WordPress site running slow?Here is WordPress Site Speed Optimization Detailed Guide 2020

Wordpress site speed optimization




speed up WordPress site
speed up your WordPress site
WordPress performance
Wordpress website speed optimization
WordPress website performance
website speed optimization WordPress
increase WordPress loading speed
WordPress slow loading
how to speed up my WordPress site
how to improve the speed of WordPress site
wp speed optimization
WordPress page speed optimization
why is my WordPress website so slow
WordPress performance optimization
Wordpress speed
fast WordPress site
speed up wp site
increase WordPress site speed
speed up WordPress
how to improve WordPress site
how to optimize WordPress site
best WordPress speed optimization
increase WordPress speed
make my WordPress site faster
how to speed up WordPress site
how to make a WordPress website faster
how to speed up website load time WordPress
WordPress optimization



Do you want to speed up your WordPress website? Fast loading pages improve user experience, increase your page views, and help with your WordPress SEO. Within the following guide, we'll share the most useful WordPress speed optimization recommendations to enhance WordPress performance and accelerate your website.

Unlike other"X best WordPress caching plugin" lists or even standard"X ideas to speeding up WordPress" tutorials, then this report is a detailed manual to WordPress performance optimization.

We tried to pay everything out of speed is more critical, which slows down your WordPress site, and technical steps which you may take to enhance your WordPress speed instantly.

To make it simple, we have made a table of contents to help you browse through our final guide to speeding up your WordPress site.

Why Speed is Very Important to Your WordPress Website?

Studies show that in 2000 to 2016, the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 7 minutes.

What exactly does this mean to you as a site owner?

You have hardly any time to reveal users your articles and also convince them to stay on your website.

A slow website means users may potentially leave your site before it even loads.

As demonstrated by a StrangeLoop case study that involved Amazon, Google, and other larger sites, a 1 second delay in page load time can result in a 7% reduction in conversions, 11% fewer page views, and a 16 percent decline in consumer satisfaction.


On top of that, Google and other search engines have started penalizing lower sites by pushing them down in the search results which means lower traffic for slow websites.

To sum it all up, if you would like more visitors, subscribers, and earnings from your website, then you must make your WordPress website FAST!

Frequently beginners believe their site is OK because it doesn't feel slow on their PC. That's a massive mistake.

Because you often come to your own site, contemporary browsers such as Chrome store your website from the cache and automatically prefetch it as soon as you begin typing an address. This makes your site load almost immediately.

However, a regular user who's visiting your website for the very first time may not have exactly the exact same experience.

In actuality, users in different geographical places will have a completely different experience.

This is the reason why we suggest that you examine your site speed by means of a tool like IsItWP's WordPress speed evaluation.

It's a free online tool that allows you to test your website's speed.

Once you operate your website speed test, you might be wondering what is a fantastic site speed that I should aim for?

A good page loading time is under two seconds.

On the other hand, the quicker you are able to make it, the greater it is. A couple of milliseconds of enhancements here and you can add up to shaving off half or even a full second out of your loading time.

What Slows Down Your WordPress Site?

Your speed test report will likely have multiple recommendations for advancement. But most of that is technical jargon that's difficult for beginners to understand.

Learning exactly what slows down your website is the key to improving performance and creating smarter long-term decisions.

The Principal causes for a slow WordPress site are:

• Web Hosting -- If your web hosting server is not correctly configured it can damage your website speed.
• WordPress Configuration -- in case your WordPress website isn't serving pages that are cached, then it'll overload your server consequently causing your website to be slow or crash entirely.
• Page Size -- Mainly images which are not optimized for the internet.
• Bad Plugins -- If you are using a poorly coded plugin, then it may considerably slow down your site.
• Topical scripts -- Topical programs such as advertisements, font loaders, etc may also have a huge impact on your website performance.

Now that you know what slows down your WordPress site, let us take a look at how to speed up your WordPress site.

