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Handy Tips that Can Help You to Improve Your WordPress Site Performance

Patience is a virtue that is not up everyone’s alley. In the modern age where everything is time bound, no one wishes to sit in front of the screen waiting for a…

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Handy Tips to Help Improve WordPress Site Performance

Handy Tips to Help Improve WordPress Site Performance

Patience is a virtue that is not up everyone’s alley. In the modern age where everything is time bound, no one wishes to sit in front of the screen waiting for a website page to load. Slow loading speed is one of the most common reasons for losing your website’s audience and leading to user discontent. Faster loading speed can help improve sales, shoot up your page views, and increase customer engagement. With money at stake, here are few ways to overcome the situation of a slow loading page.

COMPRESSING THE IMAGES

When there’s a host of images on the site, the increased size of the images are sure to slow down the loading speed of the blog. You should preferably select PNG-8 or GIF for anything with transparency and JPEG for photographic. In comparison to JPEG format, PNG might bloat up the picture, therefore you have to be more cautious.

Moreover, it is advisable to use photoshop (or a similar program) to “Save for Web” and choose 60-70% quality so you can compress the image size without sacrificing too much quality.

SETTING THE IMAGE SIZE

When loading images on WordPress, the browser takes more time if the specifications of the images are not set prior to loading. Therefore determining the height and width of the images is a simple time saving measure. It helps the browser in allocating enough space for the images.

HOSTING

Investing in the proper hosting is often over looked. This is because of the lucrative appeal of shared hosting. And why not, it’s easy on the pocket. But shared hosting has its own down sides too. Constant downtime and slow loading speed to name a few.

GO EASY ON THE PLUGINS

As attractive as the host of offered plugins are, too many of those may lead to your website crashing or loading particularly slow. Deleting the inessential plugins will certainly help boosting the loading speed. Particularly consider removing plugins that are a heavy burden on the front-end of your site like site builders and javascript-laden resources.

WORDPRESS INSTALLATION UPDATES

When they say to keep the Wordpress installation up to date, it’s not just for the heck of it. Updates help in bug fixes, provide additional features, and help boost performance.

OPT FOR A STURDY THEME

What most people fail to realize is that most of the basic and default themes offered by WordPress are fast and deliver enhanced performance. Upon comparison, other themes appear attractive with their bucketful of features. What you fail to realize is that most of these features often only slow down the site. Simple can be better than a ridiculously large bucket of options, 90% of which you’re not using anyways. Opt for a custom-built theme for the best results.

CUTTING DOWN HTML REQUESTS

Plugins come with CSS and JavaScript files. CSS and JavaScript files have individual HTML requests. As you add more plugins, files are added, and thus multiple html requests arise. Combining all these files help in cutting down the number of HTML requests and thereby speeding up the loading time. Upon loading pieces of functionality, the code is cached on the content delivery network(CDN) and the result comes with a few requests. These requests too help enhance the performance. Content Delivery Network allows visitor to download essential static files in an optimal manner. CDN enhances the site by taking all these files, such as CSS, Javascript etc. CDNs are decent and easy to use, and they execute what your site needs to very quickly. They can however be expensive, so see if it speeds up your site and drop it if it doesn’t.

HOME PAGE MAKEOVER

Homepage is the first thing that visitors see, hence immediately making it the most essential component of the site. A handful of steps that can make your homepage load faster and look more appealing. Keep widgets and plugins to a minimum. You have to constantly delete obsolete widgets and plugins, and focus on the content and information you wish to communicate. Present excerpts on the homepage rather than full fledges articles. This helps in transmitting information faster and effectively.

COHERENT AND DELIGHTFULLY SIMPLE WORDPRESS THEMES

While you are offered flamboyant themes to pick from, you must pick one that is polished and smooth in its operation. When it comes to image based themes, it is a question of whether you want an effortless and smooth theme or a visually appealing yet slow to load theme.

It’s pretty clear from traffic and conversion rates that visitors (and search engines) prefer the sites that are fast and hindrance free. A fast loading site will immediately appeal a visitor, rather than one where one might have to sit around waiting for the page to appear. These were just a handful of steps and tips that may help you increase the efficiency of your WordPress site and cheers to speeding up your WordPress sites performance.

 

Author Bio: Tracey Jones is an expert WordPress developer. Currently, she works with HireWPGeeks Ltd., where she helps her clients to hire reputable WordPress expert from the team of 150+ experienced developers. She has a strong passion for sharing everything WordPress.

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