The internet has revolutionised the world. And the magic wand it used to do so was nothing other than ‘speed.’
Yes, in the modern age of information technology, speed matters!
No one wants to waste time on the internet. Especially when it comes to the loading time of websites.
As a matter of fact, when a sluggish WordPress site makes the user wait, even for a few seconds, the user tends to want to leave… right away!
This phenomena can be confirmed by increasing bounce rates, fewer conversions, and poor search engine rankings!
Luckily, this problem can be avoided significantly by following a few simple steps. These steps will optimise your WordPress site and ensure it is not sluggish anymore.
The best thing is that you don’t need to be an expert in website optimisation to execute them. The more you employ these methods, the better the probability of positive results. Are you ready? Here we go.
1. Pick a Decent Hosting Plan
Choosing the right hosting plan is a prerequisite to the optimisation of your site.
A web host can be referred to as the place where your website resides.
It plays a vital role in determining your site’s speed, performance, and ability to handle high traffic.
Remember that a low-quality hosting plan can diminish all your speed-enhancement efforts.
Therefore, it’s critical to realise the importance of the hosting plan and provider.
2. Keep the Themes, Plugins and WordPress Updated
Although it is common to ignore the pop ups and notifications regarding the updates of different software:, you need to make sure that any WordPress update is not in your ignore-list.
We suggest you update every feature of your website as soon as possible whenever an update becomes available.
These updates are important for the security of your site, and ensure safety against the latest threats.
In addition to that, an updated website also guarantees optimised speed: and helps every part of your website run at peak speed.
3. Use a Caching Tool
This is another smart technique to optimise the speed of your site.
Basically, the term ‘caching’ refers to the sites temporary memory. When the website is opened for the first time, all the requested files are saved.
These cached files are displayed when the site is visited again in the future, thus reducing the loading time to a great extent.
Caching also reduces the resources needed to run your website, resulting a boost in the speed.
4. Image Optimisation
Images drain a lot of your websites resources. But of course, they cannot be avoided as they make your website look amazing.
Images also occupy bandwidth in addition to the server space.
Thus, in order to use high-quality images without giving up much space, image optimisation is the solution.
As the term suggests, image optimisation is a tool that compresses the size of image files without compromising on their quality.
There are many different types of image optimisation software available online to make your job easier and site faster. Smush is one of the best for WordPress and comes as an easy to use plugin.
5. Minification of Site Files
Minification is the process of making your sites code more efficient. In this process, it strips away all of the needless content in the code to make it execute faster when loading.
It also removes the spaces in the code which significantly improves the speed at which it runs.
Ultimately, computers will be able to read and process minified code much faster thanks to the fewer characters it has to read through.
Minification can be performed by anyone, no expertise required. All you have to do is get your hands on an online minification tool and you are good to go.
You also have a lot of minification plugin options at your disposal on WordPress.
6. Content Delivery Network for Large Files
With every passing day, communication is getting digitised more and more. Yet the physical distance still counts when transferring information online.
Therefore, using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to transfer your sites info would be nothing other than a great choice.
It helps with creating a more reliable and much quicker experience for your site visitors… irrespective of their physical location.
Basically, CDN is a worldwide network of proxy servers.
Every single server holds a copy of your site, which can be employed to transport your content in a quicker fashion across the globe.
CDN not only increases the site’s speed, but also improves its security.
7. Quality-Oriented Themes and Plugins
A misconception many people have regarding plugins is that installing a lot of plugins can make your site sluggish.
However, the truth is that plugins actually have the opposite effect.
If we are honest here, it’s the quality of plugins that matters more than the number of them your site has.
In addition to that, plugins add more functionality to your website thanks to their focus on security, SEO and e-commerce.
Plus, themes also play an important role in the speed of the site.
Unneeded functionality in the themes can slow down a site significantly.
Therefore, it is important to pick quality themes and plugins rather than unneeded, low-quality ones.
8. Delete Unused Themes and Plugins
Deleting unused themes and plugins is a site maintenance task that should be carried out regularly to keep your website working at its best.
Inactive themes occupy space on the server… putting your site under needless strain.
Luckily, deleting obsolete themes and plugins does not take much time.
All you have to do is to delete all disabled plugins and themes which are no longer needed.
However, it is suggested to back up your website’s data before removing any plugins and themes, just in case you delete the wrong thing and need to do a restore.
9. Clean Media Library and Revise Posts
With the passage of time and the growth of your site, your media library fills up with images, documents, and additional files.
In fact, long-running sites tend to contain hundreds, and sometimes, thousands of image and files.
Finding and deleting can be done manually, but it can take a lot of time and effort.
To avoid this, you can use plugins that automatically detect and delete unused files in your media library.
10. Optimise Databases
Database optimisation involves reorganising the database files efficiently in order to reduce space and boost efficiency.
This way, you can remove a lot of clutter from the database; as well and give your site a fresh slate to work on.
There are plugins developed to perform this task. By using such plugins, you can easily clean your site’s database without any prior expertise.
Your database can be cleaned manually too, but it involves a much greater risk of damaging your site beyond repair.
Prior to cleaning the database, do not forget to backup your website data to keep yourself protected in the event of an error.
Last Word on WordPress Site Speed Optimisation
When it comes to speeding up your WordPress site, you have a few different options available for you to use.
For the most part, these will be plugins that compress, delete and cache your sites data.
Of course, plugins can only help so much!
At some point you are going to need to learn more than just the basics to ensure your site loads at optimal speed.
This means coding knowledge is something you may want to brush up on. Either that, or bring in the professionals.
At the end of the day, a WordPress website that loads quickly is not only something your site visitors will appreciate, but something Google will reward you for!
Perform regular checkups via your dashboard and keep everything updated… And don’t forget to make a backup when tampering with things your not familiar with.
Why not check out our Best Free Website Builders post now and find out which plugins you need for 2019 and beyond!
Article source: 10 Reliable Ways to Optimise Your WordPress Site Speed
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