In today’s age, awesome online experiences are a crucial element to building a loyal fanbase. While a positive digital experience can lead to brand advocacy, one that fails to meet expectations on things like site speed can lead a prospect running in the other direction. In fact, Google engineers have discovered the blink of an eye — 400 milliseconds — is too long and causes people to search less.
Not only that, but page speed also affects SEO. Google takes the user experience into consideration with its page ranking algorithm. Since a slow loading site detracts from the user experience, this can damage SEO rankings.
To help you deliver the best experience online possible (and help improve your SEO efforts), we’ve provided this list of tips to help enhance the performance of your WordPress site. Whether it be page size, slow plugins, or some other culprit, read on for some useful tips to help boost page speed times and improve your site’s overall performance.
1. Run A Site Speed Diagnosis
First, you’ll want to run a test, like the WordPress Speed Test, to determine what could be the culprit of slow page load times.
After you insert your site’s URL, you’ll be emailed a custom analysis regarding how fast your site loads and specific recommendations to speed it up.
For WP Engine users, try using Page Performance in the User Portal. Similar to the test above, Page Performance is catered to our technology stack to give you actionable recommendations to speed up your site. You can even schedule recurring tests to see how changes to your site (like adding a new plugin) impact page speed.
2. Configure a CDN
No matter a user’s location, your content should be delivered blazing fast. Sometimes this isn’t always feasible, though…that is, if your site isn’t on an infrastructure that contains data centers in other parts of the world. Distance can mean lag in content delivery, which is where a content delivery network (CDN) becomes handy.
A CDN leads to faster page load times because when configured, your website will use an optimized server that’s closest to your site visitor. The data center will store static content and files, and then deliver them to users based on their location. This can help reduce external HTTP requests because the static content is already ready to go instead of requesting tons of HTTP at once.
Choosing a CDN depends on the popularity and needs of your site. Some WordPress CDN solutions include MaxCDN, Cloudflare, or CacheFly. (WP Engine’s MaxCDN solution can be configured through the User Portal.)
3. Split Excessive Comments Into Pages
If your content is getting a ton of comments, this could be causing page lag. Breaking the comment section into pages is a good idea to shave off the time it takes for them to load.
To paginate comments, simply go to Settings » Discussions and then choose the number of comments you want per page. This should help improve memory consumption and boost page load times for posts and pages with tons of comments.
4. Remove Unused Media/Plugins/Themes
Unless you abide by a minimalist lifestyle, over time, we all tend to accumulate clutter. These unnecessary “things” should be cleaned out every now and then. The same goes for your website.
Removing unused plugins and themes
Not only do unused plugins and themes present security vulnerabilities, but they can also detract from WordPress site performance.
To broom out these cobwebs, simply determine which plugins and themes you find absolutely necessary. The others…toss em! If anything, you can at least deactivate them to cut down the amount of code your site needs to load.
Removing unused media
You can use a plugin like Media Cleaner to dispose of unused media or you can do so manually. To manually remove unused media, simply go to Media » Library and click the unattached option.
You’ll then see all of the media files that aren’t being used on your site. You can delete those files to free up space.
5. Minify CSS, HTML, JavaScript
Through minification, the backend of your site will be optimized to be a lean mean machine. This technique works by reducing the file size of HTML, JavaScript and CSS files, and works to remove unnecessary characters, like spaces, line breaks, and comments. The result is a reduced amount of data transfer required so that files run quicker and your web pages load faster.
There are a number of plugins built to minify code. Autoptimize is one of the top rated free plugins for this task. You might also try the premium plugin WP Rocket which helps with site optimization, including minification. CSS Compressor is another good option that simplifies CSS code.
6. Clean up your database
If left unchecked, your WordPress database will start to accumulate clutter over time. To make it squeaky clean, you want to clean up any leftover tables from uninstalled plugins and remove overheads. Cleaning up your database can be done manually through phpMyAdmin, although can be tricky and damaging if you don’t know what you’re doing.
If you aren’t a technical whiz, installing a plugin to accomplish this task is the safer way to go. WP-Sweep and Advanced Database Cleaner are both safe bets to broom through your database and get rid of things like old revisions, spam comments, MySQL queries, and more.
7. Upgrade to PHP 7
Making the switch from PHP 5 to PHP 7 can make a tremendous impact on site speed. In fact, PHP 7 can handle uncached hits two to three times faster than on PHP 5.5 and can result in 30-50 percent improvements in memory consumption.
Before making the switch, do know that PHP 7 is not backward compatible. This means once you upgrade, you cannot go back to legacy systems. That’s why it’s recommended to test your site first with the PHP Compatibility Checker plugin to detect if your theme or any plugins might present any incompatibility issues.
