Tips to Boost the Speed of your WordPress Website

---

WordPress Page Speed Optimization Tips to Reduce Load Time

WordPress is a popular Content Management System (CMS) that enables users to create a website or blog from scratch. 

It is free and open-source software released under the GNU Public License Agreement (GPLv2). It has an active community of developers and users who contribute modifications and enhancements. 

While it's a great platform and everything seems rosy, it can be slow in loading pages due to factors, including hosting, plugins, scripts, and poor configuration.

But worry not. We give you seven amazing tips to speed up your WP website.

Let's get started.

1. Go for a Lightweight WP Theme

First, the basics. Many beginners make the mistake of going for a flashy and eye-catchy theme. They fail to consider that functionality is what matters more than the visual appeal for search engines and users.

In any case, a lightweight WordPress theme can be a great choice for your website. These themes typically have fewer (but essential) features and load more quickly than heavier ones. 

Moreover, lightweight themes are great when you use a shared hosting account, and you need to minimize the number of resources your website uses.

A lightweight theme achieves fast-loading web pages typically by using less code and fewer images. 

This makes the theme faster to load and easier for the browser to process. Also, many lightweight themes are designed to be responsive, meaning they will adapt to different screen sizes and devices. This also helps keep the page size small and the loading time fast.

Three lightweight themes we recommend:

• Astra — A 833-kb-sized theme with a Google speed score of A (100%)
• Ocean WP — A Gutenberg-ready theme with seven free extensions
• Hello — A 100% free theme that comes with “no bloat”

Here’s a screenshot of Astra’s website:

2. Use a Managed WordPress Hosting

Managed WordPress hosting is a form of web hosting specifically designed to host WordPress websites. It is different from traditional web hosting because it provides many features and services tailored specifically for WordPress websites.

These features and services can include things such as:

• Automatic updates
• Daily backups
• Malware scanning
• Performance enhancements

This kind of hosting is a great option for those who want the convenience and simplicity of using a WordPress-specific hosting service. 

When you are using a managed WordPress hosting service, the hosting company takes care of all of the technical aspects of running WordPress for you. 

Whereas on shared hosting, you share a server with other websites. This can affect the performance (read Speed) of your website.

Also, selected WordPress hosting providers such as GreenGeeks to offer 24/7 customer support to help users with any issues they may encounter while using their site.

Here’s a screenshot of how you can reach out to GreenGeeks’ support:

3. Never Host Video Files on Your WP Site

When hosting videos on your WP website, the page speed is slowed down due to the large file sizes of videos. One can avoid this by hosting videos on YouTube or Vimeo. These platforms are specifically designed for hosting videos, resulting in faster page speeds.

These third-party players are hosted on a separate server rather than on yours. This can help reduce your website's server load, improving page speed. 

Additionally, these platforms offer viewers the ability to watch videos without having to leave the website (embedding technique) they are visiting.

Also, videos hosted on YouTube and Vimeo are automatically optimized for web playback, meaning fewer resources are needed to view them, and they will load more quickly on most devices.

Tip: Google recommends that you provide Structured Data and include the video pages in your Video Sitemaps though you have embedded videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

Here’s an example of structured data:

4. Remove Unwanted Information from WP Database

Even though WordPress is famous for its ease of use, it's not without its problems. One such issue is database bloat. This occurs when your WordPress database becomes bloated with unnecessary data, slowing down your website. 

Thankfully, you can do a few things to optimize your WordPress database and speed up your website. 

It's a process of removing unnecessary data, optimizing table structure, and indexing your data. 

This step will improve website performance, make your website faster to load, and reduce the amount of disk space used. 

One popular plugin that can help you do this is WP Optimize. This plugin allows you to clean up your database, remove post revisions, delete spam comments, and optimize your tables. You can also program the plugin to do automatic cleanups at regular intervals. 

Tip: Use WP Optimize and UpdraftPlus to trigger a pre-optimized backup automatically.

Here’s a screenshot of WP-Optimize:

5. Use a CDN

When you use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) for your WordPress site, you're taking advantage of all the servers worldwide that are part of the CDN. This means that your pages will load faster for your visitors, no matter where they are. 

You don't have to worry about bandwidth usage or caching, as the CDN does the heavy lifting. 

A CDN will serve static files, such as images and stylesheets, from its cache instead of relying on the WordPress server to send them. This can speed up load times because static files tend to be smaller and take less time to download than dynamically generated pages.

Also, CDN can help reduce the number of requests your site makes to the WordPress server. This is important because each request takes time to process, and too many requests can slow down your site.

Three best CDN for WP sites:

• Stackpath — Comes with built-in analytics and reporting
• Bunny — A "next-gen CDN" that comes with edge storage and a 14-day free trial
• Cloudflare — Allows users to automate workflow and customize caching

Here’s a screenshot of Cloudflare’s analytics:

Read: 7 Highly Effective CDN-SEO Tips to Boost Your Rankings

6. Get Rid of Plugins That Weigh You Down

Plugins are necessary evils. They can be a great way to add features and functionality to your WordPress website. However, they can slow down your website (if used mindlessly).

There are some ways to get rid of the plugins weighing down your WordPress website. One way is to use the P3, aka Plugin Performance Profiler plugin.

Yup, you guessed it right! It is a manager to manages the managers. Managed to get it?

P3 allows you to see which plugins are slowing down your website and then helps you disable them. Developed by GoDaddy, the plugin uses the canvas element for creating charts.

Here’s an analysis report by the P3 plugin:

Tips:

• When looking for plugins, check the plugin ratings and reviews.
• Read the plugin's description carefully to get an idea of how it works and what resources it requires.
• Only use plugins that are needed.
• Select high-quality plugins from reputable developers.
• Update plugins regularly (Many fail to do this!)
• Get rid of abandoned plugins (ones with no update).

7. Minify, Minify, Minify

JavaScript, HTML, and CSS are the building blocks of a WordPress website. However, these files can be large and slow down the website. 

This is where minification comes in. It is a process of removing unnecessary characters, such as whitespace, comments, line breaks, and using shorter variable names.

When you minify your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, you take the code and make it as small as possible without negatively affecting its functionality. This can speed up your WordPress website because it takes up less bandwidth and loads the pages faster.

There are two primary ways to minify your code: Manual and Automatic. While the former is quite time-consuming, the latter makes minification a comparatively easy task.

Three plugins that minify your code:

• Autooptimize — Used by more than 1m+ customers
• WP Super Minify — A plugin that uses Minify PHP Framework
• Merge + Minify + Refresh — A plugin that is compatible with localized scripts

WordPress Page Speed Optimization - FAQs

---

1. Can I Automatically Minify Code Without Using Plugins?

Yup! There is a way. Use a CDN like Imperva to outsource the task of minifying your code. A CDN automatically compresses the files and keeps the minified version on its Points of Presence (POPs) and cache servers. The best part is that there is no configuration necessary for this task.

2. How To Check My WP Website's Speed?

You can check WordPress sites' speed using a variety of online tools. One popular tool is GTmetrix, which analyzes a website's page speed and provides suggestions for improvement.

3. What Are Some WP Page Speed Optimization 101s? 

You can do page speed optimization by optimizing images, reducing server response time, installing a caching plugin, optimizing images, and reducing HTTP requests.

Key Takeaways:

---

• Pick a lightweight theme but with necessary features
• Remove unnecessary plugins
• Minify your code
• Use a CDN to improve page load speed
• Clean up your WP database
• Go for a Managed WordPress Hosting
• Embed videos instead of uploading them to your site