How to increase the speed of a WordPress site
Today web requires efficient and fast-loading websites. Loading speed impacts user experience, SEO ranking, and page views. Fortunately, increasing the WordPress speed can be managed with less effort if you follow these WordPress maintenance company suggestions.
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Opt for a better web hosting provider
For a WebPress site, web hosting is essential in terms of speed. WordPress host usually offers several hosting options such as dedicated, shared, virtual private server (VPS), cloud and managed WordPress hosting.
When opting for a hosting provider keep in mind that hosting must provide you with enough server resources. Sufficient server resources ensure that your loading speed won’t suffer then traffic increases. -
Update
Among other features updating the theme, plugins, and WordPress core is crucial in helping your site work efficiently. Updating these elements to perform in their latest version will ensure seamless functioning. Besides those facets, keep testing the performances of others and install updates when available.
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Use the newest version of PHP
PHP is a scripting and programming language used for WordPress software. This is a server-side language, which means PHP files are stored and executed on your web hosting server. Like other components, PHP also periodically releases the update with the newest version, which we highly recommend installing for better efficiency and speed.
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Delete redundant plugins
When it comes to plugins quality is more valuable than quantity. Too many plugins speed down the loading. Even if your site is not currently using many plugins, installed plugins might perform needles work in the background and consume valuable resources, which also affects the site’s performance.
To avoid unnecessarily burdening your site, we suggest uninstalling redundant, useless, and unused plugins. Another alternative is to replace a few plugins with a single one that has multiple functions or find a light version of the same plugins.
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Install lightweight theme
Just like a plugin, the overly packed theme can set a burden on your site’s performance. Some themes might be loaded with images and effects large in byte size and imparts lots of codes, which loading requires time.
To avoid the inefficiency of the theme, we recommend using a simple theme that accommodates only necessary features and later adding additional required plugins or custom CSS.
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Optimize images
Large images contribute to slowing speed. By compressing images, you will get in site speed and performance without giving up on the site`s visuals. Many programs can reduce image size without sacrificing quality. The aim is to save space without reducing user experience and drinking the images to the point where they become hard to see.
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Try lazy loading
If your WordPress is a type of site that contains lots of images, you might find lazy loading an adequate option. Lazy loading considers loading only those pictures that appear in users’ browsers window instead of fully loading all the images at once. This means that the page content is gradual. This feature, besides images, applies to any page content such as video and audio material, text, comments, and others.
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Avoid hosting videos on your server
As videos are considered the most resource-intensive material, storing even a single video on your server will consume too much space and performance, which will slow down loading. To avoid sacrificing page speed or video content either, we suggest using tried-party video hosting services such as YouTube. Placing the video on your webpage with embed code, you will avoid stationing a video in your library. This solution doesn’t make any difference to users but donates to site speed.
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Decrease the size of CSS and Javascript files
JavaScript and CSS files are sent from the web server to your web browser when your web page is loading. Therefore, making these files smaller without jeopardizing their functionality can significantly increase page speed.
You can use one of many programs that can compress JavaScript and CSS files, but also offer the scanning option for CSS and Javascript files that burdens your page and delete redundant codes.
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Use the WordPress caching plugin
When users enter your non-cached webpage, the PHP has to retrieve content from your WordPress database, construct this content data into an HTML file, and send that file to the user. The beneficial properties of this approach are in saving server space and empowering dynamic content on a webpage. However, this method entails more energy and time than in cases of sending a pre-written page.
With a caching plugin program, this process is simplified due to its ability to create HTML pages with PHP and save them fully completed. The process is simplified as fully HTML pages are sent to users when a request so the content can reach users more quickly.
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Rationalize your content and page design
This is one of the simplest ways to improve your loading time, thus it contributes to better UX. Simplified design and sufficient content entail fewer resources, additionally making the webpages more responsive to various device screen sizes (desktop computers and smartphones).
Another important thing you can do to optimize your content is to split lengthy posts into shorter sequences. Multiple posts are faster to load. Also, you can split long posts into different pages.
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Clean up the WordPress database
Every WordPress site, after a while, starts to accuminate redundant files in its database. These files are spam, old and unused themes, plugins and files, some unpublished or old content or media, and other features that can contribute to unnecessarily long loading time and occupies valuable space in site storage.
For this reason, we suggest an auditing site with a program for removing non-essential files or manually deleting redundant features from your WordPress library.
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Disable or limit post revisions
WordPress automatically makes a copy of saved posts. While WordPress storages the copy in a database it doesn’t delete the previous version. The advantage of this function is that it allows you to revert to any earlier version of your post if it’s required. However, this method fills site storage and can slower site performance. To avoid this unnecessary, limit the number or disable saved revisions.
To limit saved revisions for posts, open sites wp-config.php file, add code define ( `WP_POST_REVISIONS`, (number) ); in space (number) add the number of revisions you allow to be saved. This will limit the number of revisions for every post.
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Avoid Redirects
Redirects add on leading time so try to avoid implementing too many permanent redirects. Although redirects are pretty much unavoidable, optimizing your website architecture will help you increase site speed and avoid overly complex redirect chains.
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Turn off trackbacks and pinbacks
These two features signal external websites when your WordPress links to them in its content, this also works backward, when other sites link to yours. The benefit of this technology is in the marketing aspect, as this method signals sites that you validate their content and you can expect to receive their backlinks in return. However, experts suggest that this technology’s cons overweight its pros. That is to say, trackbacks and pinbacks unnecessarily use server resources, additionally making the site vulnerable to spammers and DDoS attacks. For this reason, we suggest turning off trackbacks and pinbacks and opting for external analyzing tools.
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Use CDN
CDN is a cluster of connected servers globally. CDN lessens the impact of poor performances due to the physical distance of your server with users in different world parts. By storing a copy of your website’s CSS, JavaScript, and image files, CDN sends the files through a server that is closest to the user.
Final Thoughts
By identifying the aspects that might slow down your website and implementing above mentioned solutions, your WordPress will stay competitive and save your users` time.
Spending some time and effort optimizing your WordPress will ensure your loading pages fit into today’s standard of two seconds for loading. As users nowadays expect a webpage to load within a few seconds, anything slower than that will decrease user experience, SEO ranking, website traffic, and consequently conversion.
