How to Optimize WordPress Websites for Speed

Priority number one during a technical audit should be optimizing WordPress speed. Users quickly navigate away from pages that display slowly, but various online tools provide comprehensive information regarding your website's speed performance.

Optimization of WordPress performance begins with WordPress hosting. Similar procedures are followed to optimize a website hosted on a dedicated or shared server. Consequently, specific tools outlined subsequently, such as Breeze, may resemble those you have been employing on the shared website.

Consider the Importance of Speed for Your WordPress Site?

Research indicates that the mean human attention span decreased from 12 seconds to 8 seconds between 2000 and 2016. The current average duration is approximately 8.25 seconds.

This indicates that you need more time to present your content and persuade visitors to remain on your WordPress site.

A sluggish website may prevent visitors from abandoning the page before loading.

Amazon, Google, and other significant websites participated in a StrangeLoop case study, which found that a one-second delay in page load time can result in the following negative metrics: customer satisfaction, conversions, and page views (all of which decline by 7% and 16%, respectively).

Furthermore, Google and other search engines have initiated the penalization of sluggish websites through their demotion in the search results, resulting in diminished traffic for such sites.

In conclusion, if you desire increased website traffic, subscribers, and revenue, you must develop your WordPress site SERIOUSLY!

How Do You Determine the Speed of Your WordPress Site??

Frequently, novices believe their website is satisfactory simply because it does not experience any lag on their computer. That is an enormous error.

Because you visit your website frequently, contemporary web browsers such as Chrome cache and prefetch it automatically whenever you begin to type an address. As a result, your website loads virtually instantaneously.

On the other hand, a first-time visitor to your website may have a different experience. Indeed, users situated in distinct geographic regions will encounter an entirely dissimilar experience.

Before beginning work on your website, it is critical to conduct speed evaluations to determine its current state and identify areas for improvement. Popular free and premium performance testing tools are both accessible.

Core Web Vitals serve as the primary metrics for optimizing the results of performance tests. Included in the Core Web Vitals metrics are the following:

The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric evaluates the speed at which a web page loads, explicitly focusing on the rendering speed of its most essential components. To deliver a positive user experience, aim for a score of no more than 2.5 seconds.

The Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric indicates the rate at which a page is updated after user engagement, such as when a button is clicked or a link is selected. It ought to take no longer than two hundred milliseconds.

The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric assesses a webpage's visual stability and experience by computing the number of unforeseen layout shifts. Aim for a CLS score of no more than 0.1.

What Causes Your WordPress Site to Sluggish??

The speed test report will likely include numerous suggestions for enhancement. The remainder, however, consists of technical jargon that is difficult for novices to comprehend.

Gaining insight into the factors that impede your website's speed is crucial for enhancing its functionality and making more informed decisions in the long run.

The principal causes of a sluggish WordPress site are:

Web Hosting: An improperly configured web hosting server can negatively impact your website's performance.

WordPress Configuration: If your WordPress site fails to serve cached pages, server congestion will result, leading to significant slowness or complete failure of your website.

Page Size: If you use images not optimized for the web, your pages will run more slowly.

Incomplete Plugins: Using inadequately designed plugins can substantially decelerate your website's performance.

External Scripts: Ads, font loaders, and other external scripts can significantly impact your website's efficacy.

Moving on to the methods for optimizing a WordPress site, we have now identified the factors that contribute to its sluggishness.

Quickly Accelerate WordPress in a Few Simple Steps

We understand that modifying your website's configuration can be intimidating for novices, particularly those who need more technical expertise.

However, there are methods by which you can approach this.

Install a Caching Plugin for WordPress?

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WordPress pages are dynamic. This means they are generated dynamically each time a user navigates to a particular page or post on your website.

To construct your webpages, WordPress must execute a procedure to locate the necessary data, assemble it, and present it to the user.

This procedure consists of numerous stages, and it can significantly impede the speed of your website when multiple users access it simultaneously.

We advise all WordPress sites to implement a caching application. Caching can increase a site's speed by two to five.

