10 ways to speed up your WordPress blog

A while ago, as I was redoing my website, one of my friends pointed out that there was a real problem with loading time. I decided to run some tests and discovered that, indeed, something was wrong with the site, as well as this blog. I did a lot of research and learnt new tips that I implemented — with instant results.

Does your WordPress blog tend to load slowly? Here are 10 tips that will help you speed it up.

Choose the right host

WordPress.org recommends the following web hosts: Bluehost, DreamHost, MediaTemple and Laughing Squid. However, I have also heard great things about HostGator.

For a list of basic requirements, click here.

Harness the power of GTMetrix

GTmetrix uses Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow to grade your site’s performance. The service then provides you with useful recommendations to fix issues on your blog. For more information, click here.

Use caching

Caching helps your WordPress blog to load faster by reducing the number of queries made to the database. The W3 Total Cache plugin, for example, will do wonders. Click here for a great tutorial on how to implement it on your blog.

Pay attention to plugins

Do you run more than 15-20 plugins at once? If so, be aware that you are hindering your blog’s performance — especially if those plugins are badly coded.

Deactivate the plugins you only need to use occasionally, and only activate them when needed.  And delete the ones you never use.

Optimize database

When viewers check out an article on your blog, WordPress searches the SQL database on your server and renders the data as a page. The larger the database, the more loading time is impacted.

To optimize your database, follow the steps:

• Log into the control panel of you web host.
• Locate and click on ‘PHPMyAdmin’.
• Find the appropriate database.
• Select all the tables by clicking ‘Check All’ at the bottom of the page.
• Select ‘Optimize table’ in the drop-down list to the right of ‘Check All’.

You should notice a difference in loading time right away.

The WP-Optimize plugin also allows you to optimize your database directly from your blog’s dashboard.

Update WordPress

Upgrades usually include performance upgrades, as well as bug fixes.

Clean code

Optimizing code helps your blog load faster. One good way of doing it is to minimize white space in your stylesheet. Here is an example:

Before: #back-to-top {
position:absolute;
right:20px;
bottom:10px;
}

After: #back-to-top {position:absolute;right:20px;bottom:10px;}

Manually minimizing white space is tedious. Let CSS compressors do the job for you. You will find a list of great tools here.

Minify JavaScript, CSS and HTML

Minification is the process of removing all unnecessary characters from source code without changing its functionality. WP Minify will help you do that very easily.

Minimize queries and requests

When someone visits your blog, their browser has to execute PHP queries, which impacts loading time. To avoid that, replace those queries with static HTML in your template — the header in particular. Here are two examples:

Bad query: <title><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></title>

Good query: <title>Creative Ramblings – A Blog by Cendrine Marrouat</title>

Bad query: <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘html_type’); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo(‘charset’); ?>” />

Good query: <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />

For more information, click here.

Optimize pictures

Most of the time, bloggers do not worry about the size of the images they upload. However, non-optimized pictures affect bandwidth and load time.

The solution? WP Smush.it. The plugin removes unnecessary bytes from image files without changing their look or visual quality.

Conclusion

I realize that this article may be a little technical for some readers. If you have questions, feel free to ask in the comment section!

What are your tips to speed up your WordPress blog?