How to Speed Up a WordPress Site for Technical and Non-Technical Users

Speeding up your WordPress site is crucial to ensuring the best performance for your site in terms of user experience. It is also vital for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as increasingly, ensuring that your site is fast, along with other SEO optimizations, gives you the best shot at appearing at the top in Search Engine Ranking Pages, SERPs. In this article, we’ll delve deep into how to speed up a WordPress site for both technical and non-technical users.

Speeding Up Your WordPress Site for Technical and Non-Technical Users

Basic Steps to Speed Up Your WordPress Site (for Non-Technical Users)

• Choose the Right Theme

For non-technical users, the best and easiest way of ensuring that you speed up your WordPress site is to choose the right theme. In my experience, nothing impacts a site’s speed as much as the theme you are using.

As such, set out from the get-go with a fast-loading and speed-optimized theme and your users can enjoy an improved user experience, UX and the site will be on the right footing in terms of SEO.

Worthy mentions for fast WordPress themes are GeneratePress and Astra. Default WordPress themes are also very fast and their simplicity plays a huge part in ensuring that they will load content extremely fast. If you’re just starting out, I would highly advise that you use a default WordPress theme such as Twenty Sixteen.

These themes are created by the community of developers behind WordPress itself, and these individuals have in-depth knowledge on how to optimize WordPress, an added advantage. The themes are also absolutely free, though you can find a number of fast-loading premium themes.

• Eliminate Bloated Plugins

Non-technical users can also speed up their WordPress sites by eliminating bloated plugins i.e., plugins that are too huge in size, that create too many files, or make numerous unnecessary requests to your server. Just like the WordPress theme you choose, choosing simple and non-bloated plugins will go a long way in ensuring your site loads very fast.

WordPress plugins load on almost every page on your WordPress site and if a plugin is bloated, then that will translate to a slower site. Also note that you should limit the overall number of plugins you install on your site, as the more the plugins installed, the more plugin scripts will load on the pages, and the slower your site will become.

A good number of plugins to install is 20 or less and you should try and avoid plugins that make a lot of requests to your site’s host, as these will likely slow your site and lead to increased hosting costs for your WordPress site. Some of these plugins include mail plugins that send you site notifications, comment plugins that fetch comments every time a post is loaded, and page builder plugins that need to be loaded every time a page (that you’ve created with the page builder) is loaded.

To remove bloated plugins, first create a staging website (a copy of your site for testing and development) and then go on to test the effect of removing the plugins. If you are using web hosting from Cloudways, for instance, it only takes one click to set up a staging website.

Always backup your site when making changes. Some plugins may be ‘too integrated’ to your site and are needed for the site to function normally, and for these, you may need to find ways to limit their capabilities. Some approaches may include tweaking the plugin’s settings or switching off some of its features.

• Avoid Header Sliders/Animations

Another way to speed up your WordPress site for non-technical users is to avoid header animations and sliders. Sliders and animations often require complicated javascript codes and scripts, which a page will need to load before presenting the content in the animation or slider.

Some of these scripts such as ‘jquery’ and ‘jquery migrate’ may slow down your site significantly.

If you must use a slider or animation, when site design necessitates it, then be sure to only put the slider/animation below the fold and use a caching plugin to load the scripts it relies on in the footer, or deferred.

You could also go for slider alternatives such as a static banner or a single hero image.

• Upload Large Media Files to Third-Party Services

Large media files such as high-quality video files and large images can significantly slow down your site. As such, to speed up your WordPress, consider uploading large media files to third-party services such as YouTube for videos, Flickr for images, or SoundCloud for audio files. After doing this, you can then embed these files to your posts, and not have to load them from your host.

For other files such as those beyond 1GB in size, consider using third-party services such as Amazon S3 and Google Drive to store these files.

This approach will be dually beneficial as the files will not take up storage space on your server and they will also not slow down page load.

• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network, or CDN, is an interconnected network of web servers that use geographical user location to deliver instances of a website. In essence, when using a CDN, copies of your pages will be distributed to servers all over the world, and when a user in New York requests a page, for example, then it will be delivered from the nearest server to them, speeding up your WordPress site.

