How to speed up wordpress website?
Note: if you do not want to speed up your website, so let Marketist help you speed up your website. Email now at [email protected]
Introduction to course How to speed up wordpress website:
Welcome to premium article by Imran (Team Marketist). In this long article I will share all the information to speed up wordpress website step by step.
After this course you will be able to speed up any wordpress site and achieve 90+ google score on google pagespeed insights.
Why web speed matters?
Did you know that if any visitors visits your website and your website loads in more than 7 seconds, you may loose up to 70% customers.
In today’s digital world, there is alternate to everything be it your business. So, slow loading will force your user/client to shift to the available alternate.
Why back up is important?
Before moving further we need to back up our website as we are going to install few plug ins which will change your website big time. So if any plug in breaks your website you will have a back up of your website and you can restore old website.
How to back up wordpress website:
As we are using wordpress we will use simple plug in to back up our website. I am going to use updraft plus for making a backup of website.
Watch this complete video to back up your website:
Go to plug ins > Install new > Search updraft plus > set it up.
Top 5 plug ins I will use to optimize website speed;
Here is the list of 5 most important plug ins which play vital role in optimizing web speed;
- SMUSH
- Hummingbird
- Wp-optimize
- Autoptimizer
- Pagespeed ninja
Smush:
Smush is top free plug in to optimize our web images. We can resize image size and smush it to save maximum data on the website.
Also it gives option to smush our directory if you have heavy website.
Ideal image size on website is 1024*1024.
It smushes 50 images at a time as we are using free version in this course.
It enables you to activate lazy loading of images too. What is lazy loading?
It means images are not loaded untill user goes to that specific place where images are available.
Hummingbird:
List of the things this plug in do;
- Performance test and shows you webspeed score (Sometimes it resembles google page speed but sometime it may differ)
- Gzip Compression
- Caching
- Page caching
- browser caching
- Gravatar Caching
- RSS Caching
- Asset optimization
- Uptime
- Other settings
Wp-Optimizer:
This is another very important plug in which optimizes databases. Another must optimized thing on any wordpress website.
This also gives additional option on optimizing images, some images are not properly smushed by SMUSH, this does this all.
This also provides lazy loading but we will not enable it as we are already using another plug in for this.
Autoptimize:
It helps us to optimize JS, CSS and HTML.
Please have a look on the video so that you should know which options to select and which to leave.
Pagespeed ninja:
If you really wanna see how ninja works, have a look on this plug in. This is very powerful plug in which may break your site so always select optimal option first and play on the others later.
Always have a look on the web after configuration this plugin.
Check speed of the website.
Bonus tips for the future if you want to be consistent on your page speed;
- Clearing cache with time
- Always clear cache and smush images if you post any content be it page or post, or add any image on the website.
- Clear it whenever you update any plugin or theme.
- Update Everything:
- Update your plug ins and themes.
- Never leave them un-updated, this will slow down the website.
- Keep an eye on updates.
- Remember: These updates are for our own good, sometimes their security is improved and other times their functionality improves so keep everything updated.
- Remove unnecessary plugins:
- Remove all the plug ins which you do not use on the web.
- Do not install extra plug ins or same functionality plug ins.
- Do not install old plug ins:
- It is highly recommended not to install the plug ins which are not updated for last 1-2 months.
- Keep in mind if developer do not update it means they are not willing to provide services or that plug in being no more maintained.
Another topic, what if the above process does not work on your website?
Well, I have used the same procedure on many website including my own, for me it is working fine and perfect but here are few things you need to do if things do not work out;
- May be it is your current theme.
- Install 2017 theme which is by wordpress and check the web speed, if you find 90+ score on google pagespeed it means it is your theme who is not speed friendly.
- Hosting provider:
- Sometimes hosting provider do not provide SSD Hosting and provide low RAM.
- You need to change your hosting provider or increase RAM speed to improve web speed.
- Premium Themes:
- Please choose premium themes if you can afford, try to do some research before choosing any theme. Specifically check whether they are speed friendly.
- Look, if some company is providing something FREE, there must be something that is why they are FREE.
- Premium Plugin:
- If you can afford, go for premium plug in.
Bonus Tip:
Gtmetrix:
Gtmetrix is another page speed tool which tells you the time of loading of website. Well I recommend you to use this to check the possible things which can be improved in the website and it will increase the webspeed.
Waterfall section is great source.
I hope at this point your website speed must be touching 90+ score on google pagespeed insight, if not please share if you have any questions related to How to speed up wordpress website in the comment section below, I will respond to your query at earliest.