Importance of Good WordPress Hosting

Your WordPress hosting agency has a significant function in website performance. A good shared hosting supplier like Bluehost or Siteground takes the added measures to optimize your website for performance.

But on shared hosting, you share the host resources with many different clients. This usually means that if your nearby website gets a whole lot of visitors, then it may affect the whole server functionality which then will slow down your site.

On the other hand, utilizing a handled WordPress hosting service gives you the maximum optimized host configurations to operate WordPress. Managed WordPress hosting firms also offer you automatic backups, automatic WordPress updates, and more innovative security configurations to guard your website.

We recommend WPEngine as our preferred managed WordPress hosting supplier. They're also the hottest one in the business. (View our special WPEngine coupon).


We know that making changes to your site configuration can be a terrifying thought for novices, especially if you're not a tech-geek.

But don't worry, you are not alone. We have helped thousands of WordPress users enhance their WordPress performance.

We'll show you how it is possible to speed up your WordPress site with only a few clicks (no coding needed ).

If you're able to point-and-click, then you can accomplish this!

Install a WordPress Caching Plugin

WordPress webpages are"dynamic." This means they're assembled on the fly every time someone visits a page or post on your website.

To construct your webpages, WordPress must run a procedure to obtain the necessary info, put it all together, and then display it to your consumer.

This process involves plenty of measures, and it can definitely slow down your website when you have multiple folks visiting it simultaneously.

That is why we urge every WordPress website to use a caching plugin.

Here's how it works.

Rather than going through the whole page creation process each moment, your caching plugin creates a duplicate of the webpage following the first loading, then serves that cached version to each user.

Because you can see from the graphics above, when a user visits your WordPress site, your server retrieves information from your MySQL database and your PHP documents. It then puts it all into HTML content which is served on the user.

It's a long procedure, but you can skip a good deal of it once you utilize caching instead.

Take a look at our step by step manual on the best way to install and install WP Super Cache in your WordPress site. It's not difficult to establish, and your customers will observe the difference.

Most WordPress hosting companies like Bluehost and SiteGround provide caching solutions also.

SiteGround SuperCacher

If you are using SiteGround subsequently login hosting cPanel and empower SuperCacher below website improvement tools'.

After that, you will have to install and activate the SG Optimizer plugin in WordPress to handle SuperCacher settings.

Bluehost Caching

If you're utilizing Bluehostthen go to My Sites" Performance section to turn on caching.

If you're utilizing a handled WordPress hosting supplier, then you don't need a caching plugin since it's built and switched on by default.

Bonus: you'll be able to combine caching plugins using a net application firewall like Cloudflare or even Sucuri for optimum performance increase.

Optimize Images for Speed

Images bring life to your articles and help boost participation. Researchers have discovered that using colored visuals makes folks 80 percent more likely to read your articles.

However, if your pictures aren't optimized, they then may be hurting more than helping. In reality, non-optimized graphics are one of the most frequent rate problems that we see on beginner sites.

Prior to uploading a photo directly from your camera or phone, we advise that you use photo editing applications to optimize your graphics for the web.

In their original formats, all these pictures can have enormous file sizes. However, based on the picture file format and the compression you choose in your editing software, you can reduce your image size up to 5x.

At Abidalli, we just use two image formats: JPEG and PNG.

Now you may be wondering what's the difference?

Well, the PNG picture format is uncompressed. When you compress a picture it loses any info, so an uncompressed image will be higher quality with much more detail. The drawback is that it's bigger file size, therefore it takes longer to load.

So how can we decide which picture format to select?

• When our photograph or image has a lot of different colors, then we use JPEG.
• If it's a simpler picture or we want a graphic picture, we then use PNG.
• Nearly all these images are JPEGs.

Below is a comparison chart of this document dimensions and various compression tool that we could have used for the StrangeLoop picture used previously.

As you can see in the graph, the picture format that you use may make a HUGE difference in website performance.

For information on how to maximize your pictures using Photoshop and other popular editing programs, without sacrificing quality, visit our step by step manual on the way to save images optimized for the internet .

