Welcome to “Plugged In” where we look at WordPress plugins in various categories. This week we inspect several plugins that can help optimize your site for improved performance. Whether it be lightening up your database or stripping images of unneeded metadata, these plugins can assist with WordPress site optimization to make your web pages run faster than before.
(To get a diagnosis of your website’s speed, check out the WordPress Speed Test.)
WP-Optimize
Over time your site will start to accumulate unnecessary data. WP-Optimize is a WordPress site optimization plugin built to help clean up your WordPress database for maximized efficiency. The plugin works to de-fragment MySQL tables as well as remove data like pingbacks, trashed comments, expired transient options, post revisions, and so on.
The plugin offers great control over which areas of your site you want to optimize. You also have the option to run automatic, scheduled cleanups of your site’s database.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions
If you’d rather clean up your database in a single click, then the Optimize Database after Cleaning Revisions plugin might be for you. In just one-click, the plugin will work to delete a number of unnecessary data, like trashed posts, spammed comments, unused tags, expired transients, and more. Additionally, the plugin keeps a log of everything it does, is available in multiple languages, and also works with WordPress Multisite.
Autoptimize
Minification, the process of removing unnecessary characters from source code (like whitespace and newline characters), is one way to improve page load times. Autoptimize helps with WordPress site optimization by minifying certain assets of your site, like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files.
Simply install the plugin and then checkmark the boxes for the code you want to be minified. You can even add scripts for the code you don’t want to be compressed, as well as control whether or not you want the compressed files in the HTML code header or footer.
WP-Rocket
Typically WP Engine disallows caching plugins (because we already do it for you). However, we’ve recently worked with WP Rocket, who has optimized their caching plugin to work on our platform. WP Rocket is a WordPress plugin that helps with site optimization through things like minification of CSS and JS, lazy loading images, deferring remote JavaScript requests, and more.
It’s a great plugin to invest in if looking to improve site speed and page load times across multiple websites.
Smush Image Compression and Optimization
While we’ve discussed ways to optimize your database and code for improved site optimization, it’s important not to forget about optimizing images for fast load times. In fact, according to Soasta.com, images account for 62 percent of a page’s total weight. Therefore, using a plugin like Smush Image Compression and Optimization can make a huge impact on page load times.
The plugin works to resize, optimize and compress all of your images for the web so they load faster than before. If your site is photo-rich, then this plugin is a must-have.
Of course, there are many other things you can do to help speed up your site for improved performance. Want to know more? Check out 15 Ways to Make Your WordPress Site Lightning Fast for some additional tips.
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
Very Very nice post. its a very useful and outstanding article. Thanks for that.
Thanks for the article Darcy,
Great to know WP Engine is allowing WP Rocket’s cache plugin.
I’ve been using Autoptimize and find it great.
– Do you know does WP Rocket do similar optimization: concatenating JS & CSS, minifying HTML etc.?
Thanks again, Gerald
I am using two of mentioned plugins. Optimize database after revisions and Smush it. Both are awesome and essential plugins for WordPress site.
Thank you very much for the sharing.
All the best.
hmm good to optimize database but query string should careful not removing the wrong query, better for to focus on the versioning strings yes? can read example
https://wordpress.org/plugins/remove-query-strings-littlebizzy/
that, can set constant in the wp-config.php to choose query string key, safe
Thanks DARCY for sharing very useful tips.
with following your recommendation getting high improve score.
Thanks alot for the post.
Regarding WP Optimize it looks like it messed up a number of databases and it hasn’t been updated in a while. We also had autoptimize on our site and it just keep getting bloated and we would receive warnings, I guess you have to monitor it all the time and dump the cache. Not sure how this helps your site. Some people claim to have lost their google rankings with it.
Thanks a lot
Just tried the “Remove Query Strings on Static ressources” on one site, where it completely broke the layout, so I had to restore to a version before the install. When looking for this issue in the plugin support forum, I find a lot of unanswered questions, so it doesn’t seem like a plugin worthy of recommendation.
Nice list, i know these plugins and also use them
Great thoughts here we have already implemented many of these! Thanks
I used AUTOPTIMIZE and have a problem with loading images when using minify js.
Kraken.io is significantly better than Smush.
We have sugnificant difference of speed with WP-ROCKET, and specially with our many images.
Thank you for your help!