Imagine that the WordPress site is a racing car, and the admin is its driver. And can win games on the Internet. To become a Grand Prize champion, not only must the car’s speed be fine-tuned (optimized), but also, many factors need to be considered. Race track construction, weather conditions, driver skills, the talent of maintenance personnel, competitor strategies. Admin also needs to ensure that his car runs as efficiently as possible to provide him with the best performance. How is this done?
Keep the car’s engine and body in top condition. Change oil, coolant, filter, and any other fluids regularly for regular maintenance. Maintain optimal tire pressure. Before the tires and brake pads wear out, replace them. and many more…
Same as a WordPress site, only not so troublesome. Once most of the steps mentioned here are completed, thanks to automation, the WordPress site will become clean and optimized. A faster website will not only attract praise from website visitors but also help the website rank higher in search engine results. Fasten your seat belt and back up your site. Let’s start optimizing!
Choose an excellent cloud server or cloud host
If the driveway of the car is covered with potholes, frequent speed bumps, roadblocks, traffic jams, etc., regardless of the speed of the car, the price and the quality of the adjustment are irrelevant. The car cannot perform at its best. Web hosting is like the channel where WordPress site runs. The first step to ensure that a website runs as quickly as possible is to choose the ideal web hosting plan.
If you are running a simple personal blog with the least traffic, choose to use a cheap shared hosting plan with the least server resources. However, if the resources of the web host do not meet the needs of the website, it will face poor response and load times.
It is common to see many website owners running their websites on shared hosting plans with insufficient RAM and CPU. These server resources are shared with hundreds of other websites (hence the name “shared hosting”). Then they wanted to know why even after performing all the optimization tasks, their website could not load faster.
Also, ensure that the web hosting company supports the latest technologies such as PHP 7 (or higher), HTTP / 2 and TLS 1.3. Therefore, eliminate this possibility immediately and adopt an above-average hosting plan. But speed comes at a price. The cost depends on how fast the webmaster wants to go.
Use quick themes and / or frames
If the car body is not designed to have aerodynamic characteristics and cannot pass air resistance, then it will lag. The same is true of a clumsy engine. The theme is like the body of a car, and the frame is like an engine. Make sure they are coded correctly and can be loaded quickly.
The most popular WordPress themes and frameworks available today are responsive, which means they can run seamlessly on all device sizes, be it desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile devices. Website visitors and search engines will appreciate the installation of this program.
Free theme suggestions are Astra, OceanWP, and GeneratePress. Used with decent page generators such as Elementor Pro or Beaver Builder, these themes can help make almost any type of website.
Note that the page builder does slow down a website, so it is best to use Gutenberg-based themes whenever possible.
Install the Solid Cache plugin
What if cars can turn without losing speed or performance? Caching plugins can help a WordPress site do this. Caching helps website load faster by minimizing and combining CSS and JavaScript files. They also reduce the server response time by caching the HTML versions of the most visited posts and pages. In this way, the user’s browser does not have to wait for the server to dynamically generate the requested page.
Most caching plugins also include other features, such as Gzip compression, browser and object caching, content delivery network (CDN) integration, image optimization, site downtime monitoring, and more.
Some of the best free and popular cache plugins are Hummingbird, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache and WP Fastest Cache. Hummingbird Pro is even higher. She will let the WordPress site fly without hitting the wall. Used in conjunction with Smush Pro and Defender Pro, they constitute a trio of the most important plugins for WordPress, while taking care of most of the optimization tasks mentioned here. Each standard WordPress installation on WPMU DEV Hosting comes with these three plugins pre-installed.
Connect your site to a reliable Content Delivery Network(CDN)
A content delivery network (CDN) is a set of connected servers distributed around the world, and each server keeps a cached copy of the site’s files. By providing images, CSS and JavaScript, that can reduce the heavy workload.
Depending on the visitor’s location, the CDN will provide content from the nearest server. This greatly improves the speed of the website. Thanks to CDN, the website can even save a few seconds of page load time.
This is similar to cloning a racing car and storing it on every popular track in the world. Although this is almost impossible in real life, technology has everything. Popular CDNs include Cloudflare, Stack Path / Max CDN and Amazon CloudFront. Some of these services (such as Cloudflare) offer free plans, which are sufficient for most sites with low traffic. If website traffic is heavy, look for high-quality CDN. All WPMU DEV Hosting accounts, including Smush and Hummingbird plug-ins, have Stack Path’s built-in lighting speed CDN.
Enable Gzip compression
Gzip compression is a method of making files smaller for faster network transmission. It is also the name of the compressed file format (.gzip). In some cases, Gzip can reduce the file size by almost 95%, although the average file size compression ratio is much lower. Nonetheless, the smaller file size still means the user’s loading time is faster.
For a web page that loads 3 MB of content, even if the file size is reduced by only 33%, it means that the page size is reduced by 1 MB. This is the difference between users abandoning your site before the site loads and continuing to browse more content.
The best part about Gzip compression is that it all happens on the server. Therefore, when the user’s browser requests resources from web host, Gzip compressed file service can be provided immediately.
More Easy ways to clean and optimize WordPress website is the continuation of this post.
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