How to Speed Up WordPress

 

As a website is the sole investment of any digital entrepreneur, knowing everything about it the best approach towards a profitable business endeavor. In this context one aspect is very essential – the pace of the website. This is important because the speed of browsing inside the website directly affects the volume of the net traffic inflow & accumulation which in turn puts proportional effect customer satisfaction, conversion rate and finally the turnover.

The reason of paces crisis is mainly lack of basic WordPress know how and with the methods of its maintenance. In course of time, the WordPress becomes less efficient and slow due to cache sedimentation caused by the arousal of various complexities. In this following discussion, we will talk about WordPress and a wide array of measures to make it glitch free and fast. This piece will be a guide for everyone, from the beginners to the professionals and will have knowledge steps, starting from the basics to the advanced form. So read, learn, develop your skills and implement them to make your website faster.

The very first question that pops in the mind is – Why does the speed of your website matter?

The answer is quite simple; most of the people are very impatient these days. People lead a fast-paced lifestyle and a single domain is supersaturated with excess number of competitors. So, if the website is slow the traffic will close the tab and search for another similar site. From the net statistics it is quite clear that a faster browser shows an increased number of downloads and a slowed down brand website produces loss reports.

Hence speed is money in the digital world. Another drawback of this speed deficiency is that the ranking of the page slides. The website with buffering has more bounce rates that is people immediately leave the website if the loading time is prolong. If bounce rates are high then the search engine will give down vote and the website will lose its SERP upscale standing. The problem is direr in case of the app versions because mobile networks are more unstable that fixed router internet lines.

Now the main question - Why the speed of your website declines?

Let’s answer this in pointers.

·        Hosting & Server – The kind of WordPress hosting, the power of the server and server’s location plays an important part in determining the speed of the website. The shared hosting is speed compromising if an all hogging bad neighbor site is present in the network. In case of virtual private server and dedicated server, hosting the resource allocation is uniform & steady and the latter is more efficient as it is single user server. The technologies of the server and also their version, affect the speed of the website. And finally, the nearness of the hosting server to your website’s hub location influences the speed of the website browsing.

·        WordPress – The very structure of the WordPress you are using directly affects the speed of the website. The software and the CMS used make the website more efficient than the pure html-built sites but the speed is compromised. Similarly, the plugins, add-ons and the themes incorporated makes the website quite attractive & user friendly but at the same time makes it slow.

·        Browser’s Device – The final piece of the chain are the end devices which the customers are using. If a customer is using an old PC or a lower version smartphone your updated site will get slow download rate on that device and the customer will give you a bounce. This may not be your website’s fault still you will be the ultimate sufferer.

The next question is – How will you measure the speed of your website?

You may say that every device will give a different speed for a website. Right you are. As an admin you might always get full browsing speed but that does not mean that is the actual case. There are many tools in the internet to test the speed of a website. Like Okla. that measures the internet speed of a network provider, Pingdom & similar tools gives you the actual average speed of your website over the internet.

The final question is – What should be the desired speed of your website?

The clearest answer is that it should be well below 2 seconds. Anything above it means the bounce rate will increase exponentially. According to some website speed analysts the loading time of 1.7 seconds is ideal for topping out the rivals. Anyway, the aim should always be to keep the loading time well under 2 seconds for all and sundry.

Now coming to the end of the discussion we will presenting before you a list of dos and don’ts that will most certainly give your website a serious speed up and will also boost its overall quality.

1.      Do invest capital on acquiring a high-quality hosting serve. Suggestion is to go for a nearby dedicated server. This may cost a bit but in the long run you will be profited and will require minimal maintenance cost.

2.      Do keep all your software updated. By using the latest CMS, HTML and PHP you can fully utilize the server’s power and speed up your website’s pace. Remember to integrate WordPress compatible only for better results.

3.      Do, obviously, choose the latest version of the WordPress to create and monitor your website.

4.      Do choose the right theme. There are many templates in the WordPress but opt the one that will not only suite your essence but will also be compatible with the power level of your hosting server.

5.      Do maintain the website database properly. Clearing cache and old codes is highly advised.

6.      Do integrate auto pilot monitoring tools in the WordPress to keep an all-time vigil at the back end and keep you posted with the ongoing.

7.      Do not entertain server requests. The resources asked for through the server not only decrease the website’s speed but also jeopardizes the security.

8.      Do optimize the images. The pixels take up longer time to load thus making your website lag down. Manage the dimension & pixel concentration to keep the images thread motion smooth.

9.      Do not feature too many videos on your website. Videos take longer time to load which ultimately speed down the website.

10.   Do keep utilizing the automatic caching option to make your html version available at all times.

11.   Do use a content delivery network or CDN like cloudflare, amazon cloudfront etc. to transit files with ease, boosting your website’s speed.

12.   Do concatenate all your data files for easy transactions.

13.   Do use file minification option to accelerate the upload / download speed of your website?

14.   Do use the Gzip compression to compress resource file. This will speed up the whole website flow.

15.   Do not opt for hotlinking.

By reading thoroughly these instructions and implementing these you will surely get results in speeding up your WordPress.