\n<\/p>\n
Site speed is an essential ingredient to a successful website. It often goes unnoticed when it works well, but it is painfully obvious when it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Visitors will \u201cbounce\u201d (aka leave) a website with slow page load times<\/a>. Likewise, Google and other popular search engines use site speed as a factor for their search rankings (both for mobile<\/a> and desktop<\/a>). The faster the website, the better your chance of a higher ranking.<\/p>\n Even if your website is slow now, we have a few tips you can use to speed up your WordPress site.<\/p>\n Not a WordPress user? Check out: How to Speed Up Your Website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Not sure if your website is slow? Google offers a free tool called PageSpeed Insights<\/a> that lets you know how quickly your website loads (and where it could improve).<\/p>\n To assess your site speed, go to the PageSpeed Insights page, enter your website\u2019s URL in the text box, and click the Analyze button. Be sure to look at both the mobile and desktop versions to see how your website performs.<\/p>\n Once analyzed, PageSpeed Insights may also provide you with diagnostic information to help you troubleshoot any issues that are slowing down your website.<\/p>\n This is a great place to start for those who need help determining where their website stands!<\/p>\n Test your site here: Page Speed Insights<\/a><\/p>\n Once you know how your website is performing, you can use the tips below to optimize your website (and increase your website speed!).<\/p>\n WordPress plugins are easy to add and implement, which is one of the reasons for WordPress\u2019s popularity. However, it\u2019s also easy to fill a WordPress site with unused plugins, which can affect your website\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n To give your site a little boost, completely remove any unused plugins.<\/p>\n Tip: Deactivate and uninstall a plugin. Unfortunately, deactivated plugins that aren\u2019t uninstalled can still slow your website down.<\/p>\n Images can transform a website from \u201cjust good\u201d to \u201cGREAT!\u201d\u00a0 However, images can also slow a website down if they\u2019re not properly optimized. So, how do you optimize your images? We\u2019ll show you.<\/p>\n Image dimensions may not seem problematic since many themes resize images to fit the webpage\u2019s needs. However, that means that the site is doing extra work resizing images each time a visitor lands on your site. Multiply that by each image, and you have a decent chunk of your server resources dedicated to loading images.<\/p>\n To avoid that extra resource issue, resize your images to the exact image dimensions your website uses. Doing so saves your website the effort of resizing them every time it loads, allowing the server to focus its resources elsewhere.<\/p>\n You can change your image dimensions in most image editors or directly in the WordPress media editor.<\/p>\n Compression can reduce your file size, especially if your site uses high-quality images.<\/p>\n Compression reduces the image\u2019s file size, thus reducing the amount of loading work your server needs to do. The less work your server needs to do, the faster your website pages load.<\/p>\n There are two main categories of image compression: \u201clossy\u201d and \u201clossless.\u201d<\/p>\n Lossy compression can drastically reduce the image\u2019s file size but may also reduce the image quality. On the other hand, lossless compression retains the original image quality while cutting down on the file size. Consider which method of compression would work best for your site.<\/p>\n There are many image compression tools out there, like tinypng.com<\/a> or compressor.io<\/a>. Simply upload your image and download the compressed version.<\/p>\n The WordPress theme you choose can significantly impact your site speed. A well-designed theme keeps speed in mind and implements design choices to keep the website loading quickly. No amount of image compression or plugin trimming will fix a poorly designed site.<\/p>\n This also applies to old themes. New standards and practices are coming out daily, meaning that websites must adapt to keep up with the rest of the internet. If your website theme is ten years old and has not been updated recently, it might be time to start searching for a new one.<\/p>\n Some things can slow an optimized theme down, like large image files, but fixing those issues will return your website to full speed. However, slowness may be a permanent fixture if your theme doesn\u2019t prioritize speed, is outdated, or poorly designed. Swapping to a different theme is the only way to fix such a site.<\/p>\n Choosing a well-designed theme from the beginning can save you time and effort later. Your theme is the base of your website. You wouldn\u2019t choose unstable materials to build a house on, so why would you choose a slow theme?<\/p>\n Website caching is another way you can speed up your site. Caching works like this: the server stores a copy of your website and every time a visitor lands on the page, it feeds them the pre-stored version of the website. This means the server doesn\u2019t need to reload the site every time a visitor lands, thus reducing the load time. This can boost your site speed, especially if you use many plugins or a complex theme.<\/p>\n Pair Networks\u2019 Managed WordPress packages and PairSIM WordPress installation come with plugins to enable caching, allowing our customers to reap caching\u2019s benefits immediately.<\/p>\n WordPress is built on databases. While the average user doesn\u2019t need to access the WordPress database, the database is critical to a WordPress site\u2019s infrastructure. It holds all the data for your website and makes sure it\u2019s available for the website to use when needed. Without a database, you couldn\u2019t store your posts, pages, pictures, and more with WordPress.<\/p>\n However, if your WordPress website has been around for a while, it\u2019s probably built up junk in its database. This is especially true if you often create, delete, and move posts and pages around. Databases store important things, of course, but they also keep less important things like post revisions and spam comments. So, whenever you update a post\/page or fix a typo, your database stores a copy. If you receive hundreds of spam comments, the database keeps that, too.<\/p>\n All these things have their uses \u2013 so it\u2019s nice that the database stores them. However, over time, this data build-up can begin slowing down your database (and, by extension, your website). If your website has been around for a while, you may not need some of the information it stores \u2013 like post revisions from years ago.<\/p>\n Luckily, you can get all the gunk out of your WordPress database by optimizing it! Optimizing your database removes some of the unnecessary data that it\u2019s storing. Doing this every once in a while is a great way to rejuvenate your site speed. It\u2019s like spring cleaning \u2013 but easier!<\/p>\n The developers of the popular UpDraftPlus plugin have a great plugin for optimizing your database. And as a bonus, it can help optimize your images, too.<\/p>\nIs Your Site Slow?<\/h3>\n
Increasing Website Speed<\/h3>\n
Get Rid of Extra Plugins<\/h4>\n
Optimize Your Images<\/h4>\n
Image Dimensions<\/h5>\n
Compress Your Images<\/h5>\n
Choose Themes Wisely<\/h4>\n
Use WordPress Caching<\/h4>\n
Clean Your WordPress Database<\/h4>\n