Describe How it Operates?

Instead of repeatedly generating the entire page, your caching plugin duplicates the page upon the initial request and subsequently provides each subsequent user with that cached version.

Your WordPress server retrieves data from a MySQL database and your PHP files whenever a user visits. It then compiles the information into HTML content, which the user is presented with.

It is a lengthy procedure, but much of it can be bypassed by utilizing caching. A multitude of WordPress hosting providers provide caching solutions.

Image Optimization for Speed?

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Images increase engagement with your content by bringing it to life. Research shows that using colored visuals increases the likelihood that individuals will peruse your content by 80%.

However, without optimization, your images may cause more harm than good. Unoptimized images are, in fact, one of the most prevalent performance issues we encounter on novice websites.

Before uploading an image directly from your phone or camera, you optimize it for the web using photo editing software.

These images may have enormous file sizes when saved in their original formats. However, how you compress an image in your editing software and the image file format can reduce its size by as much as fivefold.

You may be pondering, "What is the difference?"

PNG files are, in fact, uncompressed. An image loses some information when compressed; therefore, an uncompressed image will be of superior quality and contain more detail. The disadvantage is that it requires more time to launch due to its larger file size.

In contrast, JPEG is a compressed file format characterized by a marginal degradation in image quality, notwithstanding its considerably reduced file size.

Therefore, how do we determine which image format to utilize?

? Employ JPEG if your photograph or image contains excellent color variation.

? Use PNG if the image is straightforward or if a transparent image is required.

The format of the images you employ can MAJOR impact the file size, affecting your website's efficacy.

Optimal Performance Practices for WordPress?

Upon optimizing your images and installing a caching plugin, you will observe that your website begins to load considerably quicker.

However, you must implement the following best practices to ensure your website remains as fast as possible.

These suggestions are not overly technical, so their implementation does not require any knowledge of code. However, employing them will avert frequent issues that impede your website's speed.

Maintain WordPress Site Updates?

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WordPress is a diligently maintained open-source initiative that undergoes regular updates. In addition to introducing novel functionalities, every update rectifies security vulnerabilities and flaws. Additionally, your WordPress theme and plugins might receive routine updates.

As a website proprietor, you must ensure that the WordPress site, theme, and plugins run the most recent versions. Neglecting to do so could result in a sluggish and unreliable website, rendering it susceptible to security threats.

Enhance Background Operation?

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Background processes are pre-established operations that execute in the background of a WordPress website. The subsequent instances illustrate background duties that are executed on a WordPress website:

? Duties of WordPress backup plugins

? WordPress cron jobs for scheduled post-publication

? WordPress cron processes for update monitoring

? Crawlers and search engines attempting to retrieve content

CRON jobs that execute scheduled posts and updates exhibit negligible repercussions on the efficacy of a website.

Other secondary processes, such as backup plugins and excessive search engine crawling, can slow down a website.

Ensuring that the WordPress backup plugin is exclusively activated during periods of minimal website traffic is imperative. Additionally, it is necessary to modify both the backup frequency and the data that requires recovery.

For instance, an adjustment must be made if a complete daily backup is generated even though new content is only published twice weekly.

If you desire more frequent backups, including real-time backups, we advise you to utilize a SaaS solution to alleviate the burden on your server.

You must monitor the crawl reports in the Google Search Console regarding crawling. Recurring crawl operations that yield erroneous outcomes may lead to website deceleration or unresponsiveness.

Utilize Excerpts on the Archives and Homepage

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WordPress exhibits the complete content of every article on the homepage and archives by default. This will delay loading times for your homepage, categories, tags, and other archive pages.

Another drawback of displaying complete articles on these web pages is that it discourages users from visiting the original articles. This may result in a decrease in both pageviews and user engagement with the website.

To enhance the loading performance of archive pages, a website may be configured to exhibit excerpts rather than the complete contents.

You may select 'Excerpt' rather than 'Full text' next to the setting indicating what should be displayed for each article in a feed by navigating to Settings ? Reading.