WordPress Performance Optimization Best Practices

After installing a caching plugin and optimizing your images, you'll notice your site will start loading much faster.

But in the event that you truly wish to maintain your site as quickly as possible, you will want to use the best practices listed below.

These tips aren't too technical, so you don't have to know any code to implement them. But with them will prevent common issues that can slow down your site.

Maintain Your WordPress Site Updated

Each update won't just offer you new features but additionally, it will fix security problems and bugs. Your WordPress plugins and theme may have routine updates, also.

As a site owner, it's your duty to maintain your WordPress website, motif, and plugins upgraded to the newest versions. Not doing so can make your website slow and unreliable, and also make you vulnerable to security threats.

Optimize Background Processes

Background procedures in WordPress are scheduled tasks that run in the background of your WordPress website. Following are some examples of background tasks that operate on a WordPress website:

• WordPress Backup plugin tasks
• WordPress cron tasks to publish scheduled articles
• WordPress cron tasks to check for upgrades
• Search motors and other crawlers Hoping to bring content

Tasks like cron tasks for scheduled posts and updates have minimal effect on site performance.

But, other background processes like backup plugins and excess crawling by search engines can slow down a site.

For backup plugins, you need to make sure your WordPress backup plugin just operates during a low traffic period on your website. You also need to correct the frequency of backups and data that has to be backed up.

As an instance, if you are creating a complete daily backup as you merely publish new content twice every week, then you want to fix that.

If you would like to have more frequent backups like real-time copies, then we recommend using a SaaS solution so that you're not taxing your server.

In terms of crawling, you need to keep an eye on your crawl reports in Google Search console. Frequent crawls that are ending up in errors can cause your site to slow down or become unresponsive.

By default, WordPress shows the full content of every post on your own homepage and archives. This means your site, categories, tags, along with another archive will load slower.

Another drawback of showing full articles on such pages is that users don't feel the need to stop by the true article. This can reduce your page views and the time that your customers spend on your site.

To be able to speed up your loading times for record pages, then you may put your own website to display excerpts rather than the complete content.

You can navigate to Settings" Reading and pick"For each post in a feed show: Summary" instead of"Full Text"

Getting lots of comments on your own blog posts? Congratulations!

However, the downside is, loading all those comments can affect your website's speed.

WordPress has an integrated solution for that. Simply go to Settings" Chat and check the box near the"Break comments into pages" option.

For more detailed directions, see our guide on the way to paginate comments in WordPress.


Remember how we discussed above that consumers in different geographic locations may experience various loading times on your site?

That's because the positioning of your web hosting servers can have an influence on your website rate.

By way of instance, let us say your hosting firm has its servers in the United States. A visitor who is also in the United States will generally see faster loading times than the usual guest in India.

A CDN is a network composed of servers all around the world. Every server will keep"static" documents used to constitute your site.

These static files incorporate unchanging documents such as pictures, CSS, and JavaScript, unlike your WordPress pages that are"dynamic" as explained previously.

When you use a CDN, every time an individual visits your site they are served those inactive documents out of whichever server is closest to these. Your internet hosting server will also be quicker as the CDN is performing a lot of the job.

It's possible to observe how it works in this infographic.

We use recommend using StackPath CDN. We have been utilizing MaxCDN on all our sites which is now part of StackPath.

It works well with WordPress websites and compliments your present WordPress caching plugins to get even faster loading times.

Do Not Upload Audio/Video Files Directly to WordPress

Now you can directly upload audio and video files into a WordPress website, and it will automatically show them at an HTML5 player...

However, you should NEVER do that!

Hosting videos and audio will cost bandwidth. You could be charged overage charges by your hosting business, or they may even shut off your site completely, even though your program includes"unlimited" bandwidth.

Hosting massive media files additionally increases your backup dimensions tremendously, and makes it difficult that you restore WordPress from the copy .

They have the bandwidth for it!

WordPress has a built-in video embed attribute so that you may copy and paste your picture's URL directly into your article and it will feature automatically.

