Simple Steps to Optimize Your WordPress Site

There are basic methods you can employ to optimize your WordPress site. You should first look over your website and test it out to see if there is something obvious you can correct. Have an employee or friend go over your site and note any issues that might interfere with user experience.  

But if you are on your own or cannot immediately find any issues, then what follows may help you identify and correct issues that are affecting your WordPress site.

Is Your Host Optimized for WordPress?

Everything starts with the host you chose for your website. You will need to find a host that has the proper server infrastructure optimized for WordPress. You should shop around for such a host before making the final decision. At WebSuited, you can find out more information about proper web hosting and how it is geared towards WordPress sites.

Speed

Perhaps the single most obvious issue that needs to be addressed is how fast your site downloads onto computers and mobile devices. The slower the site, the more likely people are to stop and go somewhere else. Be sure to test the speed of your site often to catch any new issues that might crop up. Especially if you have added features recently.  

You can use Lighthouse Report Technology or Google Core Web Vitals to test out the speed of your site.

Shrink Image Size

One of the simplest, yet most overlooked methods of speeding up your website is reducing the size of images. Image files may be quite large which means that they take longer to download. Look over all the images on your site and reduce them so that they load faster but retain their overall quality. For example, changing an image saved as a PNG and turning into a JPG will retain its appearance while being a fraction of the file size.

Catching Plug

One of the most popular plugins for WordPress, this is a simple program that captures frequently used data from a website. It then uses the information to help speed up the download process of sites that have recently been viewed.  

Because of how WordPress is constructed, it does not retain the memory of recent visits by itself. It will need a good catching plug to help make the visitor experience better.  

PHP

The version of your Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP is important to the speed and functionality of your website. If you are not using the latest version, you will need to correct that. Be sure that you are running a PHP version that is a minimum of 7.4. However, it is recommended that you use version 8 or 8.1 if possible.  

Other methods to optimize your WordPress site include the following:

• Database Optimization
• Content Delivery Network
• Lazy Loading

How your website stores and retrieves information from your database can affect the overall speed of the site. You may consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to not only improve the speed, but also the security of your website. Finally, while Lazy Loading seems counterintuitive, plugins like WP Rocker and Jetpack can work wonders. We include these features in our hosting and management plans.