After your WordPress website has been running for a while, as the number of posts and plugins increases, the database also becomes larger, and you may feel the website speed slowing down. So how can you make WordPress faster? Naiba here shares methods to increase WordPress performance and speed.
What factors most easily slow down WordPress speed?
1. One of the most significant factors affecting WordPress speed is the quality of the server.
Yes, no optimization can compare to hardware-level optimization. A powerful server is the most significant factor affecting website speed.
Naiba Web Development previously used a 1-core 2G 1M configurationTencent Cloudserver with 1 core, 2GB RAM, 1Mbps configuration. Later, during a promotion, I switched to a Tencent Cloud server with 2 cores, 4GB RAM, 5Mbps configuration, and the website speed significantly improved. If your server configuration is not high, upgrading the configuration when conditions allow is the quickest and most effective method to improve website speed.
2. Not enabling caching for the website.
WordPress itself is a dynamic website program. If you don't install caching, all user visits will be dynamically loaded, causing increased server resource usage.
After installing a caching plugin, when users visit your website, the data will directly read the cached static files, which is several times faster than directly accessing dynamic files.
3. Loading too many images.
Some friends who have just learned to build their own websites have no idea how to upload images. Often, you see that the images on a beginner's website are several MB in size, uploaded directly from a camera or phone. Such images directly affect website speed.
Especially for websites with low bandwidth, a large number of large images will fill up your bandwidth, making it very slow for others to open.
Specific methods to optimize WordPress performance and speed
1. Upgrade server hardware when conditions allow
At the time of this article's publication,WordPress's recommended hardware configurationis PHP 7.3+, database MySQL 5.6+ or MariaDB 10.1+, and the basic memory requirement for these two database versions is 1GB or more, so it's better to choose a server configuration with 1GB or more of RAM.
2. Install a caching plugin
Caching is divided into page caching and database caching.
For page caching, it is recommended that beginners directly installWP Rocket, which has the most obvious effect, but it is a paid plugin. For free options, you can useWP Super Cacheetc.
For database caching, Memcached or Redis are commonly used. However, this caching requires a VPS or managed virtual host to enable; ordinary virtual hosts do not support it.
Additionally, you can enablenginx caching。
3. Use a lightweight theme with simple code
A good theme usually has relatively high code quality, while some purchased premium foreign themes often have complex code and many accompanying plugins. If ordinary users don't know how to optimize, it can be slower.
So the simplest method is to use a lightweight theme. This site currently usesAstra Pro Theme。
4. Remove slow-response plugins
It's not that installing more plugins will definitely affect website speed. But if your server configuration is low, too many plugins do have a certain impact.
With sufficient server configuration, too many plugins themselves won't significantly affect website speed, but the quality of the plugins and some API calls from plugins can affect website speed. This needs specific investigation. The simplest way is to disable plugins one by one and determine which plugin slows down the website.
5. Use CDN acceleration
CDN can indeed speed up the website, but if you are using a foreign server, you cannot use domestic CDN services, so the improvement is not obvious.
For domestic users, you can choose Tencent Cloud CDN, Alibaba Cloud CDN, as well as Qiniu and Upyun CDN or object storage. Relatively speaking, Qiniu and Upyun object storage are simpler; just install a plugin.
Related Tutorials:Using Upyun to Accelerate WordPress Websites_New Plugin Tutorial
6. Reduce image sizes on the website
Some novice users upload original images directly when posting articles, with each image possibly being several megabytes in size, causing the website to lag. We can reduce image resolution, compress image size, and then upload them.
7. Paginate comments
If there are many comments on your website, it is best to paginate them. If necessary, you candisable the comment avatar feature。
8. Use post excerpts for the homepage and archive pages
The default WordPress theme outputs the entire article on the homepage and archive pages, so your website page will load the full content of several articles at once, including images and other resources, causing lag. Using excerpts will avoid this problem.
If you don't know how to do it, just use a plugin:Method to Display a „Read More“ Button for Posts on the WordPress Homepage
9. Do not upload video and audio files directly to WordPress
Unless there is a specific reason, it is not recommended to directly upload videos and audio to the website backend. Although they do not autoplay by default, when someone plays them, they will consume your website's bandwidth, and when the bandwidth is full, the site will lag.
10. Paginate long articles
If an article is too long, you can paginate it for display.
11. Reduce external resource requests
For example, if you reference images from other websites and those sites are slower than yours, it will undoubtedly slow down your website's loading speed.
12. Reduce database calls
Enabling data caching will result in a noticeable improvement.
13. Limit the post revision feature
For methods, refer to:What are Windows revisions? How to disable autosave
14. Regularly optimize the database
Naiba usually uses plugins to help:7 WordPress Database Plugins for _Cleaning_Optimizing_Resetting_Repairing_Searching
15. Use lazy loading for images
Also known as lazy loading, you can usea3 Lazy Loadfor settings (WP Rocket also supports it), and news suggests WordPress intends to make this feature standard.
16. Use the latest version of PHP
Usually, newer versions of PHP improve performance, but consider your actual situation to avoid incompatibility between your Theme or Plugin and the latest PHP.