Optimization Tips To Speed Up WordPress Websites

WordPress is the most used content management system on earth, controlling more than 43.5% of users globally. This is made possible by WordPress’s extensive range of themes, plugins, and technologies, which offer high levels of flexibility and customization. While this flexibility is awesome, it can also result in performance bottlenecks that affect page speed, search engine optimization (SEO), and user experience (UX). The speed of your WordPress website is essential if you want it to remain competitive and achieve excellent rankings in search results.

Here, we are going to discuss certain speed optimization tips for WordPress websites in detail. Using these strategies, you’ll boost your site’s performance to get the best SEO without spilling into a poor user experience. From helping debug common issues to overcoming performance hurdles and making your website run faster—we will have something for everyone, from seasoned developers down to an everyday WordPress user.

Speed Optimization Tips for WordPress Websites

Pick a Hosting Provider and a Plan that Works Best for You

Let me start by emphasizing the importance of having a reliable hosting provider to prevent website loading failures. Your website gets its pages from your server, where all your files and databases are stored, whenever a user visits.

Now, we have a detailed guide on selecting the best WordPress hosting. A quality host will always have rapid and steady servers. Stable refers to a host that maintains good “uptime,” meaning that their server functions properly and your website remains accessible. However, a “fast” server refers to the computer(s) that host your website.

A trustworthy hosting provider should also provide scalability for traffic increases. A good host will have the resources to handle the increased load and ensure your website stays up.

Additionally, you should choose a host that provides excellent customer support. A trustworthy host offers tech assistance once you face problems with your website. Well-trained support teams can also be problem solvers in their own right, which means less time spent finding solutions and more back-to-the-ground experience.

Include the server location in relation to your users. Even if the server is fast, if it’s far away from your users, they could end up with slow page loads.

We vetted a handful of hosting providers to help you find the best fit for hosting.

Upgrade your Rendition of PHP

Updating PHP itself is one of those small tasks that, if you know how, is easy to accomplish but often goes unnoticed. PHP, which stands for Hypertext Processor, is an open-source, server-side scripting language that is compatible with HTML. PHP is one language that allows web developers to create things like interactive websites, content management systems, programming languages, and programming ontology—all of the programming languages.

We expect the newest PHP available to significantly speed up your website. You will get:

• Better performance The code runs faster with less resource usage.
• Improved memory management: This can mean that it will take less RAM to run your WordPress site, which in turn provides much faster page load times.

You can disregard this point as it pertains to faster request processing, as newer versions of PHP can process requests more quickly, leading to faster page loading.

Newer versions of PHP generally reduce resource usage on your server and can cache more intelligently, resulting in a faster page load time.

You can review the development of endoflife.php or the endoflife date.

Because it is a server-side scripting language, many hosting providers have included PHP support in their packages. If you want to upgrade your PHP, speak with them about this.

However, note that updating PHP can affect the proper functionality of some of your WordPress plugins and themes, making them incompatible with this method. A compatibility issue with these plugins and themes could potentially break your website, so it’s crucial to take a backup before updating and to test it afterward.

This is an Effortless Fix by Updating your WordPress Version

Advice as old as time! This advice is effective and therefore deserves a place on this list. Simply updating your WordPress website to a newer version can already give you a beneficial speed bump. Optimizations: You always receive the latest performance boosts and a plethora of other optimizations. Is there anything not to like?

For example, WordPress 6.1 received performance improvements like more efficient database queries, and media delivery also benefited from some backend tweaks that resulted in faster load times for your audience. Consequently, this leads to consistently improved load speeds for both new and experienced users.

What is more, updating to a new WordPress version also enables you to execute an updated PHP version, and this will bring even more performance boosts.

In addition, it is prudent to try out an update on a staging environment before you apply the changes to your live website. Test that the update is problem-free, detects any plugin conflicts,and operates as the original corrected part. You can check the WordPress.org forums or Twitter to find out if the update is breaking sites for other people.

