17 Ways to Optimize and Speed Up WordPress Sites

Sara JInternet Marketing & Local

SEOPattronize InfoTech

Select a Good Web Host

Select a Good Web Host

• Its important to find, which server we are using.• I would recommend to go with Bluehost, Hostgator.• They are provide cost efficient packages, brilliant

customer support, with excellent server speed.• If you want to go with the managed Wordpress hosting

then Bluehost, WPEngine and Inmotion hosting can be perfect choice for you.

Use A Cache Plugin

Use A Cache Plugin

• WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache can help your website with amazing speed.

• Server uses cached copies when someone visits a page, instead of utilizing server resources to generate the pages

• 1 Million+ active websites• Add-on’s helps to reduces access of MySQL, number of

PHP & HTTP requests• For expertise W3 Total Cache plugins will be a good choice

other can go with WP Super Cache

CDN to Speed Up Your Website

CDN to Speed Up Your Website

• Static resources like images, JavaScript, CSS & other small files makes site slower if you don’t have a CDN configured.

• CDN makes content and data delivered from nearest data centers

• Decreasing the load on your host increases blogging speed.

• Cloud Flare offers free CDN service.• Max CDN should be your alternate choice for CloudFlare.

Optimize Uploaded Images

Optimize Uploaded Images

• Images can be heavier for your blog, its best to optimize the images before uploading to your website

• Resizing your images or scaling down using CSS will increase loading time for your blog/website.

• People use images of various sizes for their blog, which is reduced to save storage & increasing speed

• WP Smush will make the process easy to optimize images on your site.

Use a Better Theme

Use a Better Theme

• Choose a WordPress theme that comply with HTML and CSS standards.

• Custom designed WordPress theme will avoid usage of unwanted plugins and customizations.

• In most cases WordPress theme you purchase will come with inbuilt features & SEO optimized.

• You can improve your site speed if your theme follows HTML and CSS framework best practices.

Enable Gzip Compression

Enable Gzip Compression

• Compression mechanism enabled on your site/server will Gzip the whole content from server and delivers with reduced size to user. Browser will render the data and display as HTML.

• You are free to enable the Gzip compress from cPanel form your web host

• There are many other ways to enable Gzip compression.• Use a caching plugin suggestively,W3 Total cache (Plugin by

default comes with Gzip compression mechanism)• You can do it also by tweaking your .htaccess file

AntiSpam Plugin to Control Spam

AntiSpam Plugin to Control Spam

• Receiving too many Spam comments will make your site will bound to become slow.

• One most popular plugin ‘Akismet’ helps to block all your spam comments

• Setting up this plugin is simple, Open an account on Akismet site & opt for a free API from the site. Update the API Code on your website plugin configuration section to activate.

• Make sure you don’t have any open folders, files. Open files are easy to hack and inject spam code on your site.

Use JavaScript in Body & CSSin Head

Use JavaScript in Body & CSSin Head

• Optimizing CSS & JavaScript can improve site loading time.• CSS in head section and JS in body or in Footer.• Remove any render blocking scripts at the head section.• Use asynchronous mode to make sure your page is not

blocked while loading in browser.• User compressed or min files for CSS and JS instead default

developer version. This will reduce the size of the file and unwanted loading time.

Use CSS Sprites

• CSS Sprites is an single image contains all small images used in the website

• This eliminates multiple image downloads during page load.• With the help of CSS we can show any portion of the image

in any place or page within the website• Alternatively you can also use Data URI’s instead of direct

image file name• All these will reduce huge loading time.

Install well Coded Plugins

Install well Coded Plugins

• Plugins will help to automate many activities and saves our time.

• Faulty or not well coded plugins will create issues within the website and affects website loading by a huge margin

• Choose a plugins which have good reviews and ratings.• Read reviews about the plugin before you install.• Check Compatibility for your wordpress version.• Update latest security fixes to your site.• 'Plugin Performance Profiler‘ tool helps to identify plugins

which affects website loading time

Optimize Database Tables

Optimize Database Tables

• The optimizing database is must, for speed optimization of your WordPress blog.

• MySQL database should be optimized for stop loading spam content.

• Use PhpMyAdmin to stop spam comments, trashed post, old post revisions and other things which reduce the optimizes of blog

• WP-optimize or WP-DBManager make your job easy by doing above activities

Use Responsive Design

Use Responsive Design

• You don’t require a separate site for mobile devices. Developing a responsive site will make your job easy

• You can manage content, image and other resource in a single location or file.

• It enables your blog to use few resources as possible, when a user opens your site from the mobile device, it will show up low-resolution images and when from a desktop site it will show high-resolution images

• You will see a good loading time for both mobile and desktop.

Replace PHP with HTML

Replace PHP with HTML

• HTML is 20 times faster than PHP. It is always recommended to use HTML instead of PHP

• Use HTML for PHP to display a text for image.• Using PHP will keep your servers busy all the time.• loading speed of your site will be improved, by replacing

with HTML.

Turn OFF Trackbacks & Pingbacks

• Trackbacks and Pingbacks can be a major problem when you look through your blog.

• A trackback is a reverse server link automatically created when someone links to your blog. These trackbacks use your server and database resources.

• So turn off the options of trackbacks and Pingbacks of your site from navigating to WordPress Discussion Setting.

Delete Old Post Revisions

Delete Old Post Revisions

• Each update made to your post will have a revision data in your database. When you are about to publish blog post and double check it before publishing

• Revision data will consume space on the web host and can decrease loading site time

• Consider installing Revision Control plugin that will automatically remove any old post revisions from your database

Optimize Widgets

Optimize Widgets

• Widgets makes blogs smarter and more functional.• Widget stores unnecessary CSS & JavaScript, which will

make websites slower.• Site speed can be increased by updating CSS and JavaScript

files of the widgets regularly.

Plugin Maintenance

Plugin Maintenance

• Plugin maintenance is a basic activity which should be done for any WordPress site.

• Leaving installed plugins without care can leave you in deep trouble.

• If plugins are not updated on a regular basis then they would become vulnerable and extremely dangerous. This will an open backdoor for hackers to hack your site.

• Updated version plugin can perform better and optimized CSS and scripts can help your site load faster.

Conclusion

• A slow site is the worst nightmare for any blogger. Any blog makes its first impression with the loading speed.

• A blog speed is measured with many online tools like GTMetrix or Pingdom Speed tool. These tools will provide suggestions to speed up your site.

• Above tactics will make amazing speed in your blog• You can find out other important information about

speed optimization on Google Pagespeed Insight.