Here are 10 quick ways to speed up your WordPress website:
- The first step is to figure out why your site is loading slowly. Test it on http://gtmetrix.com/
- Enable Caching. Caching is “Caching is an area of a computer’s memory devoted to temporarily storing recently used information. The content, which includes HTML pages, images, files and Web objects, is stored on the local hard drive in order to make it faster for the user to access it, which helps improve the efficiency of the computer and its overall performance.” Try using W3 Total Cache.
- Minify CSS and Js. Minimizing your CSS and JS will remove all unnecessary characteristics and unnecessary white space. I would suggest using JS & CSS Script Optimizer. Of course back up the original one in case you want to edit it later.
- Use sprites. Sprites reduce the number of requests made to your server, which saves bandwidth. A sprite is basically taking multiple images and turning them into one image. You can read more about the CSS required to make sprites here.
- Optimize images. Images sometimes contain a lot of extra meta data that you can’t see and don’t need, and sometimes your image file size can be made smaller by compressing them in smarter way without loosing any quality. Using smushit, imageOptim, or WP smushit.
- Use a CDN. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) allow you to host files on multiple systems. If you are using YouTube or Viemo to host videos for your website, you’re already using a CDN. Using other CDNs to serve up frequently used CSS, HTML and JS libraries like jQuery can help speed up your website.
- Enable Gzip. When a user hits your website a call is made to your server to deliver the requested files. The bigger these files are the longer it’s going to take for them to get to your browser and appear on the screen. Gzip compresses your webpages and style sheets before sending them over to the browser. This drastically reduces transfer time since the files are much smaller.
- Analyze plugins. Some plugins can be poorly written, causing your site to load slowly. So to figure out which plugins could be slowing down your site install P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler).
- Optimize your Database. Sometimes things get left behind in your database from uninstalled plugins or overhead from posts, which can slow down queries made to your database. Opitmzing it can increase query speed, which in turn speeds up your website. If you’re no sure how to optimize you database you can use a plugin like WP-Optimize.
- Upgrade your hosting. If you’re hosting multiple websites, have a large website, or you’re receiving a lot of viewers then and your site is still running slowly then it just might be time to upgrade your hosting.
