How to optimise your WordPress website for faster loading
Everyone knows that a slow site can damage your reputation if it's slow to load.
We will show you several ways to increase your speed and make your website faster.
The steps listed below generally can increase your website by up to 80% and you'll definitely notice the difference.
Typically as your website grows you generally start to notice the difference, especially if you are using a lot of images, video and content.
Did you know on average, visitors that come to your website will not wait longer than 3 seconds before trying to find an alternative solution?
Th is why it's worth revisiting your site regularly, making the steps we've provided to keep visitors that come to your website happy.
One of the most important things to do is to keep your website up to date.
This only adds a small amount of speed to your website but it's probably the most important to keep it updated.
Iron out any bugs and fixes that can slow down your website.
WordPress updates include bug fixes and patches to protect your site from new-found vulnerabilities.
Don’t put off updating your site to the latest CMS version, PHP version or whatever update may be due.
As soon as an update becomes available, check your site's compatibility and make any updates as required.
There are two ways to provide automatic updates.
If you are using Softaculous one click installer, you can tick to enable the automatic updates.
The second option is you can install the WP Auto Updater plugin by locating to your plugins and typing in "WP Auto Updater" in the search bar.
Click install then activate and configure WPAU to automatically update when updates become available.
Check your code to see if there are any errors.
Most websites have a few errors, it's the ones that are causing major loading issues that you need to correct.
You can hire WordPress designers and developers to check this, if you don't feel confident doing it yourself.
Multiple errors and bad code can cause a website to slow down quite a lot.
You can use the Markup Validation Service to see if your site has any errors.
More websites are using images with their website to make it look more creative.
We all like to use high-resolution images to make it look at its best but this is also where it can have a significant impact on your site speed.
If you are using high-resolution images we recommend converting then to either PNG of JPEG format.
Simply open them in paint and save as your preferred file format.
The second and faster option if you're using WordPress is by using the WP Smush plugin.
This is a great plugin where it compresses your images for you.
WP Smush comes with a free version that optimizes your images for best performance.
Another alternative should wish to use an online alternative is to use Image Compressor.
This web page allows you to upload your images and compress.
Be careful how much you compress your image as this can lower the quality of the image.
cPanel's optimise your website is probably the easiest way of optimizing your website and is compressed using Apache.
The types of content to be compressed are specified by MIME type.
Your hosting provider needs to have Apache’s mod_deflate enabled on the server for it function correctly.
The majority of big sites use GZIP.
This can be a very effective tool for small and big sites that use images, content and video within their pages.
You can check if you your website is GZIP enabled by doing a gzip compression test. "Check and Enable GZIP compression" with the WordPress plugins section.
If your website is already gzipped then great but if you are not then the WordPress plugin will help. Don't forget once you have enabled gzip on your website to test and confirm using the gzip checker.
Choosing the right hosting provider can help with website speed.
This depends where you are and where your hosting providers servers are based.
If you live in America but your hosting providers servers are on the other side of the planet, you'll notice longer loading times in comparison to someone who is located nearer the server.
If you are based in the UK, then you will benefit from using our service that offers a range of hosting solutions which will help keep your ping rate low, and your website speed at it's best.
The closer you are to the server the lower your ping rate will be.
Data from the server to you and back will take less time, increasing website speed.
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) helps to cache your website on multiple servers which are geographically distributed to provide fast delivery of Internet content.
A CDN also has many advantages.
Distributing content closer to website visitors by using a nearby CDN server (among other optimizations), visitors experience faster page loading times.
As visitors are more inclined to click away from a slow-loading site, a CDN can reduce bounce rates and increase the amount of time that people spend on the site.
In other words, a faster a website means more visitors will stay and stick around longer.
Bandwidth consumption costs for website hosting is a primary expense for websites.
Through caching and other optimizations, CDNs are able to reduce the amount of data an origin server must provide, thus reducing hosting costs for website owners.
Although our server is hardened and secure, a CDN may improve security by providing DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) mitigation, improvements to security certificates, and other optimisations.
We recommend using Cloudflare which is a free CDN that can provide faster loading times for your website.
To add this to your website simply signup on the Cloudflare website and specify which domain you'd like to add.
On the page configuration page the clouds highlighted in orange show which options you want caching.
This can be toggled on and of as required, if you are unsure which to add on Cloudflares CDN only enable your A records.
Once you have selected the options you need, you need to add your new name servers which Cloudflare has provided.
Enter the new nameservers within your domains registrars DNS name server setting.
These will typically be in your domains DNS settings but we can also do this for you if you are unsure by submitting a ticket.
Find a hosting provider that is with the same country as you or not the other side of the planet as this will have an impact on your website speed.
Compress images before uploading to your website or use a WordPress plugin to do this for you.
Use gzip and check when you've completed compressing that gzip is enabled and working.
Use the Pingdom Speed Test before you've started and when you've completed to see the difference in your websites loading times.
Pingdom tools will also give you a detailed analysis on your website, showing where you need to improve.