10 Easy Tips To Make WordPress Site Load Faster

Are you a WordPress user? If yes, then is your site load faster? One should not take the speed lightly. The WordPress has crossed 28% mark in websites across the world.  It shows the WordPress’s popularity. The Google has said that the loading speed is a ranking signal. So, you must make your WordPress site load faster. When your site loads slow, you will lose more than 70% of traffic. The visitors will not visit your WordPress site again. When your site is slow, you lose traffic, subscribers and revenue. Then, what would be the use of having a site? We do not want to happen to your WordPress site.

The speed applies to both desktop and mobile. One must make their website load faster for both SEO and traffic aspects.

You can check your site speed using Google’s pagespeed tool and Pingdom.

Are you feeling tensed of having low site speed? Do not worry, we have come up with easy tips to make your WordPress site load faster. Look at these :

1. Select Best Web Host :

Do you know that a web host plays an important role in loading a website? Yes, it is true. Many beginners would go with a shared hosting plan while starting a blog. The reason is budget. Many of the newbies do not have much budget for the hosting. There is nothing wrong in it. Everyone would do the same thing. However you must select a best web hosting company like Bluehost. You might ask us why a host matters. If you search for a web host, you may find thousands of companies. Do you think all are same? No, they are not. The reliability matters a lot. These days people read hosting reviews before choosing a web host.

What are the things that you should look while choosing a good web host?

• The uptime of a server is important. No company can give you the 100% uptime. Many of them would give 99.9%. But, you must research on your own. Ask your fellow bloggers. Some companies like WPEngine and Kinsta are dedicated for the WordPress hosting. There are many hosts that promises maximum uptime. You should not experience down times otherwise you will lose the traffic.
• Check whether they manage hardware, software and upgrades efficiently.
• Look at the support team. It is a waste when the support is unavailable at urgency. How to know whether the support is dedicated? Again you will find it in the reviews.

When your blog attracts huge traffic, then you should upgrade your plan from shared to VPS. Have you heard about it before? If no, then read this article about the VPS hosting. The advantage of VPS hosting is that you can run multiple sites without downtime. It can handle huge traffic.

For handling huge traffic and resources, one should go with the best managed WordPress plan.

2. Choose The Best WordPress Theme :

You might come across a beautiful WordPress theme. But, speed is more important than the look. The fact is that the most appealing themes comes with the load. You will have the access to hundreds of options. When you run a speed test, then it will load slower. One must choose the light theme for the WordPress.

There are thousands of free themes available on the WordPress. But, the features are limited. The other issue is the credit link in the footer. So, it is better to choose a premium theme over free. You might be confused to choose the right one. Don’t worry. We researched and found that Generatepress theme works well for SEO and speed loading.

You may argue that there are many sites that are visually great and load faster. They might be using CDN. Your site’s speed can be higher for VPS or dedicated hosting.

3. Enable CDN :

One should use the content delivery network a.k.a. CDN for making your WordPress site load faster. In CDN, the static elements or files like CSS, JavaScript, images, videos get stored separately. When an user demands it, the CDN will show the stored data from the nearest location server. This way, the loading speed can be reduced. The Cloudflare is a popular CDN. It is free to use. However, they have plans for businesses.

Ask your web host if they are working with the Cloudflare. If not, you can directly set up it. Read this article for setting up the Cloudflare on your website. The CDN will definitely increases the loading speed.

4. Use Cache Plugin :

You might have cleared the cache in your PC. The same applies here. Do you know what is cache? The data will get stored in a temporary storage location. You can use either W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache for caching. They are free. One should use only one caching plugin for better performance. Using multiple caching plugins can make your WordPress site load slow.

Enable GZip compression for the best performance.

5. Compress Images :

We need images for the blog posts. But, when they are large, you will be in trouble. You might be thinking of using high quality images in your blog posts. Do you know that they eat large space? It may take very longer times to load large images. You can fix this issue by compressing them. The compression reduces the file size but keeps the quality intact. You can use Ewww and Robin plugins for compressing the images. Crop and resize your images as per your needs.

Tip : Use Jpeg or png formats for images rather than bmp.

6. PHP Version :

Do you know that the base or server script language of WordPress is PHP? One must upgrade to the new PHP  version for getting the speed. You can change the PHP version in the cPanel. If you are using the old version, then it is time to select the new version. The reputed web hosts give you this feature. If it is unavailable, then ask your web host to upgrade the PHP version. You can certainly see the difference once you upgrade to the new version.

7. Minify Code (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) :

You cannot expect a WordPress site without HTML, CSS and JS files. They will slow down your WordPress site speed. You should reduce the size of these text files. The minification includes removing white spaces, unessential characters and code. For that you need to combine, compress and minify JS, CSS and HTML files. There are plugins like Fast velocity minify and Autoptimize that works for this purpose.

8. Optimize Your WordPress Site Database :

With growing database, your site may load slower. The unwanted post revisions, spam comments, drafts and many can be the burden on your server. The server’s RAM can be exhausted. So, you should optimize your database. For that, WP-Optimize plugin works like a charm. But, remember to backup your database before optimizing it. We have used this plugin and there was a great improvement.

9.  Optimize Your HomePage :

Here are the things to do while optimizing your home page.

• Use a lighter WordPress theme.
• You should keep the number of posts less than 6 on your homepage.
• Select simple and smaller fonts.
• Do not overuse banners and ads.
• Use the plugins that are necessary. You should not use too many plugins. The plugins increases the loading speed.
• Too many widgets can also harm your blog speed. Replacing banners with text will improve the loading speed.
• Do not use sliders or frames on your homepage. It is better if you avoid them completely.

Many beginners think that an attractive homepage or theme will attract more visitors. No, that is not true. The content, clean page and loading speed will improve your traffic.

10. Limit Comments And Post Revisions :

You might be knowing that the comments are important for the ranking purpose. The more you engage with your readers, the more benefits you can get. However the overuse of comments can make your site slow. You can limit them in the discussion settings.

While writing a blog post, you may edit several times. Every time the WordPress would save a post revision. These post revisions will make your site load slower.

You can reduce the number of revisions. The lesser post revisions improve your site speed.

Add this snippet define( ‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 2 ); in wp-config.php file. You can give your own number in the place of 2.

Disable Pingbacks And Trackbacks :

According to the WordPress, “Trackbacks and pingbacks are methods for alerting blogs that you have linked to them.” For making your site load faster, disable them. You can find the option in discussion settings. By default, this option is not enabled.

What Are The Final Words?

These are the tips to increase your site speed. How do you make your WordPress site load faster? Please share your tips or suggestions. If you had loved our article, then share with your friends.