Separate Comments by Page?

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Are you receiving a lot of feedback on your blog posts? Congratulations! That is an excellent sign of an attentive audience.

However, the processing time of all those comments may significantly slow down your website.

There is a built-in solution for that in WordPress. To enforce the 'Break comments into pages' option, navigate to Settings ? Discussion and select the corresponding checkbox.

Implement a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

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Recall that users residing in various geographic regions might encounter disparate loading durations on your website.

This is because the location of your web hosting infrastructure can affect the speed of your site.

Suppose, for instance, that your web hosting provider's servers are located in the United States. In general, a visitor in the United States will experience quicker page loads than one in India.

Implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can assist in optimizing the loading performance for every visitor.

A CDN is an international network comprised of servers. Every server is responsible for storing static files used to construct your website.

These static files consist of immutable content such as CSS, JavaScript, and images, in contrast to the dynamic nature of your WordPress pages, which was explained above.

When a user visits your website via a CDN, the static files are loaded from the server closest to them. The CDN accelerates your web hosting server and performs much of the work.

A CDN enhances the performance of your WordPress caching plugins and facilitates quicker page loads for your sites.

Avoid Directly Uploading Video or Audio Files To WordPress?

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Audio and video files can be uploaded directly to a WordPress site and displayed automatically in an HTML5 player.

However, that should NEVER be done!

Streaming videos and audio will require bandwidth. Even with the inclusion of 'unlimited' bandwidth in your web hosting plan, you risk overage charges or even having your site deleted by your ISP.

Hosting sizable media files significantly exacerbates the size of backups and complicates restoring WordPress from a backup.

Instead, you should utilize a service to host audio and video, such as SoundCloud, YouTube, or Vimeo, and let them handle the laborious tasks. They possess the necessary resources!

WordPress includes an inbuilt video embed feature; to use it, you only need to copy and paste the URL of the desired video into your post, and it will automatically embed.

We advise optimizing the podcast hosting service when developing a WordPress podcast website.

Employ a speed-Optimized Theme?

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When choosing a theme for your website, performance optimization should be your primary consideration. Some aesthetically pleasing and seemingly impressive themes must be more adequately coded and can significantly slow down your site.

Generally, a straightforward theme is preferable to one cluttered with intricate layouts, extravagant animations, and extra components. Those features are consistently attainable via premium WordPress plugins.

Themes sold by premium WordPress theme marketplaces are well-coded and speed-optimized.

Employ Quicker Plugins?

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Poorly coded WordPress plugins frequently add substantial content to a site without necessity, increasing page load time and decreasing site performance.

You may also conduct your assessments. For example, you can perform speed tests before and after installing a plugin to assess its influence on overall performance.

Optimization of WordPress Speed?

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Implementing WordPress optimization best practices and fundamental performance tips should significantly improve your site's loading times.

However, each millisecond counts. Several additional adjustments will be necessary if you desire the highest possible pace.

Some of the subsequent suggestions are more technical, necessitating the modification of site files or a rudimentary comprehension of PHP.

Additionally, you must ensure a site backup is available.

Dividing Lengthy Posts into Pages?

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Longer, more comprehensive blog posts are generally well-received by readers. Frequently, longer posts achieve higher rankings in search engine results pages.

However, if you publish lengthy articles that contain numerous images, they may slow down the rendering times of your pages.

Consider dividing lengthy posts into multiple pages as an alternative.

WordPress includes built-in functionality for this purpose. To begin a new page, insert a Page Break block into your article at the desired location.

Minimize Requests to External HTTP Servers?

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Numerous WordPress themes and plugins import various files from external websites. These files may contain scripts, stylesheets, and images from external sources such as Google, Facebook, analytics services, etc.

It is acceptable to utilize several of these. Numerous files have been optimized for rapid loading, making this alternative to hosting them on one's website.

However, if your plugins generate many requests, your website may be significantly slowed down.

