: provide temporary access, delete the access afterward, and do this for anyone granted access.
Quite often, customers provide wp-admin access to their websites. In theory, a bad actor could misuse this access to steal customer contact information. However, my reputation is on the line. If such a breach happened even once, my reputation would be destroyed.
I was getting bored working on my own, so I hired Glyn to work with me as a general “stuff-doer.”
My answer to this might seem a little selfish. I really dislike answering boring or repetitive questions and prefer not to respond privately when it could be public. This is why we have a public Discord server and a public Trello board that we update daily.
When people ask questions publicly, they tend to research their question more to see if it has already been answered. Public answers benefit more than just the asker, which makes answering them more enjoyable for me. However, I wouldn’t consider Super Speedy Plugins to be extremely transparent—we’re honest about there being only two of us, but we don’t disclose everything, like how little money we’re making due to a lack of marketing!
This can be tricky due to my ADHD. I’m prone to prioritizing the loudest voices on Discord. However, product direction is driven largely by customer feedback. This has been the case from the start and will likely always remain so. For example, we’ve had increasing demand for custom post type functionality in SSF, so that is moving up the priority list as more voices join in.
Any time I solve a performance problem, I feel immense joy. Over the past six months, I’ve been studying and researching ways to improve the speed of Super Speedy Search Ajax. A couple of weeks ago, I finally implemented it. Seeing it load instantly as I typed was exhilarating. I was literally jumping around in my chair, exclaiming to Glyn, “Look at this! Look how fast it is! You cannot get faster than this—no one can!”
Big challenges, especially performance issues, excite me. While most of the problems I work on are performance-related, it’s the process of tackling any significant challenge that brings me joy.
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