Implement a Caching Solution

The cache is likely the most significant component of that performance equation. Instead, it is a simple solution that can improve load time by making your WordPress website faster for returning visitors.

Caching involves saving common data in a temporary storage area. The cache allows for instantaneous retrieval of data whenever needed, eliminating the need to query the server.

One reason for this is that it can decrease the amount of data that should be transferred between the server and your visitor’s browser, resulting in faster page loads as a consequence of an improvement in website performance. Consequently, when a visitor returns to a previously viewed page, the server doesn’t need to send a new set of database queries to retrieve all those elements, such as HTML and images, and instead serves the cached content on any subsequent page.

Caching plugins will solve the problem. At this point, all of them are straightforward to use. However, if you install multiple caching or optimization plugins, your site’s performance may suffer. They can overlap and obstruct each other, causing your site to lose its speed!

Here are our top picks for caching plugins:

• WP Rocket is super powerful and one of the best solutions to speed up your site. Designed to be simple. No free option.
• W3 Total Cache: Very powerful, very customizable. Designed to be comprehensive. Checkboxes, checkboxes, and more options.
• NitroPack—Full page caching with some extremely smart, cutting-edge performance optimization tech. Lots of great bells and whistles, but on a pricing model that also scales with pageviews.
• WP-Optimize—a good compromise—does basic full-page caching and some advanced database and media optimization tools.
• WP Super Cache: This is a simple one that only offers full page caching; everything else has to rely on another optimization.

Make Use of Image Optimization

Improve WordPress website speed with this}/#{solution. Having photos is crucial for attracting visitors and keeping them engaged. Even if your site is filled with stunning images, make sure to optimize them for a fast page load. Mr. Matt Cutts recommends: compressing images, using alt text and titles with your image tags, and creating an image sitemap. Create an image sitemap.

To automatically compress images, you can use a WordPress plugin such as Imagify. Imagify is the best free image optimizer for WordPress to compress and auto-convert images into WebP and Avif. This plugin will compress your images automatically using Smart Compression, with a high balance between quality and performance level. Simply follow this guide to install the WebP converter for media, which not only saves time but also eases the process, especially if you’re looking for something lightweight and simple to install and forget about.

WP Smush is also free to reduce your images as you add them to the media library. Every compression is lossless, i.e., you will not notice a difference in the image quality.

Option 2: Compress images on your own instead of using a plugin Photoshop and other image editors can reduce image size. Otherwise, you can minimize your images with online tools like TinyPNG. 

Choose a Simple Theme

The theme you choose affects how quickly your pages load for users. Indeed, WordPress boasts the largest collection of themes, yet not all themes are equally beneficial.

Of course, some themes are better coded than others. Badly coded or inefficient themes can kill your website load time and give you all kinds of problems down the road.

It’s important to note that some of these themes are more limited than others. The shiny objects on the subject lines are likely to pique your interest, but be cautious! If a page contains numerous images, scripts, or other elements, it will likely be larger and heavier. At times, simplicity is the solution!

Simply select a theme that operates quickly and efficiently, is open source, and allows for community reviews. They are your best choice in a sea of options. Make sure you validate that by checking the ratings and reviews. There are things you can do, even if the theme, such as celebrating, could change in the future, so it’s best to stick to one for the time being. Shifting themes could potentially cause issues in the future.

In addition to themes, a page builder is also a popular tool for website design. This tool is suitable for both novice and seasoned WordPress users. Similar to the theme, we recommend you pick a popular and well-reviewed caching plugin. There are page builders that are significantly lighter and more optimized for speed than others.

Turn on Page Caching

Dynamic WordPress pages Therefore, every process of loading a web page from the non-cached site will require all necessary information related to that content to be retrieved in your WordPress database by PHP on your server and assembled into an HTML file, which then can be sent over to client stakeholders.

