{"id":60,"date":"2016-05-09T11:35:28","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T06:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/?p=60"},"modified":"2017-02-03T15:08:23","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T10:08:23","slug":"how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedevcouple.com\/how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-website\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gone are the days when you find yourself sitting down in front of the computer staring for ages at a blank screen, waiting for a WordPress website to load fully and appear in front of you. If you’re still struggling with this issue, then a great solution is to open your browser and type the keywords “How to speed up your WordPress website?” I’m sure you’ll find plenty of such solutions.<\/p>\n

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Being a WordPress researcher and copywriter, I read lots and lots of content and some time back, I even struggled with this problem while setting up my blog. I needed an optimized solution which not only improves speed but also my workflow.<\/p>\n

How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website?<\/h2>\n

When it comes to speeding up your site, there are a lot of ways of doing so. But the real deal is to ensure that the method you’re using assists\u00a0you in different zones. You must know that even Google prefer sites with reasonable web speeds and ranks them well. So, your ultimate goal should not be just speeding but also\u00a0increased traffic levels and high ranking in search engines.<\/span><\/p>\n

A code nerd would undoubtedly know the art of spinning around this issue with a few lines of HTML and PHP. But what about people not so good with the\u00a0code? Here are some quick ways to speed up your website. This is not an ordinary list where you expect someone to list the plugin name with its description. Instead, I am going to discuss these plugins w.r.t. the functionality they offer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Choose a Smart Caching Plugin<\/h2>\n

The concept of storing some specific parts of the website temporarily is termed as caching. Its sole purpose is to prevent the site from loading all over again each time a user visits the website. Optimizing web page speed via cache plugins has proved to be quite successful in the WordPress community. This fact is supported by some related plugins (both free and paid) which you can find in one go.<\/p>\n

W3 Total Cache<\/a> plugin is the most popular and free plugin of its kind. It powers more than a million websites including some influential names of the community like Smashing Magazine, Mashable, etc. Its features are not so user-friendly, and newbies find it difficult to understand the technical insights this plugin delivers. You can cache all the WordPress pages, database, and objects. Being WP-CLI supported, it can perform query string updating and a lot more. W3 Total Cache<\/a> is fully compatible with CDN networks, dedicated and virtual private servers. You can read a lot more about its key features from here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Talking about some paid solutions, then\u00a0WP Rocket<\/a> tops the list of best-selling cache plugins that not only boost web speed but also generate high traffic. The best part about WP Rocket<\/a> is its user friendliness which makes it easy for anyone to handle and configure.<\/p>\n

When compared to its free counterparts, WP Rocket<\/a> performs page caching along with cache preloading to improve speeds and site ranking. The images get\u00a0loaded only when you scroll down a page and not before. It produces static HTML, CSS and JavaScript files which cut down a major portion of web load time. To learn more about this plugin and its pricing model you can refer this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Compressing Image Size<\/h2>\n

If your site has static images, then these are the major contributors to increasing web page speeds. Image compression and lazy load techniques have been employed to handle images. The lazy load trick\u00a0ensures that\u00a0images load only when a user scrolls the cursor down and not before. You’ll hardly find any popular free plugin (except for Lazy Load<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0BJ Lazy Load<\/a>\u00a0plugins) offering this feature. However, paid solutions do offer it as a part of their service package.<\/p>\n

Now when the question arises about image compression, WP Smush.it<\/a> is the name you should look for. With over 400,000 active installs, this plugin strips off a major portion of unwanted details from images. It reduces the overall image file size, removes hidden, bulky information like unused colors without losing quality.<\/p>\n

Optimizing Database By Cutting Down HTTP Requests<\/h2>\n

Just like images, if you have static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files then these will be loaded altogether each time a user visits your website. This means a large number of HTTP requests are catered. However, these can be significantly reduced if the number of objects on each web page gets minimized. People have employed minification techniques to achieve this bit of functionality. The WP Minify<\/a> plugin has handled this issue to quite an extent by removing all the blank spaces from the code and combining all the JS and CSS files into a\u00a0unified component.<\/p>\n

Still a room always exist which can be filled wisely by optimizing the database tables. Developers can obviously do it in a few minutes manually via using the phpMyAdmin<\/em>. But the option of working with plugins always exist.<\/p>\n

The WP-Optimize<\/a> plugin outclasses most of its counterparts. It is one of the best database cleaning and optimization tool. It removes\u00a0the excessive post from your database. Apparently, your blog\/website contains lots of posts but only a few of them are needed and important. The rest are just a burden and occupy extra space. Therefore, the WP-Optimize<\/a> plugin deletes the unwanted content (spam and trashed comments, draft posts,etc. ), rather than just storing it as trash.<\/p>\n

Use An Efficient Hosting Solution<\/h2>\n

Despite relying on the use of plugins and paying more heed to consolidate the software, you can take hold of the core and strengthen it. I am talking about the hardware of the website which is the hosting providers. Mostly, people know about shared hosting plans but are unaware of the fact that it cannot bear high traffic. So, to scale from medium to high traffic levels you should choose among the following:<\/p>\n