In this article, we will cover how to speed up WordPress websites and why the speed of webpages matters. But before moving on how t speed up WordPress website we will know why WordPress speed matters.
Why speed of WordPress website matters?
1. Slow Websites fewer visitors: If the website takes too much time to load then users will lose satisfaction and leave webpage before loading website.
2. Speed is one of the factors of SEO: Google algorithms now also include website speed which will affect your website SEO. So if your website speed is slow then its ranking will be reduced at search engines.
Webpages with better speed will improve user experiences, increase visitors and ranking at search engines that will also help in SEO.
To get better performance WordPress websites follow the guideline that is given below.
Guidelines to Boost WordPress website speed and performance:
1. Make Good choice for Web Hosting :
The called and an element is Web Hosting. There are three types of web hosting Shared Hosting, VPS(Virtual Private Server) Hosting, Dedicated Hosting.
Shared hosting is a cheapest hosting provider but its incredibly slow your site speed and frequently have downtime due to finite resources during high traffic periods it's a phenomenon called "bad neighbor effect".
If you have a huge site, manpower and budget then go for dedicated hosting. It may be more than you need.
Apart from all this VPS is best option for running small website without having downtime it provides perfect balance of speed, performane and cost.
2. Enable Caching :
Whenever the user tries to access any WordPress websites servers pass Php request to MySQL database which finds the page that is being requested, put it all together as HTML and show it to visitors. This consumes most of the resources and takes much time.
The solution for above is caching which save a copy of the pages in cache memory whenever the user makes the request for the very first time. So whenever user request same page then server first checks cache memory if the page is available then it sends the page to visitors if not then send the request to MySQL because of which caching saves both time and resources.
There are two ways to enable cache in WordPress websites by using WordPress caching plugins and ask if your hosting provider provides caching feature at your server if it is then enabled it. Best method is to enable caching at server.
3. Use Content Delivery Network CDN:
CDN caches all the static files that are Javascript, CSS, images that your websites have and allow visitors to download these files as fast as possible by serving then on servers that are close to users. WordPress provide plugins for CDN and MaxCDN, Sucuri, Cloudflare, StackPath, KeyCDN, Rackspace, etc are some the CDN's available for WordPress websites.
4. Optimize Images, homepage and WordPress Database:
Image file size is one of the factor of WordPress website speed. Larger the image file size more time website take to load. Optimize the image to reduce the file size. Number of tools and WordPress plugins are available to optimize plugins.
Most visitors land at the homepage, therefore, the homepage is one of the most important pages in your website. To make visitors stay at your website then make sure that your home page contains clean and focused design and minimal widgets which also make it to load faster.
Follow the below guidelines to optimize your home page.
- Your home page should not contain a large number of widgets. Remove inactive plugins and widgets.
- Show only 5 to 6 posts per page.
- Instead of showing the whole content of posts shows only excerpts of posts.
To optimize database delete unwanted data such as spam comments, fake users and unwanted plugins or themes this will reduced the size of your database, web files and also increase the speed of browser to fetch data that will directly increases speed of website.
5. Use The Latest Version Of PHP, WordPress and its Components :
With latest version of PHP, WordPress, themes and plugins will make sure that all the major vulnerabilities are fixed or not. Keeping website up to date will not only help you to improve the speed of website but it also make sure the security of website should be maintain.
6. Use Faster Plugins and Optimized Themes :
If themes or plugins have too many dynamic elements such widget, sliders and huge page size then it will directly effect the speed of your webpage. Instead of that users must use light weighted themes and plugins that will not afest the speed of WordPress website
7. Regular Maintenance of Database :
Maintaining database is most important for keeping database clean and easy to access data. There are many plugins available to do so. While maintaining database user must sure that there should be a minimum number of post revisions and wp_options table should contain the minimum number of rows
8. Make Minimum Database & server request :
Whenever the browser requires some resources such as Javascript files, CSS files or images the server request is generated. More the server request more the browser takes time to load the website. In this case user should take care of the followings:
- Show a minimum number of posts per pages.
- Remove the unwanted plugins.
- Use the minimum number of images and high weighted elements
- Avoid the use of external resources such as fonts, external CSS, and Javascript.
- Enable lazy load to load images.
Follow the above simple eight steps to boost your WordPress website speed. The above steps not only speed up your website but also help in maintaining the security of website