One of the most important factors to consider when trying to maintain a good volume of traffic to your WordPress website is page load time. The speed of your site will be the first thing Internet users will notice, creating a first impression on how good or bad is it to use your site. If your pages do not load fast enough, your visitors might leave instantly without even trying to look at your site or read the first lines of its content. Google and other major search engines consider site speed in search engine ranking.
To improve your WordPress site’s speed, there’s a lot of easy tweaks you can do:
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Optimize your database.
If your database is jammed and disorganized, your site’s pages would load slowly because it would take longer to locate and display data. Thus, you should optimize your database by installing a WordPress plugin that will do the job for you or do it manually using phpMyAdmin under your MySQL database in the cloud control panel. Great plugins that you can use in repairing, cleaning up and optimizing your database include the WP Database Optimizer and WP-DBManager.
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Get rid of unused plugins.
Plugins can definitely have an impact on site speed, it is recommended to keep them to a minimum. Check if there are some that are deactivated and uninstall them, and the same goes for those that are seldom used. Also, make sure to update plugins when you are prompted to do so.
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Remove post revisions.
Whenever you are editing a page or content, WordPress will create and save a revision. Though this function is useful in seeing the changes that were made, it can also make your database too loaded in the long run, decreasing your site’s speed. You can use the Better Delete Revision plugin to get rid of redundant revisions.
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Minimize image file sizes.
Using large image file sizes unnecessarily on your site can slow it down and decrease its usability. Instead, optimize images and reduce file sizes without compromising quality using WordPress plugins and free online tools, such as EWWW Image Optimiser and Ranking Easy Image Optimizer.
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Opt for simple, lighter, yet still attractive themes.
Mostly, the low load speed experienced by WordPress users is simply the effect of the themes they use. As much as possible, you should stay away from fancy and over-the-top themes with bulky lines of code and loads of images. While they may look great, they can significantly decrease website speed. Instead, you should go for simple themes that are created by reputable WordPress developers that accordingly update and support themes.
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Utilize a caching plugin.
This will make a significant difference to the performance and speed of your website. As you can see, caching plugins generate static files of your pages and posts to serve to users, decreasing the processing load on the hosting server, also the load times for users. There are many options available for you, from the simple and easy-to-use Quick Cache to the more rigorous and advanced WP Super Cache, which offers all types of configuration options. Alternatively, you can also upgrade your hosting to a virtual dedicated server (VDS) package with substantial performance gains. However, this alternative might not be suitable for you if extra cost is an issue.
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Update your PHP version.
Newer versions of PHP are faster, which you will notice by comparing versions 5.2 and 5.3. If you are a cloud user, then you should be using PHP 5.3 by default, which is quite faster than 5.2. You can also choose to opt for PHP 5.4, which is known to even have more improvements in speed. You can upgrade your PHP version in the cloud control panel under the Advanced Management Tools.
The good thing about using WordPress as a platform for your website is that you do not need extensive technical knowledge and skills for optimization and improvement. Try following the tips listed above and see your pages load faster than before!
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