WordPress powers over 40% of all websites online, highlighting its versatility, user-friendliness, and flexibility. However, one challenge many WordPress users face is ensuring their site loads quickly and efficiently. Page speed is crucial for user experience and search engine ranking, so optimising WordPress performance is essential.
In this post, we’ll discuss various strategies, recommendations, and further reading to get the most out of your WordPress site. Readers can implement these strategies or contact SaneChoice for expert WordPress performance help.
Why Is Page Speed Important?
Before we get into the how-tos, let’s briefly discuss why website page speed and performance are significant.
- User Experience: Slow-loading websites frustrate users, leading to higher bounce rates and lower engagement levels.
- SEO: Search engines like Google consider page speed a ranking factor, meaning faster websites rank higher.
- Conversion Rates: A faster site can increase conversions—whether sales, sign-ups, or any other goal.
- Mobile Usability: As mobile internet usage surpasses desktop, having a website that performs well on all devices is increasingly important.
The key takeaway is that your website’s performance is not just about running smoothly. Ranking penalties and indirect links to low conversion rates exist. With the above in mind, let’s look at some significant areas where WordPress performance can be improved.
Hosting Matters when Optimising WordPress
Choosing the right hosting provider is a crucial preliminary step in enhancing the performance of your WordPress site. Not all hosting services offer the same level of quality or compatibility, and selecting a provider that is specifically optimised for WordPress can significantly impact your website’s speed, reliability, and overall user experience.
A well-suited hosting service ensures that your WordPress installation runs smoothly, enabling features that help your site load quickly and efficiently, ultimately leading to better performance and satisfaction for your visitors.
Types of Hosting
- Shared Hosting: This is the most economical option but means sharing resources with many other websites. This can lead to slower performance during high-traffic periods.
- Managed WordPress Hosting: These plans are specifically optimised for WordPress and offer better performance, security features, and automatic updates.
- VPS Hosting: A Virtual Private Server offers dedicated resources, meaning your site’s performance isn’t impacted by others. It’s a middle ground between Shared Hosting and a dedicated server.
- Dedicated Hosting: Your website gets its server 100% dedicated to WordPress. This is often expensive, but it provides the utmost control and performance.
Our Hosting Recommendations for Optimising WordPress
For enhanced performance and specialised WordPress support, consider managed WordPress hosting providers like WP Engine, SiteGround, Bluehost or SaneChoice WordPress Hosting.
Use a Lightweight Theme
Themes impact the look and speed of your site. While feature-rich themes might be tempting, they can often slow down your website. The theme should be considered the base of any WordPress website, and if it’s slow, it creates optimisation problems down the road.
- Select a Well-Coded Theme: Choose a theme designed with performance in mind, such as GeneratePress, Astra, Neve or UICore Pro.
- Minimalist Design: A more straightforward design can lead to faster load times.
- Consider Responsiveness: Ensure your theme is mobile-friendly, which is crucial for SEO and user experience.
Our WordPress Theme Recommendations
Always look for WordPress themes that are optimised for performance. Look at the author’s demo websites and use a tool like PageSpeed Insights from Google to assess their performance.
Optimise Images
Images typically constitute the largest files on a webpage, making them prime candidates for optimisation. Reducing their file size and improving loading times can significantly enhance web performance. This quick, effective strategy can lead to a smoother user experience and better site responsiveness.
- Compression: Use tools like TinyPNG, ShortPixel, or (our favourite) Squoosh to reduce image file sizes without sacrificing quality. Furthermore, WordPress plugins like Smush and Imagify automate this process directly within the Admin Panel.
- Correct Format: Use JPEGs for photographic images and PNGs for graphics or images requiring transparency. Consider WebP or AVIF (our favourite) for even more significant file size reductions for next-gen formats.
- Lazy Loading: This technique delays the loading of images until they are about to enter the viewport, which can speed up initial page loads. The great news is that WordPress 5.5 and above have native lazy loading built-in by default.
Our Image Optimisation Recommendations
We think Squoosh is the best way to optimise images on WordPress websites. While more manual, it gives you greater control and results in small file sizes. The SaneChoice website uses AVIF image format wherever possible to balance quality and performance.
Implement Caching
Caching temporarily stores data from your website to reduce loading times. It has multiple facets, which can be confusing. Let’s explain the different types.
- Page Caching: Creates static versions of your pages, reducing server load. Plugins like WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WPRocket can handle this effectively.
- Browser Caching: This process allows web browsers to store copies of website assets—such as images, stylesheets, JavaScript files, and other resources—locally on the user’s device. By doing so, the next time a user visits the website, the browser can quickly retrieve these stored assets instead of downloading them again from the server.
- Object Caching: improves performance for dynamic websites by caching database queries. This is important as WordPress is a database-driven platform, so optimising queries becomes critical for speed. Memcached and Redis are popular solutions.
- Opcode Caching: Involves storing compiled PHP code, which speeds up the execution of scripts.
It is always worth mentioning that Content Delivery Networks (CDN) like Cloudflare offer caching options. CDNs improve global performance and add significant security protection. However, they are more complex to set up than some options mentioned above.
Our Caching Recommendations
The simplest way to get instant performance benefits for your WordPress website is to download a plugin like WPRocket. These plugins provide out-of-the-box optimisations and make the process very simple. SaneChoice can help your website perform well if you want something more comprehensive. (We discuss CDNs further below in the article).
Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Reducing the size of your CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files can improve loading times. However, with the introduction of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocols, the importance of minification for performance optimisation is diminishing due to the built-in optimisation techniques in these newer protocols.
