With a few simple tweaks and techniques, you can easily improve your WordPress performance and reduce page load time. From optimising resource usage to finding the best plugins for your site, learn how to maximise the efficiency of your WordPress site with these easy-to-follow expert tips.
Utilise a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
To deliver content more quickly, you can use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This service stores copies of your website content on multiple geographically dispersed servers and delivers the content closer to its end users. This reduces latency and helps to improve page load times. Additionally, some CDNs will minify your CSS and JavaScript files, which can further improve performance.
Setting up a Content Delivery Network (CDN) on WordPress is fairly easy. Although the process will vary slightly depending on the integration method, most CDNs can be configured in conjunction with a caching plugin, including our favourite CDN from bunny.net.
Optimise your images
Properly optimising images is a great way to improve the performance of your WordPress site. First, make sure that you are using image formats appropriate for the content. JPEGs are best for photographs and images with complex colours and patterns, while GIFs and PNGs are best for simple graphics and icons. Additionally, be sure to compress or resize large images before uploading them to your site. You can use online tools like TinyPNG or Compressor.io to do this quickly and easily.
Resizing and compressing your images can significantly reduce the amount of storage they take up. Keeping your site’s image size down will also mean that pages load faster, improving the overall performance of your WordPress site. Additionally, keeping your images optimised is important for SEO as large unoptimised images can often create a bottleneck for search engine crawlers and slow down indexing. By optimising your images for SEO you also give them a better chance of appearing in Google Image Search results, potentially driving even more traffic to your website.
Upgrade to the latest version of PHP
Keeping your PHP up-to-date is important for optimal WordPress performance. Outdated versions of PHP can lead to slower loading times and other issues. It’s easy to upgrade your version of PHP, just make sure you back up your site before making any changes. You can also consult with a WordPress professional if you’re not sure how to do this yourself.
You can use the WordPress Health Check Plugin to see what version of PHP your WordPress site is currently running. It will also tell you if your version of PHP is outdated and needs to be upgraded. You can also download WP Update Manager which will take care of upgrading your version of PHP. If neither one of these options appeals, we can take care of the PHP update for you.
Use a caching plugin to improve performance and speed
To further improve your WordPress performance, consider using a caching plugin. Caching solutions reduce page loading times and resource usage by taking static copies of dynamic pages. This means that when someone visits the same page again, they don’t have to load it from scratch and a cached version is served up instead. There are several good caching plugins available but our absolute favourite is WP Rocket, which is produces some amazing results on the WordPress platform.
Caching can be quite complex and there are various settings that can be tweaked depending on your needs. Generally, you should consider the caching solution as “set it and forget it”. Even the most basic of implementations will help improve performance for your visitors. This includes sites that utilise slow, heavy themes with Elementor or WPBakery installed. But make sure to test any changes before pushing them live on your website.