This method offers several advantages, primarily the ability to load ever-dynamic content on the website without occupying extra server space. However, it is more time- and energy-consuming compared to a pre-written web page.

The cache plugin is the most common method to fix this issue. That way, for any future visitors, a caching plugin will keep the final view of your site ready to display. All subsequent visitors to your site will also benefit from this preparation. WP Rocket is a more advanced performance plugin that will immediately turn caching on (if you leave everything at defaults) and make your website load faster with just the flip of a switch. This could help in making your website faster, with a higher PageSpeed Insights score and better Core Web Vitals grades.

Popular caching plugins include:

• Cache Enabler – WordPress Cache
• W3 Total Cache
• WP Super Cache

You can do it without plugins. Therefore, you should request a solution to add expiration headers using the code found in the htaccess file.

Treat Your Static Content Using CDN

Faster page loading times: When configured correctly, a CDN can help you save valuable time by serving visitors’ details from the nearest servers whenever they arrive on your site. This is where your data center will come in, handling storing static files and content that they can replicate based on the user’s location.

That can serve static content instead of requesting tons of HTTP; it will create one request externally, so doesn’t this reduce the external HTTP requests? You can use,

• Incapsula: Free CDN Provider
• Cloudflare
• CDN Enabler for WordPress

to set up your CDN. While deploying a CDN might take an hour or two, it’s typically one of the fastest methods to drastically (and instantly) boost your site speed.

# # associate .js with “text/javascript” type (if not present in mime.conf) # AddType text/javascript.js # configure mod_expires # URL: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_expires.html # ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 second"  ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType application/x-javascript “access plus 2692000 seconds” ExpiresByType text/html “access plus 600 seconds” ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml “access plus 600 seconds” # # configure mod_headers # # URL: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_headers.html # Header set Cache-Control: public” Header set Cache-Control: private, must-revalidate” Header unset ETag Header unset Last-Modified

 Activate Gzip Compression

The more compact a website is, the quicker it loads. Enabling gZip compression could reduce the size of your website content by 70%. Compress a website, and the bandwidth is less, so it can be loaded more quickly.

Users will visit your website; their browser will automatically unzip the files, and it will show up! It enables the server to transfer content (data) directly from a database or server to your browser, resulting in a significantly faster and more efficient process.

You can use a WordPress plugin to make Gzip enable, like PageSpeed, Ninj, and Breeze.

If you prefer to perform the task manually, without the use of a plugin, then proceed to open yours. The.htaccess file is likely located in your server’s root directory. Add this code

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

Import Your Photos Using LazyLoad

Lazy loading is a design pattern in which you defer the loading of an object unit until its use is required. In WordPress, this generally means to lazy load the object when a user has scrolled down or used an on-click event. You can lazy load all sorts of stuff: images, videos, and even the comment system.

BJ Lazy Load: A free little (great) plugin to lazy load images. It just replaces all of your posts, thumbnails, gravatar images, and content iframes with a placeholder and loads the content as it gets close to entering the browser window when you scroll down. Also works with text widgets.

Lazy Load for Videos is a free plugin that allows you to lazy load your videos. The plugin can significantly speed up WordPress on its own, especially if your site is video-heavy.

Reducing CSS, HTML and JS Files

Minifying your HTML/JavaScript/CSS, which simply means removing inessential empty spaces and character returns from whatever resource you need loaded, is a much more productive and practical strategy for optimizing resources.

•  White space characters
•  New line characters.
•  Comments
•  Block delimiters

Turn off Unused Plugins & Themes

Trashing unused plugins and themes: You can optimize your WordPress speed by deleting unused plugins and unused themes. Know the plugins and themes you no longer use. If you haven’t been using a particular plugin, it may be causing unnecessary tasks to run in the background. Deactivating a plugin is usually the first step to get rid of an inactive plugin. After that, you can visit your inactive plugins list and delete the ones you do not need anymore.

Simply navigate to Appearance > Themes and delete any themes you no longer need.

