A slow website is infuriating.
Even if your content is excellent, it doesn’t change the fact that people don’t like to wait.
It hurts your content’s readability. And it negatively affects your site’s overall performance.
Hacks to Improve PageSpeed of Your WordPress Blog
So let’s explore the solutions.
1. Choose a Reliable Hosting Provider
Before you do anything to fix site speed, it’s best to turn to the current hosting provider for your WordPress blog. The first step is to figure out if they’re the right web host.
You need to do your own research for this. Asking the host point-blank if they’re the “right one” isn’t exactly a great idea.
So you’re on your own. Don’t forget that your blog is on WordPress. And this means you need a hosting provider that offers managed WordPress hosting.
If you’re not with a web host that can accommodate you properly, make the move. You don’t want to be one of those that lose money because of a slow site, do you?
But if you’re with the right web host such as Kinsta, that’s good news. So to this provider, lay it all on the line. Tell them all about your blog – and what you want to do it.
This way, your web host can properly address your concerns.
Ask questions like:
- Does my current hosting plan suit my needs?
- Can you do anything to improve my site’s speed?
- Can you recommend any product to help me improve pagespeed?
For more hosting options & comparisons, you can check Mango Matter Media.
2. Use a Caching Plugin to Improve PageSpeed
One of the best caching plugins is W3 Total Cache. Just pick one to get rid of poor loading speed.
A caching plugin does the job by storing your site’s final version. And if this version is already there, it means your WordPress site doesn’t have to generate it for the next visitor.
The data it can store includes JavaScript, HTML, and CSS codes, flash files, and fonts.
3. Use a CDN to Increase PageSpeed
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. And it’s a surefire way of improving a blog’s pagespeed.
It’s a system where distributed servers deliver web content. How it makes the delivery uses the following as the basis:
- Origin of a web page.
- The geographic location of the web visitor.
- Content delivery server.
Does your blog deal with high traffic?
Does it have a global reach?
If so, a CDN is an ideal solution for you.
The closer a web visitor’s location is to this system, the better. And the faster the content gets delivered!
In other words, it works by giving you a much better loading time. An advantage of this is that it does the job no matter the type of site you run.
4. Compress Media
Featuring images is a way to create a good user experience. And it can drive up the number of visitors you have.
You know, if a person receives information, he’s likely to retain only 10% of that after three days. But if you give him the same information and pair it with a relevant image, he’ll remember about 65% of it.
The downside? They will significantly slow down your site.
But since they attract traffic, it’s not practical to get rid of them. What you should do is use a compression plugin.
WP Smush and ShortPixel are a couple of the best compression plugins out there. They’re easy-to-use WordPress plugins that let you optimize your files. And they allow you to do this with the promise of maintaining media quality.
5. Uninstall Unnecessary Plugins
There’s no doubt that plugins work. But if there’s too many of them, they will affect your blog’s speed.
Not only that, installing too many plugins can impact your site’s overall performance. One of your WordPress plugins might cause another plugin to get errors. Worse, it could stop its functions entirely.
Some plugins are also already outdated. They’re old and are no longer compatible with your current version of WordPress.
So uninstall those plugins that you don’t use. It’s recommended to just go with one type of plugin for each category.
For example, you have four free plugins for security. Therefore, it’s a smart move to uninstall the other three because all you need is one.
6. Use the Same Data Center for Your Website and Database
It’s possible to go with different data centers for your website and for your database.
But it’s not a good idea. It can cause delays. It can make the process of fetching posts take longer.
For example, your website’s data center is in the US. And the data center for your database is in China.
Do you think that your visitors have the time to sit around and wait for the fetching process to begin?
Of course, they don’t. If your site fetches data longer than they have time for, they’d rather go elsewhere.
So check the data centers.
Are they in the same location?
Are they close to each other?
7. No Hotlinking
You can also call by its other names:
- Direct linking.
- File leeching.
- Bandwidth stealing.
- Bandwidth banditism.
- Remote linking.
Whatever you call it, one thing remains certain: it’s a form of hijacking. It’s a problem in many ways. It costs other people their money and drains server resources. And oh, it’s illegal, too!
You see, hotlinking is the use of another website’s resources.
An example is this: a person copied images from your blog and posted them on his. So for his website to load those images, your own website has to load them first.
From that situation, there seems to be no trouble. But try to look at it from the position of someone who was “hotlinked”.
What if your posts are the ones that were hotlinked?
What this means is that the bandwidth and resources he uses for his site are coming from your server.
Think of it like going on a shopping spree. And some stranger has the nerve to let you pay for all his purchases.
As unfortunate as this sounds, it happens.
The solution? Disable hotlinking to improve pagespeed.
All you need to do is copy these lines to a plain text editor like Notepad:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?EXAMPLE.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?google.com [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?feeds2.feedburner.com/EXAMPLE [NC]
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ – [NC,F,L]
And then paste them to the .htaccess file on your WordPress account’s root folder.
Final Thoughts
So these are the hacks that can help you if you’re having trouble with improve pagespeed.
Whether you’re a pro or a student blogger, it doesn’t matter. The fact remains that WordPress is easy-to-use. So let it remain that way.
Author Bio
John is an animal-loving Digital Marketing Ninja and the Community Manager of MasterBlogging. He spends most of his waking hours testing cutting-edge digital marketing strategies and on his spare time, plays with his dog. Zeus. You can follow him @J_PMarquez.