- Minification Tools: Plugins like Autoptimize and Asset CleanUp can streamline this process by removing unnecessary spaces, characters, and comments from these files.
- Defer JS: Load non-critical JavaScript files asynchronously so they don’t block the render path.
Our Minification Recommendations
As mentioned, this performance area requires less focus with the latest HTTP protocols and theme designers using minification as a standard. At SaneChoice, we don’t use tools to minimise file size further, but that does not mean it won’t benefit your website! Try and assess.
Leverage a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDNs store copies of your site on servers worldwide, reducing latency and improving load times for global visitors. They serve files from the hosting technology closest to the visitor, significantly reducing latency. Furthermore, CDNs have advanced security options to protect your website from malicious activity and security attacks.
- How it Works: When someone visits your website, the Content Delivery Network (CDN) intelligently routes their request to the nearest server in its network. This process ensures that the content is delivered quickly and efficiently, minimising latency and providing a smoother browsing experience for the user.
- Popular CDN Choices: Some of the most popular and reputable Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) include Cloudflare and KeyCDN. These services are well-known for seamlessly integrating with WordPress, providing enhanced website performance and faster loading times. Cloudflare offers robust security features alongside its CDN services, making it a top choice for many users.
Our CDN Recommendations
SaneChoice uses Cloudflare for all client websites and optimisation services. The balance between features, performance, and security (even with the free version) makes it a compelling choice.
Optimise your Database
Over time, your WordPress database can accumulate significant unnecessary data, leading to bloating. This occurs due to various factors, such as post revisions, spam comments, and transient options. Additionally, plugins may leave behind unused data and can contribute to your database’s overall size. Regular maintenance and optimisation are essential to ensure your database remains efficient and performs well.
- Database Cleanup: Use plugins like WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner to remove unwanted data such as post revisions, spam comments, and transient options. NOTE: Always back up your database before making significant changes to prevent data loss!
Our Database Optimisation Recommendations
Be very careful with the number of WordPress plugins you install. Each plugin install has some impact, ranging from the very small to the very large. Lastly, grab a plugin and clean your database periodically for redundant bloat. We find that saved revisions are a key that adds to database weight.
Enable Server-Side GZIP or Brotoli Compression
GZIP and Brotli are compression algorithms that optimise file sizes before transmission to the browser. Reducing file size leads to improved loading times, as less bandwidth is consumed, allowing webpages to load faster for users.
- GZIP and Brotil Explained: GZIP, a widely used compression method, effectively reduces the size of text-based files such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Brotli, on the other hand, offers competitive compression rates and provides additional decompression speed benefits, making it particularly effective for web content.
- How to Enable: Most modern servers support GZIP, but you can also enable it via plugins like WP Rocket or by adding specific code snippets to your server’s .htaccess file. Also, Cloudflare offers Brottli compression without you having to change anything on your WordPress website.
Our Server-Side Compression Recommendations
Due to CloudFlare’s numerous advantages, we utilise their range of services, both free and paid, to facilitate efficient and rapid data compression. CloudFlare’s out-of-the-box features allow us to enhance website performance easily while ensuring a smooth user experience. By leveraging CloudFlare’s capabilities, we can streamline website performance and improve loading times, benefiting site visitors.
Choose Efficient Plugins
Plugins are essential tools that enhance WordPress’s capabilities, adding various features and functionalities to the platform. However, they may also affect your site’s overall speed and efficiencyPress website.
- Keep Plugins Updated: Out-of-date plugins can slow down your site and pose security risks.
- Quality over Quantity: Evaluate plugins for quality and necessity before installation. Prioritise those with good reviews and active support.
- Performance Testing: Use tools to test how each plugin impacts your site.
Our Plugin Usage Recommendations
Update all active plugins regularly to benefit from the latest features and security enhancements. Additionally, assess the plugins in use and remove any that do not contribute significant value or are causing a slowdown to your site. This will enhance your website’s speed and improve overall functionality and user experience.
Perform Regular Site Audits
Conduct regular tests and audits of your website to verify that it continues to perform at its best and remains optimised as time goes on. This proactive approach will help identify any issues and ensure that your website consistently delivers an excellent user experience.
- Online Performance Testing Tools: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or Pingdom to identify and address performance bottlenecks.
- Google Chrome’s Lighthouse: A powerful performance auditing tool integrated directly into their browser. It enables users to run comprehensive tests on their web applications and websites.
- Ongoing Maintenance: Include performance audits, security checks, and updates in your regular maintenance plan.
Our Site Audit Recommendations
Our preferred tool for conducting site audits is Google’s Lighthouse. This comprehensive tool offers a wide range of features that allow us to assess various aspects of website performance, accessibility, SEO, and more. Its detailed reports help identify areas for improvement, making it an invaluable resource for optimising our web presence.
Conclusion
Optimising WordPress for performance is an ongoing process that pays dividends in improved user experience, SEO rankings, and conversion rates. You can ensure your WordPress site remains fast and efficient by choosing the right Hosting, leveraging caching, optimising images and files, and conducting regular audits.
Whether new to WordPress or a seasoned user, these strategies will help you get the most out of your website.
SaneChoice
https://www.sanechoice.cloud/The SaneChoice Team is deeply committed to technology, but our greater passion lies in fostering business success. Since 2004, we have been dedicated to assisting our clients in understanding and implementing optimal hosting, design, and security solutions to facilitate their growth and scalability.