As dedicated internet users, we all prefer a fast website rather than a slow one. According to Google, your website should load in two seconds or less, or else visitors will start to lose interest. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t always make it easy to deliver fast pages to visitors. Therefore here we prepare some ways for you to speed up your website. As we’ll soon see, these approaches to speed up your WordPress website are pretty non-technical, so you may practice it on your own.
(1) Run performance tests
First, let’s understand how your website performs. Loading speed will be different across your site’s pages, depending on the amount and type of content on each page. Website homepages are the typical testing page, but you should test other particularly high traffic pages as well. Be sure to test your website’s performance regularly, especially after adding new functionality. This will ensure your website continues to deliver pages at competitive speeds.
(2) Use the latest version of PHP
PHP is the scripting language that powers all WordPress websites. Like themes and plugins, PHP also releases updates to run more efficiently, which in turn helps your pages load faster. The latest stable version is PHP 7. It is a major performance improvement over PHP 6. You may check your hosting site’s documentation or contact support to see which version of PHP you’re using. If it’s not PHP 7, ask your host to update your site’s PHP version to the latest version.
(3) Manage your plugins
Quality is better than quantity when it comes to WordPress plugins. Since each plugin is like a piece of mini-software on your website, too many running at once can negatively affect your website’s loading time. Better deactivating any plugins that you are not using, after testing your website that everything still works, delete the unused plugins.
Also, make sure the plugins you do keep around are high-quality. The best plugins are designed in such a way that only consume the server resources when needed. Thus they are light on code and won’t occupy too much storage space on your server.
(4) Use a lightweight theme
Like plugins, your WordPress theme might be placing an unnecessary burden on your website server. Themes with high-quality images and effects might look cool, but they come at a cost. Fancy effects can require a lot of code, which inflate file sizes and slow your page performance. You may pick a simple theme with only the necessary features. You can always add more effects later through plugins or custom CSS.
(5) Optimize image
Large images are another common cause of slow WordPress websites. To improve your site performance, reduce your image file sizes as much as possible. You can compress images with Photoshop or other image editing software. The goal is to save space, but don’t sacrifice the quality of the image that makes the users squint to see your visuals.
Conclusion
Like many aspects of running a WordPress website, speed optimization is your responsibility. Fortunately, there are several ways that can help to optimize your website loading speed and provide the most satisfying user experience. It is worth spending a bit of your time to save your visitors a lot of time.
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