How To Speed Up WordPress?
Learning how to speed up your WordPress website is an essential skill for any website owner.
Like any Content Management system out there, WordPress isn’t immune to speed issues as certain choices can greatly impact your website loading speed.
But don’t worry, we have devised a guide on how to speed up WordPress below.
So how do you speed up WordPress? Here are 8 simple tips:
Choose A Good Website Hosting Provider
Web Hosting is one of the most important choices you have to make regarding the overall speed of a website. Choosing a cheaper hosting provider means that your website will be crammed onto shared servers with thousands of other sites, which slows down the connection.
So it’s always recommended to find a Hosting package that allows for a good amount of storage and CPU speed. This will be reflected in the price, especially if it’s an eCommerce site. But the investment in Hosting is worthwhile as it’ll keep your customers happy and coming back to your fast website.
Choose A Solid Theme/Framework
The theme and framework is another key element of your website loading speed. A lot of theme frameworks are bloated because they have to cater for a large audience that needs an all in one solution. However, it depends on your situation.
For example, if you’re just running a small business website, you won’t need all the bells and whistles of a bloated framework.
A skilled WordPress developer can also fix any bloat issues by removing unnecessary features from the theme framework, such as CSS, scripts and images. So that your site is running at optimal speed.
Keep Your Server Requirements Updated
As time goes along, server requirements will need to be adjusted for a number of reasons, such as security and speed. This can include PHP version upgrades. So keeping updated on server requirements will leave your website running at its best speed.
Use the Latest Version Of WordPress
WordPress is regularly updated with new versions releasing almost weekly. These updates aim to fix any security vulnerabilities as well adding new features.
Optimise Images
Google is now punishing slow websites in terms of SEO rankings and usually, the major reason comes back to un-optimised images. So always make sure your images are optimised for the web. This means that they need to be uploaded with a good file name, a good file size (under 1mb) and alt text that describes what the image is about.
Decrease Server Requests
The amount of server requests basically determines how long a website page will take to load. So minimising server requests is a very good strategy. This starts with removing unused CSS stylesheets and JS scripts. Other heavy server requests include Facebook Pixel, Google Web Fonts and Images.
Limit Unnecessary Plugins
The beauty of WordPress is that anyone can install a plugin without much technical knowledge. However, adding too many plugins can greatly impact your website because they all load their own resources and overall, this will slow a site down.
Optimise Your Homepage
A homepage generally attracts the most traffic and as a result, it must be optimised and present your business in the best fashion. So always make sure your Homepage is regularly reviewed and updated to achieve the best results possible.
Need Help?
Gold Coast Websites offers the highest quality wordPress website development services at competitive prices. Contact us today!