Most CDNs are premium and require a subscription but you can use the Cloudflare CDN with a free account. Cloudflare is a web security, optimization, and development company that integrates seamlessly with WordPress. It gives you a dashboard where you can tweak DNS, SSLs, Caching, Site Security, and so much more.

• Regular WordPress Updates

Regularly updating your WordPress themes, plugins, and core versions can go a long way in improving site speed. Updates often come with improvements in task execution, optimized (and often shortened) scripts, and overall improvements that will collectively improve page speed.

It is crucial that you keep your WordPress site up to date, as it also ensures that your site remains safe. To bolster site security, you should also never keep any unused or older versions of plugins.

• Limit Post Revisions

If you’re like me, you’ll often find that you’ll go back to a post you’ve put up and make some revisions. WordPress automatically saves these revisions to your database, and when you have 3 or more revisions for each posts, these can rapidly add up and bloat your WordPress database.

A bloated database will definitely slow your site down, necessitating steps to ensure post revisions are kept at a minimum.

To do this, ensure that you limit the number of post revisions you make. My approach to this is to only save a post draft after making a significant change to the post. Each time you save a post draft, a new revision is created and stored in the database.

You can also limit post revisions using a plugin such as the Limit Posts plugin or the Companion Revisions plugin.

You could also tweak WordPress settings to limit post revisions by adding the line define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 3); to the top of your wp-config.php file. You can access this file via Theme Editor in Appearance settings on your WP dashboard.

Advanced Tips for Boosting WordPress Speed & Performance (for Technical Users)

• Use the Latest Version of PHP

For technical users, one of the best ways to speed up your WordPress site is to update to the latest version of php. This not only ensures compatibility with newer plugins and versions of WordPress but also improves how fast newer and more recent versions of web browsers read your site’s code. If a page is read faster by the browser, then it will be faster for your users.

Newer PHP versions also manage memory better, and will less likely undergo issues with storing or retrieving data from your WordPress database.

To update to the latest version of php, head to your hosting panel’s or server settings and look for ‘Upgrade PHP Version’.

• Choose a Faster Server

Essentially, your WordPress site will only be as fast as your web server. What this means is, if your site is on a shared server, for instance, it will definitely be slower than a site on a standalone server.

As such, go for hosting that will provide a standalone server at a reasonable price, and also one that has a CDN in place. This will ensure that not only will content be delivered faster but also from the nearest server location.

In our experience, Cloudways Hosting offers the best hosting services at a reasonable price, with a one-click solution for doing most of what I have shared on this guide. They provide standalone cloud servers that are quite fast, and have a CDN in place ensuring your content is delivered to your audience via the closest server to their location.

You can get a 20% Cloudways Discount by using our promo code ‘MANIAINC‘. We may get a commission when you do or when you get a Cloudways plan via one of our links.

• Leverage a Caching Plugin

Caching is an additional way to speed up your WordPress site. A site cache stores static copies of your pages, scripts, and files ensuring these ‘copies’ are delivered to users instead of being requested from the server. Effective site cache implementation can make a huge difference in WordPress page speed and it is crucial to have a caching plugin to help you do it.

Effective caching plugins include Breeze, WP Super Cache, and WP Optimize. These do a good job and both Breeze and WP Super Cache will work with Autoptimize, which is the most effective plugin for managing scripts and doing minification.

• Minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

Minification is removing spaces and comments from code and style scripts such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It helps make the code leaner and consequently increases site speed.

The most effective minification plugin is by far Autoptimize. It can be quite aggressive, however, so it is best to configure it as best as you can for your particular use case. The way I do this is to go to my theme’s developer’s website and find their recommendations on how to implement minification.

When you set Autoptimize to align with your theme’s requirements, then you are assured that it will work effectively. You could also use a pagespeed tool like webpagetest.org, find the files that are slowing down your site or those that you do not want to minify, and optimize or exclude those in Autoptimize respectively.

It is essential to also ensure that you do not do double-minification as numerous caching plugins will also offer minification tools. The Breeze cache plugin by Cloudways, for instance, does a wonderful job of caching and also JS, CSS, and HTML minification.

For the best result, ensure you only minify once, using a single plugin and do it as recommended by your theme developer or as needed for your use case. For example, an e-commerce site may exclude from minification any scripts needed by WooCommerce.

