WordPress is becoming the web development platform of choice for many users, and with good reason. It’s incredibly powerful and flexible, but the downside is that your site might not be as fast as other options out there.
You can do a few simple things to speed up WordPress and make it run faster.
Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN will make sure the elements of your website are stored on servers that are physically close to the person browsing it. This makes it faster and saves server space, two extraordinary things. The best part is that you can set up a free account with Cloudflare, which speeds up your entire site, not just WordPress.
Turn on Caching
You can optimize the way pages are generated on your site with caching, which requires a little extra setup but speeds up the process dramatically. There are several options for this, but some of the best caching plugins out there include WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. They’re easy to install, configure and make your site much faster.
Use a WordPress Cache Plugin
There are several options for caching your entire blog that don’t require much configuration or time. W3 Total Cache and WP Fastest Cache are two popular options, but you can find many more with a bit of research. Installing one of these plugins will speed up the loading time of every page on your blog by caching them until they’re updated.
Deactivate Unused Plugins and Themes
You may not use every plugin or theme that’s active on your site, but there are probably a few you haven’t touched in months. Deselecting these unused elements will make the site run faster because it takes fewer resources to work with less code. You can easily do this in your WordPress dashboard’s plugin and theme sections. You should also eliminate render-blocking resources that can bog down your WordPress site.
Switch to Minimalist Techniques
The more complex your page is, the longer it takes for a browser to read all of the code. Using simple HTML with less complicated elements makes websites load faster. While you probably don’t want to change all of your current techniques, using something like cookie bar GDPR for WordPress can help quite a bit.
Use Search Engine Optimized Images
This sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that many images are too large or use too many colors. You can optimize images for SEO by changing the image quality and the number of colors it uses through online editing software. Also, make sure your original file is saved, so you have something to return to if you need it.
Buy a Faster Hosting Plan
If all else fails, upgrading your hosting plan is an easy way to speed up WordPress without too much work on your end. High-quality plans usually come with a host that specializes in WordPress and has larger server spaces, which means your website functions more quickly.
While WordPress is a great platform, sometimes it gets bogged down with too much traffic or has too many elements. Making these few changes to your site will speed up how fast pages load and save server space for more critical uses.
