How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website Loading Time
WordPress is among the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) out there, powering about 28% of the web according to Builtwith.com. It is a versatile tool that allows bloggers and website owners to build their own digital platform in no time at all! Whether you’re a pro or an amateur, you can use WordPress to launch your own blog, magazine or corporate website.
You can integrate with other services like Google Ads, MailChimp, and other affiliate marketing tools to grow your business. Once you get the hang of it, creating a WordPress website is a snap.
It’s a popular choice among webmasters because of its versatility and ease of use. Anyone can pick it up and start blogging or creating a website in a matter of minutes. It is especially easy to use for beginners because of its minimalistic design and drag & drop functionality. You won’t need a web developer to guide you through the setup process.
The Essential Tools to Create a Faster WordPress Blog
There are several plugins and tools that you can use to create a faster loading WordPress blog. If you’re serious about speeding up your site, you might want to consider using a few of these tools.
WordPress itself is built on PHP and MySQL, two of the least efficient web server technologies out there. Each server process needs to compile and execute a PHP script whenever a page is requested. This is why WordPress loads slowly even on the most basic pages. This is why you should always be looking for ways to speed up your WordPress install.
The first step to a faster WordPress site is to install and activate the WP Super Cache plugin. This plugin compiles the most frequently used pieces of content into a single compressed file, cutting down the workload for your web server and preventing any lag spikes while serving pages to your readers. In addition to cutting down on page load time, this plugin also prevents any database lag spikes by caching frequently accessed data on your web server.
Optimize Your Images
One of the factors that can slow down a WordPress site is bloated images. Even if you use an image optimization tool like Google’s free webmaster tool, Goggles, or an online tool like TinyPimp.com, it is still best practice to manually go through each image and optimize its settings.
There are a few reasons why images on your WordPress site might be slow to load. First, you might have chosen an image size that is larger than necessary. Second, you might have used an image hosting site like Flickr or Imgur that automatically compresses images. Third, your images might not be the right resolution. Finally, you might have featured an image with a large amount of text next to it, causing it to load slower than usual. To fix these issues, you should first consider downsizing your images to make them more efficient. If you do decide to keep the larger version, you should use a tool like CSS Spriting to apply a fluid layout to your page. This way, when a user interacts with an interface element like a button or a form, the text and the image will resize synchonously to fit the dimensions of the element.
Use CDNs
Another excellent way to speed up a website is to use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A CDN is a service that connects you to a large network of servers that are close to your audience. When a user visits a website that is using CDNs, their request will be routed to the closest server to the website’s IP address. Because CDNs route requests based on the proximity of servers to the visitor’s IP address, pages will load much faster. For best results, use a CDN that is close to your geographical region.
Use HTML5 Websites
When a user visits your website, they will be presented with a variety of documents, mostly HTML versions of pages from your site. These documents are known as HTML5 websites. An HTML5 website is a website that is designed to work with the bare minimum required markup, using semantic markup to provide a flexible and adaptable layout.
An HTML5 website loads quickly because there is less information to process. Browsers, which drive the majority of website traffic, have gotten very good at interpreting and displaying websites based on the information available. In essence, an HTML5 website is nothing more than a bunch of
tags with some semantic markup applied.
Turn Off Unnecessary Functionality
WordPress is a very feature-rich tool, which means you can do a lot with it. Depending on how much time you have and how much functionality you need, you might want to consider disabling some of the more advanced features. For example, you might want to turn off the Commenting System or the Visual Rich Posts feature. A lot of these features are useful for professional sites that need to look like Fortune 500 sites, but you don’t need that level of functionality for a personal blog.
Use Git to Manage Your WordPress Site
Git is a free version control system made by GitHub. A version control system is a software system that keeps track of changes you make to your site over time. Keeping track of changes can be a significant time saver and it gives you the flexibility to go back in time and see how a certain design or feature evolved.
When you use Git, you have the ability to track changes to any part of your codebase. For example, if you have a WordPress site and you decide you want to add a new feature, you can use Git to track the changes you make to the theme and the plugins that you use to create the new feature.
Use NoScript to Make Your Site More Secure
NoScript is a free tool from Mozilla that blocks scripts on web pages. When a user visits a web page with embedded scripts (e.g.,