After having successfully set up your WordPress website and you feel like sitting back to expect a great result from it, remember there is one finishing touch you need to fix. That is the speed of the website.
Like you would already know, the speed of your website has a significant impact on the success of your site. It is what will determine if your audience will want to visit your site again and again or be put off at their very first visit.
Well, you may see the process of getting your WordPress website running fast to be a tedious process. Sometime, this may even seem very scary when you sit back to consider some optimization processes that you have to go through using certain tools available on the market.
But the truth is that there are some things you can do to get your website speed on the high, and that is what this post is designed to tell you. In this post, we have highlighted 5 important things you can do to speed up your WordPress website.
Steps to Speed up A WordPress Website
#1: Get a Premium Theme
One of the top factors why you may have your WordPress website crawling may be as a result of the theme your Website is using.
You may be wondering what type of theme is best to step up your WordPress website’s speed. The first thing is to choose a theme that is well coded, lightweight and quick loading time.
Secondly, and most importantly, choosing a premium theme is the best way to speed up your WordPress website. How? Pretty simple!
A premium theme will give you access to premium features (expected), more frequent updates as well as a better quality to your WordPress website.
#2: Get a Quality/Reliable Host Provider
Maybe this should be my first tip to help you speed up your WordPress website. Remember that a website that is hosted on a faulty server is bound to give problems no matter how hard you try with your optimization processes.
You may cut in “how do you get a reliable host provider” Pretty simple!
This is where you have to consult and make adequate findings from friends and colleagues about the host they can trust and also recommend. Definitely, they will help you get a hosting provider you can trust at all times.
#3: Declutter and Optimize Your Database
Why keep unnecessary drafts, comments, and other files that may affect the speed of your website?
Well, in case you never gave this a thought, optimizing and cleaning your database is an important aspect to consider when your WordPress website seems to be crawling at each click.
Thinking of where to begin? Simple! With certain tools as the wp-optimize, you can clean up junks and unnecessary files from your database with just a click.
#4: Install Caching Plugins
Another cheat sheet to get your WordPress website racing is leveraging on browsing caching.
Like you already know, caching helps to store files locally on your visitors’ computer so that when next they come knocking on your site, your WordPress website can load almost immediately.
Here are some plugins to help you achieve speed on your website; WP Fastest Cache, W3 Total Cache, and WP Super Cache. Trust me, these plugins as very easy and simple to setup.
#5: Post Revisions
Turning off “Unlimited” post revision is another good step to speed up your WordPress website.
In order to this, to do this, you will need to install plugins such as the Revision Control plugin, which gives your visitors endless control over the revision feature.
However, if there is no page caching feature for old users to your website, you can as well use the W3 Total Cached plugin to quickly load the cached version of your website’s homepage.
Trust me, this works perfectly and gives all users (even fresh visitors) seamless navigation around your website.
Other Useful Steps to Speed up A WordPress Website
Besides the above, you can also speed up your WordPress site and get it running like a cheetah by doing the following;
- Optimizing images on your website
- Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript Splitting long posts on your website
- Cut Down on HTTP Requests
- Reduce the numbers of plugins in use
- Use a content delivery network such as MAX CDN.
Wrap Up
Having your WordPress website load as fast as possible is very important to impress your audience and persuade them to keep coming back to your site. This is not something difficult or impossible. With the above-mentioned steps, getting your website up and running will be quite easy for you.