8. Optimize Images
Images are imperative to keeping a site visitor engaged. While your site may contain a ton of beautiful imagery, it’s a good idea to optimize these images to achieve fast page load times. When directly uploaded to your site, images contain metadata that take up unneeded space. Too large of a file can hog up bandwidth and cause a page to lag in load times.
A plugin like Smush Image Compression and Optimization or ShortPixel Image Optimization will take the work off your back by automatically stripping an image of unnecessary data upon upload (without sacrificing image quality).
9. Enable GZIP Compression
When a user hits your website, a call is made to your server to deliver the requested files. The larger the file, the longer it’s going to take for the full page to load. Gzip works to compress your webpages and style sheets before they’re sent over to the end user.
Gzip compression can be enabled through the sensitive .htaccess server file. Therefore, it is recommended you ask your hosting provider or developer to set this up for you. A plugin like WP-Rocket can also enable gzip compression for you.
You can visit checkgzipcompression.com to see whether or not your site is gzip enabled.
10. Achieve minimalism with site design
Is it time for a site re-design? If so, think minimalism over clutter when it comes to the design of your site. Starting with a good, lightweight framework, like Genesis, is the first step toward simplicity, site responsiveness, and an optimized site that doesn’t turn users away. When it comes to your home page, fewer elements are better to start with. Just remember, the more features you have, the longer it’s going to take for your site to load.
11. Forgo Shared Hosting
Shared hosting might seem like a good deal at first. But when your site goes down or experiences page lag due to another site’s problem, you’ll want to reconsider investing in a proper infrastructure.
Part of what you’re paying for with dedicated hosting providers is lightening fast speed regardless of traffic. WP Engine, for one, has built the scalable architecture EverCache into its technology stack. Even if your site experiences a traffic surge, you won’t have to fret about site downtime.
In addition, enterprise plans with WP Engine are run in dedicated environments for optimal WordPress site performance.
Final Thoughts
Once you implemented these solutions, you’ll hopefully see a noticeable improvement in site speed and page load times. Remember, for faster site performance, you can do these things:
- Run a WordPress speed test
- Configure a CDN
- Limit comments per page
- Remove unused media/plugins/themes
- Minify CSS, HTML, JavaScript
- Clean up your database
- Prepare for PHP 7
- Optimize images
- Enable gzip compression
- Start with a lightweight theme
- Reconsider shared hosting
Have you optimized your site recently? Leave us a comment below to let us know what your favorite tricks are for boosting WordPress site performance.
A photography and art enthusiast, in her spare time she enjoys traveling, practicing yoga, designing items for her craft store, and trying new cooking recipes. Follow her on Twitter
With my budget, I cannot afford dedicated hosting, or I would get it! Are there more affordable alternatives?
WP Engine is brilliant in that I can run php7 and http2 which really speeds thing up.
The problem with website speed tests tend to be that they do not support http/2 and the results and advice they give you are not accurate. It is the same with many optimisation plugins. They do not work correctly on http/2 or make no difference. You can find more speed by ditching the pluging.
One plugin I have found that makes a real difference is Gonzales which disables java script and css that are not being used. This can be done on individual pages and makes a real difference.
Thanks for sharing these great tips! I would appreciate if you can also provide a guide on “Firewall in WordPress” and if it has any effect on WordPress performance.
Thanks!
I would like to add also the plugin Compress JPEG & PNG images: https://wordpress.org/plugins/tiny-compress-images/ . Did awesome work – compress much better than the other plugins + the images` quality stays good. 🙂
Also, you can enable the GZIP thru you .htaccess file without installing any plugins: https://varvy.com/pagespeed/enable-compression.html. The same could be done with the expires headers)
The shared hosting is quite affordable solution for beginners and there are a lot of companies which could offer you very good plans for the first time, so I believe it’s not so vital to go big at first, even if you are having more than 1k traffic a day. 🙂
Informative article. Speed is very important for a site. No one wants to wait a long time for loading our contents. So we have to take some efforts to optimize and improve the performance.
WP-Total Cache, Optimize database after revisions and Smush it are useful tools for WordPress users. Your post has shared important tips in this regard. I appreciate them.
Have you a nice week ahead.
Thanks for this information.
Thank you for helping us. This is awesome.
Hey,
Great stuff!! A really helpful post. I learned many new things form your post. also thank you for sharing database clean up and image optimization plugins share. I really need them. Thanks again for your useful post.
Thanks for the techniques that I’m looking for to improve my site speed. The image compression tip is the best from the list. thanks.
Thanks for this post
Hello Darcy, Great article. We all know about image optimization, shared hosting, minifying CSS and JavaScript etc. But, I think configuring CDS, Database cleanup and upgrading to PHP 7 are some of the great advice. These tips can really help to achieve good performance for a WordPress website.
Thanks for this great stuff.
Hi,
Great Post !!. These steps are quite helpful for developing a healthy website.