Find out additional information on how it functions in our guide on embedding videos in WordPress.

If you are creating a podcast site with WordPress, we then recommend podcast hosting support Blubrry for the ideal performance.

Utilize a Theme Optimized For Rate

When choosing a theme for your site, it is very important to pay particular attention to engine optimization. A few beautiful and impressive-looking topics are in fact poorly coded and will slow your web site way down.

It's usually much better to go with a simpler theme than to pick a theme that's bloated with complicated layouts, flashy cartoons, and other unneeded capabilities. You can always include those attributes using standard WordPress plugins.

You could also check out our article on selecting the great WordPress motif for information on what to search for.

Use Faster Plugins

Poorly coded WordPress plugins frequently load too much bloat if your site needs it or not. This increases your page load speed and also slows down your site.

To help you choose the best plugins, then we frequently publish our expert pick of best WordPress plugin stipulates. We pay particular attention to ease of use, user experience, and most of all performance.

The following are some of our picks for the many typical WordPress plugin classes.

• WPForms -- Fastest and most novice-friendly contact type plugin for WordPress.
• Soliloquy -- In case you would like to add sliders to your site, subsequently Soliloquy is your top WordPress slider plugin in terms of functionality and characteristics. We ran the tests and discovered the Envira Gallery to function as the fastest photo gallery plugin to get WordPress. Shared Counts is one of the quickest Social networking plugins for WordPress.

Aside from our personal recommendations, it is possible to run your own tests. Simply run speed tests before and after installing a new plugin to compare its effect on performance.

By using the WordPress optimization most effective practices and fundamental rate tips listed above, you should see a significant improvement in your website's loading times.

If you would like to receive the fastest speed possible, then you will want to generate a couple more changes.

The following suggestions are a little more technical, with a few requiring you to change your website files or have a simple understanding of PHP. You'll want to make sure to copy your website first only in case.

Split Long Articles into Pages

Readers tend to appreciate blog posts which are more and more comprehensive. Longer posts even tend to rank higher in search engines.

But if you are publishing long-form posts with a lot of pictures, it might be hurting your loading times.

Instead, consider splitting up your longer articles into multiple pages.

WordPress comes with built-in functionality to do that. Simply include the label in your article in which you need to divide it into the next page. Do this again in the event you would like to split the content on to another page also.

Reduce Topical HTTP Requests

Many WordPress plugins and subjects load all kinds of files from different websites. These documents may include scripts, stylesheets, and graphics from outside resources such as Google, Facebook, analytics services, and so on.

It is fine to use some of them. Many of these documents have been optimized to load as soon as possible, therefore it's faster than hosting them on your own site.

But in case your plugins are creating a lot of these requests then it might slow down your website significantly.

You can reduce all these external HTTP requests by minding scripts and fashions or mixing them into a single document. Here is a tutorial on how to disable the plugins' CSS documents and JavaScript.


Note: This step is a little more technical and will require a basic understanding of PHP and WordPress template documents.

Regrettably, there is a great deal of badly coded WordPress themes out there. They ignore WordPress regular practices and wind up making lead database calls, or too many unnecessary requests into the database. This will really slow down your server by giving it too much work to do.

Even well-coded topics can have code that makes database calls just to get your site's basic details.

In this instance, every time you visit, that's the beginning of a brand new database call:

Charset='charset');?"

You can't blame motif developers for that. They just have no other means to find out what language your website is in.

But if you're customizing your website employing a kid motif, then it's possible to replace all these database requirements with your particular information so as to reduce all of those database calls.

"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" dir="ltr"p" 

http://gmpg.org/xfn/11"> 

"Content-Type" articles ="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

Review your parent theme for instances like this that can be easily replaced with static information.

Boost WordPress Database

After using WordPress for a while, your database will have a great deal of information that you most likely don't require any longer. For enhanced performance, you can maximize your database to eliminate all of the unnecessary information.

