How to increase the loading speed of a WordPress website? This is one question that is asked by almost all WordPress website owners. Properly optimizing WordPress websites to Increase loading speed might seem difficult for non-tech persons, but it isn’t impossible. And, the answer to this question lies in this article.

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system since 2003. It helps to create any type of website with easy customization, professional-looking themes, and eCommerce functionality. More than 30% of the web all over the world is built on WordPress.

Most bloggers and businesses take the help of WordPress to build websites and engage with people all around the world. In recent days creating a WordPress website has become easy with website builders and using thousands of plugins from WordPress plugins directory. But sometimes even after building a professional looking WordPress website, it becomes slow to load and it affects a lot on your business.

In this article, we will cover some of the best ways of WordPress optimization to increase site loading time.

Let us begin with some important highlights about the things a WordPress site contains.

A WordPress website contains coding, script, database, images, video, and other content.

You can additionally install and add themes, plugins, & codes to customize WordPress sites as per your need.

Top Reasons that make WordPress Site Slow

Wrong Site Configuration

WordPress sites can become slow if you didn’t configure it correctly. WordPress sites contain a large number of files, code, script, content, and other things. All these will communicate with the database and appear in front of the user. If any of these are poorly configured then it might create problems to load the site properly.

Too much/unused plugins

Plugins are one of the easiest ways to implement any functionality to a WordPress site. There are thousands of WordPress plugins that are available on the Internet. But if you install a plugin that is not available on WordPress plugins directory or, a plugin that is not trusted or, large then it might create some serious problems for your site. Sometimes installing too many plugins and leaving it unused can also create trouble for your WordPress site.

Bad Script/Coding

Codes and Script are the two most important elements of a WordPress site. There are PHP codes, HTML, CSS, Javascript that one can change as per their need. So, if you have installed a bad code or script from external sources then it might create a problem for your site.

Heavy Images

Images play a huge role while you are optimizing your WordPress site for fast loading. Using heavy and not properly optimized image sizes can stop your site from loading fast.

Cheap Web Hosting

One of the most common reasons for loading WordPress sites slow is your web hosting provider. Hosting sites on shared servers and resources with cheap web hosting packages can make your WordPress slow and sometimes can create problems with your site to reach your user.

How to Speed Up WordPress Site and Increase Performance Score

Below are some of the most important points you should follow to achieve your WordPress performance optimization goal. Before applying anything on your site you can run a WordPress speed test on Pingdom to know whether your WordPress site loading slow or not.

Caching Content

Caching content especially static images can give you a huge boost in site speed and loading time. When you cache content a returning visitor will get a saved cache version of your webpage loading from his computer and web browser and not directly from the web server. Caching web content not only helps to load the website faster but also minimizes cost. The most popular and widely used plugin for WordPress speed optimization is WP ROCKET.

Optimizing Images

Image optimization is one of the most important factors for WordPress optimization. You should avoid using too large size images on your site. You can also use any popular image optimizers to reduce the size of the image while avoid compromising with the quality.

Stop using Unnecessary Plugins

People are seen using too many unnecessary plugins on their WordPress site to get maximum functionality on their site. But using a lot of plugins can result in slow site loading. To get a particular functionality on your WordPress site you can customize it from your theme settings or through functions.php.

Choose Lightweight Theme

Installing a heavy theme on your website can cause slow site loading. It is a best practice to choose a popular and lightweight theme from WordPress official themes directory.

Using CDN

Content Delivery Network (CDN) will help your site get accessed from the nearest location on the Internet. If you use CDN on your site your user will get your website from his nearest edge location instead of from your original host server location. It will help in WordPress optimization to improve user experience and get faster access to your site.

Decreasing Number of Redirection

Not properly redirecting your site version or pages sometimes creates a problem for faster site loading. Implementing the wrong type of redirects or using too much redirection can increase the site load time. Try to minimize the number of the redirect as much as possible to avoid any slow loading of webpages. Also when implementing redirect make sure you set the correct type of redirection to your webpages.

Minify Codes, Script, and CSS

Sometimes minifying the website codes, script, and style sheets can help to decrease the size of the webpage and site load time. You can use any plugin or code minify tool which will help you to structure your code and delete whitespaces to reduce the size of the file.

Using LightSpeed Server

LightSpeed server is a great solution to make your WordPress site fast. LightSpeed server is a new server technology used by web service provides. Make sure to choose the right web hosting provider who is providing LightSpeed server to host your WordPress website.

These are the most important elements of WordPress optimization and, it should be followed and implemented properly to speed up your WordPress site. If you have no time to implement these to optimize your site then you should hire a professional WordPress developer.

This Article Originally Published Here.