Enable HTTPS and HTTP/2

HTTP 1.1 was used by the web for a very long time. It was in need of an update! HTTP/2 offers a lot of improvements over HTTP 1.1 from a performance perspective, like multiplexing, server pushes, and header compression (to some extent).

In order to run HTTP/2, you need HTTPS enabled on your site as well as some kind of SSL certificate installed. It not only accelerates your WordPress site but also enhances its security.

Not Host Audio/Video Directly on the Site

Add audio/video files directly into your WordPress site and have each display in their own HTML5 player. But you should NEVER do that!

It loads your site extensively. If you need to upload video and audio, please embed the link for proper playback.

WordPress has this good video embed thing, so you can just throw a URL for your video inside the post, and it will magically embed itself.

Stop the use of Hotlinks

Hot linking is when a website uses another site’s resources. For example, if someone copies an image from your site, their website opens with your image instead. This also consumes your server’s bandwidth and resources.

Disabling this feature improves the speed of your website, as it slows down the site.

Add your domain name and the following code to your htaccess file to disable hot linking.

What happens after implementing hot linking? Images on external sites will display as broken, showing a 403 error in the header.

What is the Optimal Website Loading Speed? 

A website’s loading time should ideally be 2 to 3 seconds or quicker. Studies show that people who use Web sites normally expect those sites to be free from delay. If the site takes more than a few seconds to load, users tend to lose interest.

However, some websites may experience slower loading times than others. We are adding load time for web pages, including eCommerce sites, blogs, and SaaS:

Example of E-commerce: For an e-commerce site, the average loading time is 2–3 seconds. More than 40% of consumers will not wait more than three seconds before leaving an eCommerce site that does not load.

Definition: Optimal loading times for a standard WordPress site range between 1 and 5 seconds. The bounce rate of a blogging site significantly increases beyond 5 seconds.

SaaS: SaaS websites are no other with less fast-loading pages. There is a significant difference in conversion rates when the page loads in less than 2.4 seconds, compared to those that take longer.

Even if your site isn’t in these categories, strive for a 3-second load time.

Conclusion

If you are unable to enhance the performance of your WordPress site, then you need to give it serious attention. Create a plan from our guide. You just have to begin by checking your site feature by feature. Apply our recommendations to your site and assess its effectiveness. You won’t see results within a few days, but if you want to consistently see positive results, this guide can be very helpful. It’s not a task overnight. So, hold on and keep doing.

If you received any of these benefits from this guide, do let us know your thoughts in the email. This will help new readers improve their work.

FAQ

1. What are the causes of a slow-loading WordPress site?

Unoptimized images, an excessive number of plugins, a heavy theme, and the absence of caching contribute to the slow loading of your site. Additionally, poor hosting can lead to long response times and unoptimized database queries.

2. How can a non-developer speed up a WordPress site?

Absolutely! You can use numerous methods to speed up your website even without understanding how the coding works. These methods could include enabling image optimization, using cache plugins, or choosing a fast host with performance optimizations.

3. What is the best way to optimize images for faster loading on WordPress? 

Website Speed and Image Optimization Optimize Images: Resize images to the proper dimensions, compress them losslessly, and employ lazy loading techniques. Like CSS, image optimization plugins handle this.

4. Should I use WordPress’s cache feature or not?

Yes, please use the caching plugin. Caching plugins capture a snapshot of your pages and convert them into static HTML files, reducing the amount of work required when a user lands on the page. This is achieved by avoiding the need to search for all relevant code and dynamically create output each time. Some popular caching plugins for WordPress are WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache.

5. Are speed tests affected by the web hosting provider for the WordPress site?

Absolutely! Making the right web hosting choice is crucial, as it significantly influences the speed of your website. Shared hosting has resource limitations and more loading time. If your website is having slow response times, think about moving to managed WordPress hosting or VPS (virtual private servers), which are more powerful and provide dedicated resources and server optimizations.