My Top 6 WordPress Tips to Improve Page Speed
Since starting my WordPress site early last year I have learnt a lot about improving my site, increasing page speed, keeping it secure and up to date. Now I feel it’s time to share and will be writing a series of posts with tips and advice, the first is on increasing your page speed.
“Statistics show that 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load.” That’s a scary thought in itself! So here are my 6 tips to help you on your way to increase your page speed. Some tips may improve your speed a lot or just a little, everything counts! A better speed can also help towards a better google ranking.
*But before you make any changes to your site please go to either of these sites and test the load time/speed score of your home page and write them down (values will vary amongst different testing sites):
1. Delete inactive plugins
Take a look at your plugin list (plugins > installed plugins) and ask yourself which of these do I really need and add value to my blog? Deactivate and delete the ones you don’t need. If you only deactivate them they will still take up space and may increase loading time.
2. Remove spam comments
These can take up a lot of space and your slow site down. The best plugin to help combat spam comments is akismet download and activate it asap. Then go into your comments and delete spam (comments > spam > empty spam) and delete trash.
3. Delete old post revisions
Did you know whenever you edit a post WordPress creates a post revision? No? Neither did I! There is a fab WordPress plugin optimize database after deleting revisions that will delete these revisions and optimize your database, saving space. These deletions can also be scheduled.
4. Remove Unused CSS
Within a website, there is usually a lot of unused text within the coding of our plugins etc. I’ve found the best way to remove this text was to use a helpful site called unused-css.com. Just put in your website site url > click detect unused and within an hour or so you will be sent an email with the link to your optimized css files. You can download these optimised css files and exchange them with your old files. The free service goes one level deep. But with the more advanced service starting at a 30-day pass (£16) or 12 months (£52) it is affordable for everyone!!!
**Note: Before you exchange the optimized file with the old file make a backup of the old file and check your website after each file change**
5. Optimise images
If your website contains images on each page it’s important the images are optimized and a smaller file size as possible, this will help with page speed dramatically. The best plugin for this I’ve found is wp-smushit, install, activate it, then go to (media > Bulk smush.it). If you have a lot of images it may take a while to process but be patient it is worth it. Afterwards you may choose to manually smush.it your images as you add them or periodically.
6. Install a caching plugin
Caching plugins like w3-total-cache or wp-super-cache are designed to improve user experience and page speed. They can be a little complicated to setup, but are definitely worth it and highly recommend by experienced WordPress users.
If you have followed any of these tips please go back and re-test your site speed / score.
Post your before and after results below
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