Joe, in order to meet the most recent requirements of browsers it is indeed necessary to get an ssl certificate (provides a secure connection between the user and the website, it is near mandatory if the site contains feedback forms, shopping etc) but before spending too much money, check with your provider. Shortly after I purchased a certificate for a client, the hosting service offered this feature for free (& required only a modification to the .htaccess file).

As for security of the site itself, there are many other options (all relating to the hosting) eg sitelock. These features cost money but offer security from the point of view that your site is constantly monitored for malware and unauthorised changes.

Speed optimising can normally be achieved by ensuring content like images and photos are added to the project in a size suitable for the site (eg a photo straight from a camera may be 5meg, but by resizing it to 1024X768 this size will be miniscule, the image will still look great but the load on the webpage display will be negligible). There is also much discussion of the size of pages generated by WX5. I use google analytics and the code size of WX5 sites has never been an issue.

https://helpcenter.websitex5.com/en/post/210988

Hello

"...nless there's something else." - Yes.There is a lot more.For example.

"How about speed optimizing?":

1. Test your site in special services. For example: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/https://www.webpagetest.org/https://gtmetrix.com/https://tools.pingdom.com/Try to implement as many recommendations as possible that will be offered by these services.But consider the profitability of implementation.
2. If you remove all unnecessary "elements".
3. Use a good hosting. It is better with ModPagespeed.
4. Optimize images.
5. Use static file caching.