The speed and page load time of you website plays an important role in its ranking and optimization. In this article we are specifically talking about WordPress websites because it is the most popular CMS in the market today with almost 40% of the market share. There are some small and easy tips and steps (however overlooked frequently) to take in order to speed up a WordPress website.
Tips to Speed up a WordPress Website
Reduce Server Response Time
Whenever a URL is requested from the browser, the server sends the requested page. Hence the server speed needs to be optimized and it should be very fast. In order to fulfill the request from the client. This is known as reducing the server response time for WordPress websites. It is also known as Time To First Byte or TTFB. The best way to reduce the server response time is to use an optimized server configuration. Also, optimizing the database settings. One way to handle this is to use WordPress hosting where the server is already optimized for WordPress websites to give the best performance.
Use a Content Delivery Network
Using a CDN is a great way to speed up a WordPress website. It distributes the data in different geographical locations around the globe. The website owners should select the data center locations based on the traffic. From the areas and countries where most of your requests are coming, select a CDN in those locations for quick speed and load times.
Choose a Good Hosting Provider
Choosing a good hosting provider is also very important. As mentioned earlier selecting WordPress hosting can ensure optimized servers as well as dedicated WordPress support from the provider. Also you can target managed hosting. In the case of managed WordPress hosting the technical details are handled by the hosting provider, so it becomes easier to manage the website. Also, there is support for technical processes like migration, troubleshooting etc.
Faster WordPress website through Lighter Theme
Choosing a lighter theme can help to speed up a WordPress website. Sometimes you might be tempted to choose a beautiful theme. This can make your website aesthetically pleasing however, if it is slow then it is of no benefit. That is why it is best to try out the speed of your website when you are planning to change the theme.
Test your Plugins
Just like theme, some plugins can also slow down the website. Although plugins tend to make like easier by adding specific functionality to your website with pre-written code. But we cannot compromise on the performance. Whenever you are adding a new plugin, always test the speed of your website before the plugin is installed and then after adding it. If there is even a small decrease in speed, then it is better to do without that specfic WordPress Plugin.
Use Caching to Speed up a WordPress website
Caching is also a great way to speed up a WordPress website. It enables the copy of the webpage to be saved on the browser, so everytime the client requests for a page the entire page is not fetched from the server. WordPress has built in caching. There are also a number of great WordPress caching plugins available in the market like Varnish, Breeze, Redis etc. These can easily help in improving the performance of the website.
Database Optimization
Having a huge database is a big culprit in slowing a website down. Nowadays most of the websites have a large amount of data to be stored. So the best practice is to use optimization on your database. Use the latest version of the database and check the implementation for optimized indexing.
Optimize Images & Videos
Image and video optimization is also required in order to load these quickly. If your website has a large amount of video or image content, then it is essential that you optimize it before loading on the website. There are a number of tools available in the market which are optimizing the images and videos by reducing the size and not compromising on the quality. Gzip and Brotli are a couple of them.
These are some of the tips and tricks to optimize your WordPress website for best performance. Do follow these to get the best results.
You can also learn about comparison between WordPress and Wix and then decide which of the CMS do you require.