This may be easily managed with all the WP-Sweep plugin. It permits you to wash your WordPress database by simply deleting items like trashed articles, revisions, fresh tags, etc.. It is going to also maximize your database structure with only a click.

See our guide on the best way to optimize and clean up your WordPress database to get improved functionality.

Limit Post Revisions

Post Upgrades occupy space in your WordPress database. Some users believe that revisions may also impact a few database queries operate by plugins. If the plugin does not expressly exclude post revisions, it may slow down your site by looking through them.

It is possible to easily restrict the number of alterations WordPress keeps for every report. Just add the line of code to a wp-config.php file.

This code will restrict WordPress to save your past 4 alterations of each page or post, and discard older revisions automatically.

Disable Hotlinking and Leaching Your Content

If you are producing quality articles on your WordPress website, then the sad reality is that it will probably get stolen later or sooner.

1 way this occurs is if other websites serve your images directly from their URLs on your website, instead of uploading them for their servers. In effect, they're stealing your web hosting bandwidth, and you do not get any visitors to show on it.

Simply add this code to a .htaccess file to block hotlinking of images from your WordPress site.

#disable hotlinking of images with prohibited or custom picture optionRewriteEngine onRewriteCond%HTTP_REFERER! ^$RewriteCond %HTTP_REFERER ! ://(www\.) ? abidalli.com [NC]RewriteCond %HTTP_REFERER ! ? google.com [NC]RewriteRule \.

Notice: Do not forget to modify abidalli.com along with your own domain.

You may also need to check our article revealing 4 strategies to prevent image theft in WordPress.

Some articles scraping websites automatically produce articles by stealing your content from the RSS feed. You can take a look at our guide on preventing website articles scratching in WordPress for strategies to deal with automated content thieving.

Use Lazy Loading if Needed

If you include many pictures, multiple movies embed, and photo galleries into your blog posts, then your website may gain from lazy loading.

Rather than loading all of your images and videos at once, idle loading downloads just those that will be visible on the user's display. It replaces all other images and video embeds with a placeholder picture.

As a person scrolls down, your site loads images that are currently visible in the browser viewing area. You are able to idle load images, videos, as well as WordPress remarks and Gravatars.

For WordPress, comments see our guide on the way to idle load comments in WordPress.

Utilization DNS Level Website Firewall

However, not all of the firewall plugins will be the exact same.

Some of them run on your site, this means attackers are already able to attain your web server till they get blocked. This is still effective for safety, but not optimal for performance.

That is why we recommend using a DNS level firewall like Sucuri or even Cloudflare. These firewalls block malicious asks even before they reach your site.

Fix HTTPS/SSL Errors without Plugin

If you're switching your website to HTTPS/SSL, then it is likely you might encounter mixed content mistakes.

The easiest way to fix this is by installing a plugin like Really Simple SSL. On the other hand, the problem is these plugins grab all URLs first, then switch them to HTTPS before sending them into user's browsers.

This is really a small but noticeable performance impact. It is possible to reduce this by manually repairing all URLs. For more details see our post on just how to fix common SSL problems in WordPress.

Use Newest PHP Version

WordPress is largely written in the PHP programming language. It is a server-side language, which means it is installed and runs on your own hosting server.

All great WordPress hosting firms utilize the most stable PHP version on their servers. However, it is possible that your hosting business is running a slightly older PHP version.

The newer PHP 7 is two times faster than its predecessors. That's a massive performance boost that your site must take advantage of.

You can see which PHP version your website is utilizing by activating and installing the Version Info plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will show that your PHP version in the footer area of your WordPress admin dash.

If your website is using a version lower than PHP 7, then ask your hosting company to automatically upgrade it to you. If they cannot accomplish this, then it's time to find a new WordPress hosting company.

That's it! Hopefully that this article helped you understand to enhance wordpress rate and performance.

Go on and try these strategies. Don't forget to test your site speed prior to and after implementing these best practices. You'll be amazed these changes will boost your WordPress functionality.

If you liked this guide, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter along with Facebook.