How to Speed Up WordPress Performance Step-by-Step (UPDATED)

Ishtiak April 25, 2020

0 777 3 minutes read

Wordpress is a highly coded secured cms platform & easier to set up but the most common question we get is how to speed up Wordpress performance and I will share some basic guidelines to help you out. First Thing is not to add low-quality plugins and Use a Lightweight Theme/Framework, poorly coded theme slows things down a lot, so chose wisely. Before installing a theme you can always check their Gtmetrix Score or Google Page Speed score to help you decide

1. Selecting the Right Web Hosting Service

The most common mistake people do is go after a cheap Webhosting Package with Unlimited Disk Unlimited Bandwidth. Nothing is unlimited and Good things are never cheap. Even though nowadays most of the web hosting companies provide unlimited package but they have hidden restrictions which aren’t mentioned in their package and the terms are called fair usage policy while you purchase you click the checkbox accept terms of service but you never really dig into what are the fair usage policies are. They put a restriction on I/O Limits, Maximum Ongoing Process, Php Memory Limit, Maximum File Upload Limit, etc. When I was in college couldn’t afford a good host I bought myself an unlimited hosting package for $1 and the PHP max upload limit was 2mb and I couldn’t even install a theme on Wordpress because it didn’t allow me to upload more than 2mb. Saying that there are few hosting services with unlimited plans is fair to their clients and they allow you more than the resources you need to run your website perfectly. The First Name Comes in mind is BlueHost. Their Shared Hosting Usage Policy is fair based on the price they are charging if you love unlimited plans with a blazing fast network you can try them. And My Personal Favorite is Siteground. Why Siteground? Because of their uptime, speed & server end optimization.

2. Use Caching Plugins to Speed Up WordPress Performance

After selecting the right web host the 2nd most effective way to speed up your WordPress by installing a good caching plugin. Caching plugins helps reduce the HTTP request & my SQL database access by creating cached copies of your page. In my opinion, the best Caching Plugin is Wp-Rocket although it’s not free. If you want to use free caching plugins, I highly recommend Wp-Fastest Cache or LightSpeed Cache. After installing a caching plugin you will notice that your page speed loading time has increased.

3. Minify HTML, CSS & Javascript to Increase Page Load Speed

What minification is and how it can benefit your site? Minification is the process of taking a piece of code and removing all unnecessary characters from it. Minified files perform exactly the same as the original code, they just take up a little less space because they cut out extraneous information. Minification is particularly popular for scripts, stylesheets, and other similar website components. It can benefit your site by Decreasing loading times. You can easily Minify your Wordpress using Autoptimize. It is the Best plugin for Minification and the Most amazing Part is, it’s completely free & this will help you speed up Wordpress performance

4. Use a CDN

CDN or Content Delivery Network service basically keeps a copy of your website in various data centers located in different places. The Basic Function of CDN is to Serve the webpage to a visitor from the nearest possible datacenter location. The people who visit your website belong to various locations in the world, and needless to say, the site-loading speed will differ if the visitors are located far away from where your site is hosted. There are many CDN (Content Delivery Networks) that help in keeping the site-loading speed to a minimum for visitors from various countries & the first Name comes in mind is Cloudflare and you can use Cloudflare for free and it will speed up Wordpress performance by loading the site from the nearest location of the page visitor.

If you need some advance optimization method via htaccess you can check this article Increase WordPress Page Speed 5x Using Htaccess Optimization , this will speed up Wordpress if your hosting service is not optimized