No matter how good your content is if your site loading time sucks speed up – no one will read it.
One of the key factors for any popular blog is this: they make sure their site is loading faster than others.
You can use Pingdom Tools to check your site’s loading time. If you think your site is loading too slow, this article is for you.
Let’s go through the ways to speed up your WordPress sites.
#1. 3 simple tips to speed up WordPress sites
Here are few basic things you need to do to speed up WordPress sites.
First, remove the spam comments: Most bloggers ignore deleting their spam. Spam comments actually put more burden on your databases hence it reduces your site’s loading time. The best way to speed up your WP site is to use Akismet plugin and delete all the spam comments time to time.
Remove post revisions: Most bloggers don’t aware of this point, they update their posts very often and they pre-check their posts before hitting publish button. This often leads to post revisions and creates more burden on the databases on consumes more space on your DB’s.
The best way to control post revisions is by installing better delete revision plugin. It removes and deletes old revision of posts, pages, and related meta content completely then optimizes Database: reduce size and optimization to speed up.
Don’t use too many WP plugins: One of the dumbest blogging mistakes most people make is they use every widget or plugin under the sun. Don’t make use of unwanted plugins, they simply make your site loading time slower. Most of the time, 80% of your site loading time depends on the plugins that you use. So, use only those plugins which add real value to your blogs to speed up your WordPress sites.
#2. Use the BEST hosting service – speed up
Using the reliable hosting service provider always enhances your database performance and site loading times.
If you use cheap hosting providers, they always create more burden on your databases by using less bandwidth and your readers will always face slow loading times when they land on your sites. Don’t make this mistake if you are serious about making money blogging.
You must invest money on the basic things like buying a premium them, and owning a better hosting service to give your readers the best user experience.
I use and recommend Host Gator service, they are best in their field.
#3. Compress the images and don’t play with CSS
The primary reason for a slow loading site is the images. If you use too many images (.jpg, .png, or .gif), it decreases the site loading time as they consume more space in your databases.
So if you are using images on your sites, make sure to compress them. Either by using automatic free online tools or by using plugins like WP Smush it. This WP plugin is effective when you want to compress all the images on your sites.
One more important thing to consider here is: don’t play with CSS files in your themes and folders. Most new bloggers don’t aware of any coding and they tweak unwanted things – this is the primary reason most new blogs take too much time to load.
Unless you know what you are doing, don’t play with CSS folders or files in your blogs.
#4. Install W3 total cache
What can I say about this plugin?
This is one of the best WP plugins that is used by almost every blogger in the blogosphere.
What does this plugin do?
W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
It also improves the user experience for your readers without having to change WordPress, your theme, your plugins or how you produce your content.
#5. Optimize your databases
Here are few handy WordPress plugins to optimize your databases.
WP-DBManager: This plugin allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database, drop/empty tables, and run selected queries. It also supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.
Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions: This is a must-have a plugin to optimize your databases, moreover, it’s a one-click WP database cleaner. You can start the Optimization within the WP Admin Panel » Tools » Optimize Database.
The great thing about this plugin is, if you use the Scheduler the Optimization will run automatically!
Over to you: What do you think about the loading time of a site? Is your site loading faster? What are your tips to speed up a WP site excluding the above?