• Remove Render-Blocking JavaScript and CSS

Render-Blocking JavaScript and CSS are JS and CSS files that block the initial page render when a user requests a page. These can include analytics scripts, advertising, or other lines of code and stylesheets that load before the DOM is fully loaded.

To remove render-blocking CSS, ensure you load these scripts deferred, using the ‘defer’ statement in the ‘src=’ line of the header code.

You can also use your caching plugin to load these in the footer, if they do not require immediate use above-the-fold. Beware that ad code should only be loaded in the header to ensure top ads are shown.

• Optimize Images, Media, and Database

Image, media and database optimization is another way to speed up your WP site.

For images, you can use plugins such as Smush to compress image files, and even convert them to faster-loading file types such as .webp.

For other media files, and especially large ones, be sure to use third-party services (as discussed in the first section) to store these, and then only link to or embed them in your posts.

Database optimization can be a little tricky but the right caching plugin can easily help you do this. Installing Cloudways’ Breeze, as an example, can help you with database optimization, which works best when your site is hosted with them as it has native support. If the feature is unavailable, you can still use the plugin or the WP Sweep plugin to get the job done.

Optimizing the WordPress database includes deleting post revisions, removing orphaned entries (such as those from deleted plugins), and ensuring proper storage structure and techniques.

Do note that choosing the right plugins can help streamline this process. Always choose plugins that will clean after themselves once you delete them. This avoids a bloated database and is crucial for speeding up your WordPress site. Also choose plugins that do several things at once, reducing the need for numerous plugins that each do one thing.

• Disable Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Pingbacks are essentially pings to certain sites you are linking to, or from sites linking to your content. Trackbacks are analytics and tracking link tools that are used for attribution of conversions and sales. These make numerous and often unnecessary requests to your server and database, and can significantly slow down your site.

As such, I would recommend that you disable them; and you can often do this via the General Settings in WordPress for pingbacks.

For trackbacks, avoid trackback plugins and only use trackback links when it is absolutely necessary. The way I do this is to use link shortening services that allow for tracking similar to trackbacks such as Bit.ly.

• Uninstall Unused Plugins and Themes

A clean WP installation is crucial for site speed, necessitating that you uninstall all unused themes and plugins.

To be on the safe side, however, always have one extra theme as a fallback, in case your main theme faces issues. If you only have one theme installed and it crashes, then your site could be left with a fatal error (WordPress screen of death) and we do not want that.

Ensure also that you properly uninstall themes and plugins. The right way to do this is to first backup your entire site or use a staging website. Then you can go on to deactivate the theme or plugin, and then delete it once it is deactivated.

It’s also a good step to first check the plugin’s settings to see whether there is an option to ‘Delete All Data and Files on Uninstall’ as it will ensure that when you delete the plugin, it deletes all its files and database entries.

Conclusion: How to Effectively Speed Up Your WordPress Site

Speeding up a WordPress site is essential for optimal performance, ensuring a great user experience, and for SEO. There are various ways to speed up your WordPress installation regardless of whether you are a non-technical or technical user.

Installing a few non-bloated plugins is one approach. You can also use third-party platforms to store large media files and avoid storing them on your server, hence ensuring they do not weigh on your server’s storage capacity or the site’s loading times. Other approaches include using a CDN, implementing a cache plugin, minification, and disabling pingbacks and trackbacks.

Choosing a fast web server is also crucial to site speed and if you choose a good host, you will get one-click solutions to do most of what we have discussed in this article, via your hosting dashboard.

From our experiences, Cloudways offers the best overall cloud hosting solutions, including an integrated firewall for security, a CDN for fast content delivery to your audience, and a natively supported caching plugin that also minifies your site’s code and optimizes your WordPress database. You can try their hosting with a free 3-day trial and see the flexibility and options they provide. We may earn a commission.

You can always measure if any of the strategies you have deployed are working, by using pagespeed tools such as webpagetest.org and Google Pagespeed Insights. Be sure to read our 7 WordPress performance optimization tips for more on how to optimize your WordPress site.

We hope you enjoyed our tips on how to speed up a WordPress site. Feel free to reach out for any assistance via our comments or contact page. Cheers.

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