10 Ways to Speed Up Your

WordPress Website

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Speed, design and performance of a website generates trust and can

increase your conversions.

Here are 2 tools which you can use to test the performance of your website

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Plugin Management• Plugins can slow your website and even expose your website to security risks.

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1.

• Having the right kind of plugins is critical.

Good ratingsHigh number of

downloadsGood support

Frequent updatesA Good Plugin

Evaluating a Plugin

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• Go to the WordPress Page of that plugin and look for reviews, ratings and support options.• Check out when it was last updated and number of downloads.• A trustable plugin will have recent updates and a lot of downloads.

Plugin Management1.

Plugin Houskeeping

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1. Deactivate and delete all plugins you are not using. It will free up

space and make management easier 2. Only install plugins, which are being used3. Make sure you are using the most up to date version of all

the plugins4. Do not use plugins if you can directly use code

• For ex almost all Social Platforms like Twitter/FB provide API code for social integration• Using a plugin for social integration causes an additional layer of code execution

Plugin Management1.

Background

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Caching2.

• The entire dynamic content of your WordPress website such as pages, posts, categories, users, comments, settings, etc are stored in a MySQL Database.• Anytime a user visits the website, PHP makes a database hit to render the page at runtime.

What is Caching

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Caching2.

• WP Super Cache – It caches pages and posts and stores them as HTML files on the web server so that repeated requests can be rendered with faster and with fewer resources. The plugin will automatically updates the cached file as comments are added so that the files are always current. • WP Total Cache – Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

Caching is a method to store static versions of WordPress pages- so that a trip to the database can be avoided. Here are 2 Plugins you can consider

Shared Hosting

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Hosting Plan3.

• Shared hosting is a hosting service where many websites share a single server• Hosting providers may host 500-900 websites on a single server• Since resources are shared by so many websites – performance may be slow

For small a Wordpress website that will not be getting a lot of traffic, most people like to go for shared hosting which is cheap ($3-9 dollars a month).

VPS(Virtual Private Server) Hosting

Hosting Plan3.

However if you have a big website (200-400 pages) with good web traffic (over 4000 visits a month) VPS may be a good option for speed.• VPS (Virtual Private Server) is a virtual machine created on a physical server• Each website is dedicated a certain amount of resources (CPU & RAM)• Since your website is allocated dedicated resources – the performance is much faster

Source: bluehost

Dedicated Hosting

Hosting Plan3.

• In this option the user leases the entire physical server for hosting and is not shared by anyone else• Unlike VPS and Shared hosting the user has full control over the server• Dedicated server is useful for mission critical complex websites which get a lot of traffic• This option is the most expensive

Source: bluehost

Case Study

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Hosting Plan3.

Our Ecommerce client VOS Motorsports (www.Vosmotorsports.com) has over 25,000 products. The website was initially hosted on a Blue Hosting shared hosting. The website performance was very slow and on peak times the website would crawl. We recently upgraded them from Shared to VPS hosting. Website performance has improved dramatically.

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Optimize Your Wordpress Database4.• All of us create and delete posts and pages. We upload and delete images. We experiment with plugins and later remove them.

• Advanced folks also create and delete custom tables right within the WordPress database.

• All these operations leave overhead on the database that should be routinely cleared out.On regular intervals it is a good idea to optimize your WordPress MySQL database. Optimizing your database will help to free up disk space and keep your database running smoothly.

Manual Optimization

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Optimize Your Wordpress Database4.

• Using phpMyAdmin select all tables and click "Repair" and "Optimize"• Scan for redundant tables, which are not used - that weren't deleted when you removed old plugins or functionality.

Optimization using PluginsWP-Optimize: This plugin allows you to clean up your WordPress database and optimize it without phpMyAdmin.

WP Database Optimizer: This plugin allows for automated scheduled database optimization.

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The Right Wordpress Theme5.Go for a stylish-but simple and minimalist theme. Themes with a large amount of images and scripts can slow your website.

• Choose a CSS menu based them, not an image based menu• Avoid image heavy themes• Make sure your theme is easy to maintain and extend• Make sure the theme works in all browser versions out-of-the boxWe have worked with clients having complex WordPress Themes, which are a nightmare to maintain. Anytime there was a WordPress or Plugin upgrade the website would break. Your developer or web development firm should be able to help you with this. Using the Theme Authenticity Checker in WordPress• Free themes can put malicious code into your wordpress website• You can use this Plugin to Scan all of your theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code

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Image Optimization 6.Optimize your images for the web and display size. So if the original image size is 800 * 800 and the image will appear on the website in a 400 * 400 rectangle – then it is important to resize & store accordinglyRememberBig image = huge file size = slow to load

Here are a two Plugins which can help you with image optimizationWP Smush.It Reduce image file sizes and improve performance using the Smush.it API within WordPress.

Lazy Load Lazy load images to improve page load times and server bandwidth. Images Are loaded only when visible to the user.

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External Widgets and APIs7.• Many clients want all the latest social widgets, batches on their wordpress sites. • Keep in mind when you have a lot of widgets and third party API calls, it will slow your website. • The best advice is to use only those widgets and APIs which are optimized for performance.

Also when you call external APIs – the browser has to do a DNS lookup which is expensive.

• http://cdn.bizible.com/scripts/bizible.js• http://www.google.com/ads/user-lists/342342/?fmt=1&num=1&cv=7&url=http&random=234234• http://translate.google.com/translate_a/element.js?cb=googleTranslateElementInit

For example the above API calls result in a HTTP call and a DNS lookups which are both expensive

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CDN (Content Delivery Networks)8.A Content Delivery Network provider helps in loading the static content of your website (images, videos, JavaScript, et al) in a fast and efficient manner.

• A CDN consists of a large number of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the world• The goal of a CDN is to render your website static assets to your visitors from various regionsThe content of your website is duplicated and stored on servers in various locations. Based on the location of a user, the content is served in a quick manner. Below are two popular CDN providers you may want to consider

• CloudFlare

• MaxCDN

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Leverage Browser Caching9.Each roundtrip to the web server to get files (Javascript, CSS, Images) consumes resources and results in delay. Here are a few simple things to keep in mind • When a browser displays your website it has to load images (logos, pictures, etc), scripts (CSS & Javascript files) and other resources.• Most of these resources are static - that is they do not change frequently.• Browser caching enables the browser to "remember" the resources that the browser has already loaded. This way it does not have to reload them from your web server again and again. • The end result of this is that your pages load much faster.

How do you do this• You have to add a small code to the .httaccess file • Here is a sampleExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"

ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"ExpiresByType text/html "access 1 month"

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Combine Extenal Files and Images 10.Each roundtrip to the web server to get files (Javascript, CSS, Images) consumes resources and results in delay. Here are a few simple things to keep in mind

• Combining external scripts into as few files as possible.• This will minimize network trips and your web page will display faster.

Combine external JavaScript and CSS Files files

• Use CSS sprite to combine common images into few files as possible using CSS sprites.• This reduces the number of round-trips and your web page will display faster.

Combine images using CSS sprites

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Sandeep AroraSandeep.Arora@Telezent.com

CEO of Telezent

Telezent has a great Web Design, SEO & Digital

Team. In 2014 we are inviting Clients and Digital Marketing firms to partner with us and grow together.