These external HTTP requests can be reduced by disabling scripts and styles or combining them into a single file.

Decrease Database Access?

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Unfortunately, the WordPress theme marketplace is rife with improperly coded themes. They must adhere to WordPress best practices and execute excessive superfluous database requests or direct queries.

This can severely impede the performance of your server by overwhelming it with work.

Even programmed themes may contain scripts that make database queries to retrieve the most fundamental information about your blog.

The theme developer is not to blame for this. They are simply unable to determine the language of your website in any other way.

However, if you are customizing your site with a child theme, you can substitute particular information for these database queries, reducing the number of database queries.

You may examine your parent theme for similar instances where static information can be readily substituted.

Enhance the WordPress Database?

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After using WordPress, your database will likely contain much unnecessary information. To enhance efficacy, optimize the database by eliminating redundant information.

Limit Revisions to Posts?

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Post revisions consume database capacity on WordPress. According to some users, revisions may also impact specific plugin database queries. Without explicit exclusion of post revisions, the plugin could impede your website's speed by conducting unnecessary searches through them.

Prevent Leaching and Hotlinking to Your Content?

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Unfortunately, if you produce high-quality content on your WordPress site, it will almost certainly be compromised at some point.

This occurs, for instance, when external websites serve your images via their URLs embedded on your site rather than transferring them to their servers.

They are, in effect, swiping the bandwidth from your web hosting account without providing any traffic in return.

Certain websites that harvest content generate posts automatically by stealing the content from your RSS feed.

Should Lazy Loading Be Required??

The site may experience advantages when incorporating numerous images, video embeds, and photo galleries into blog entries due to the implementation of lazy loading.

At least frequently load download images and videos that will only be visible on the user's screen instead of installing the entire collection simultaneously. All other embedded images and videos are substituted with a placeholder image.

Your website imports images visible in the browser's viewing area as the user scrolls down. Images, videos, WordPress comments, and avatars can be loaded lazily.

Implement a DNS-Level Website Security Firewall?

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Utilizing a WordPress firewall plugin prevents malware, hacking attempts, and brute-force attacks. Nevertheless, every firewall plugin is unique.

Certain of them operate on your website, allowing assailants to access your web server before they are blocked. While this remains secure, peak efficacy needs to be improved.

We, therefore, advise the implementation of a DNS-level barrier. These firewalls prevent malicious queries from reaching your website.

HTTPS/SSL Error Resolution without Plugin?

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Mixed content errors may occur when transitioning a website to HTTPS/SSL.

Installing a plugin such as Simple SSL is the simplest solution; however, this plugin intercepts all URLs, converts them to HTTPS, and then forwards them to the users' browsers.

This has a negligible yet discernible effect on efficacy. You can mitigate this by manually correcting every URL.

Utilize the Most Recent Version of PHP?

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The majority of WordPress is constructed using the PHP programming language. It operates as a server-side language that is installed and configured on the hosting server.

On their servers, all reputable WordPress hosting providers utilize the most recent and reliable version of PHP. You may be utilizing a hosting provider using a slightly outdated version of PHP.

PHP 8.3 has a 42% increase in speed compared to its predecessors. That is an enormous performance increase that your website must utilize.

The Version Info extension can be used to determine the PHP version being used by a website.

Once activated, the plugin will display your PHP version in the footer of your WordPress administration dashboard.

If your website is still running a version of PHP that is lower than 7, request that your hosting provider upgrade it. A new WordPress hosting provider must be sought if they cannot do so.

Last Verdict?

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A sluggish WordPress site will annoy visitors and adversely influence search engine rankings. A website that loads quickly is vital for search engine optimization and user satisfaction.

This article has examined several techniques for increasing WordPress's performance. We arranged the techniques in ascending order of difficulty, beginning with the most novice-friendly suggestions and progressing to the more sophisticated procedures.

This article has helped you implement the most effective strategies to enhance the performance of your WordPress website. Please share any inquiries or supplementary suggestions regarding the optimization of WordPress performance in the comments section.