How to Speed Up a WordPress Website: 10 Key Techniques for Optimisation

Posted on 6 March 2023

A slow website can have a significant negative impact on user experience, search engine rankings, and conversions. When it comes to WordPress, slow website speed can be due to various reasons such as using heavy themes, plugins, unoptimised images, and a sluggish database. Fortunately, there are several techniques available to help you speed up your WordPress website. In this article, we’ll explore ten key techniques to optimise and speed up your WordPress website.

1. Choose a Fast Hosting Provider

The first step in optimising your WordPress website for speed is to choose a fast and reliable hosting provider. The hosting provider plays a vital role in the speed of your website. A slow hosting provider can negatively impact your website’s speed, leading to poor user experience and low search engine rankings. Therefore, it’s essential to select a hosting provider that offers optimised WordPress hosting or managed WordPress hosting.

2. Use a Lightweight and Fast Theme

Your WordPress theme has a significant impact on your website’s speed. A heavy theme with lots of graphics, animations, and other heavy elements can slow down your website. Therefore, it’s best to choose a lightweight and fast theme that is optimised for speed. You can find several fast themes on WordPress directories such as ThemeForest.

3. Minimise the Use of Plugins

Plugins add functionality to your WordPress website, but using too many of them can slow it down. Therefore, it’s best to use only necessary plugins and remove the ones that you are not using. You should also choose plugins that are lightweight and optimised for speed to ensure your website loads quickly.

4. Use a Caching Plugin

Caching is a technique that stores frequently accessed data in temporary storage, allowing it to be retrieved faster. A caching plugin can significantly speed up your WordPress website by storing static content such as images, CSS, and JavaScript. Popular caching plugins for WordPress include WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

5. Optimise Images

Unoptimised images can significantly slow down your WordPress website. You can optimise images before uploading them to your website by reducing their file size without compromising on quality. There are several image compression plugins available for WordPress such as Smush.

6. Minimise HTTP Requests

HTTP requests are made every time a user visits a webpage, and the more requests that are made, the slower the website will load. To minimise HTTP requests, you can combine CSS and JavaScript files and use a content delivery network (CDN) to serve static files.

7. Use Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a technique that loads images and other media elements only when they are needed, rather than loading them all at once. This can significantly reduce the load time of your WordPress website. There are many lazy loading plugins available for WordPress, such as Lazy Load by WP Rocket and a3 Lazy Load.

8. Optimise Your Database

Your database is a critical component of your WordPress website, and it can also affect its speed. You can optimise your database by removing unused data, optimising database tables, and regularly cleaning up your database. This can be done manually or by using a database optimisation plugin such as WP-Optimize. Here’s an example code for database optimisation:

/* Delete spam comments */ DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'spam'; /* Delete post revisions */ DELETE a FROM wp_posts a LEFT JOIN ( SELECT post_parent, MIN(ID) as min_id FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = 'revision' GROUP BY post_parent ) b ON b.post_parent = a.ID WHERE a.post_type = 'revision' AND b.min_id IS NULL; /* Delete transients */ DELETE FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE ('transient%'); /* Optimise database tables */ OPTIMIZE TABLE wp_commentmeta, wp_comments, wp_links, wp_options, wp_postmeta, wp_posts, wp_terms, wp_term_relationships, wp_term_taxonomy;

9. Use GZIP Compression with WordPress

GZIP compression is a technique that compresses files before sending them over the internet, reducing their size and allowing them to be transmitted more quickly. You can enable GZIP compression on your WordPress website by adding the following code to your .htaccess file:

<IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript </IfModule>

This will compress the content of your website, making it easier and quicker to download.

10. Keep WordPress Updated

Finally, it’s essential to keep WordPress updated to the latest version to improve website performance. WordPress regularly releases updates that fix bugs, improve security, and enhance performance. Keeping your website updated to the latest version can improve its speed and performance. You should also keep your themes and plugins updated to ensure compatibility with the latest version of WordPress.

Conclusion

Optimising your WordPress website for speed is critical to providing a better user experience and improving search engine rankings. By using these ten key techniques, you can significantly improve the speed and performance of your WordPress website. From choosing a fast hosting provider to optimising images and using lazy loading, these techniques can help your website load faster and provide a better user experience for your visitors. By using GZIP compression with WordPress and optimising your WordPress database, you can take additional steps to improve the speed and performance of your WordPress website.

Remember, a slow website can negatively impact user experience and search engine rankings, so it’s essential to optimise your WordPress website for speed. Implement these techniques to speed up your WordPress website and enjoy a faster and better-performing website.

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