Studies, both old and new, have confirmed time and again the negative impact that your website’s prolonged loading time can have on your business. Google’s claim that it prefers to rank faster loading websites higher up in the search results, and the growing dominance of mobile internet has resulted in a mad rush by businesses to understand the mechanics of building in speed in their website. Take a look at 12 of the most useful ways in helping to speed up your WordPress website.
1. Work on the basics
The success of your website depends on its rock solid foundation. Take a look at a few of the basic principles of laying a sound foundation for your website.
– Identify and use the services of a good hosting company even if it bears down hard on your budget as it will have a far-reaching impact on the speed of your website.
– Opt for a lightweight and effective WordPress theme which fulfils your objective minus the redundant bells and whistles.
– Leverage the benefits of a content delivery network (CDN). This is a definite way to improve your loading time as it helps to considerably reduce bandwidth usage.
2. Employ Checks to Identify the Errant Plugins
While Plugins are helpful in donning your website with several functionalities, few, however, result in slowing down the loading time considerably. Use diagnostic plugins to check and remove these so as to speed up your website.
3. Reduce size of Images
Reducing image size has always been the key to helping your website deliver better performance. Several contemporary plugins ensure that image compression occurs without any loss in image quality.
4. ‘Cache’ in the benefits
Proper implementation of your browser cache will help second time users access files from your cache thus speeding up your website. Also it helps to reduce the HTTP server requests considerably.
5. Zip it up
Zip up your webpage files to reduce the page size thereby making it easier to load.
6. Clear Database Clutter
The efficient AutoSaved functionality of WordPress helps to track and save almost any changes you have made. However, it is also fast cluttering up your database and making your site heavier. Follow a regular clean-up process of your database to keep this in check.
7. Compress Scripts
Along with your images and your webpage files, it is also a good idea to compress your Javascript and CSS sheets into one single file to enhance speed.
8. Turn off Alert Triggers
Though it feels good to let others know that your WordPress site is linking to theirs, it might cost you your loading speed. Turn off all alerts that enable you with this functionality.
9. Provide Website Details for Display
Providing details like specifying image dimensions and character sets in HTTP response headers saves time in enabling browsers to decide how to display your website.
10. Position Scripts to load files in Optimal Order
Load your files in the optimal order to save time by placing your CSS closer to the top of the page and the Javascripts to the bottom. This order is largely defined by the way browsers read your page in order to display it.
11. Load Images Fast
Ensure that your images load fast in order to increase the overall loading speed of your website. Using techniques like implementing CSS sprite could be a good way of ensuring this.
12. Replace static HTML with PHP
In most scenarios, using PHP in place of static HTML helps to speed up things as similar requests need not be made multiple times.
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