BlogVault is one of the kwown Speed Optimization Plugins that will help you overcome any such occasions. And so ensure your site is back in function as quickly as possible. It also includes a real-time backup system, which assures that any changes to your site are saved as they happen.
On top of that, it will also notify you if any data wasn’t backed up along with the reason why that particular data was left out.
Image compression with Optimization Plugins
Another important factor in website speed is the amount of data that has to be processed. So the pages can be served at the user’s request.
The larger amounts of data on your site, the longer loading times will be.
The largest files we see are usually image files. This applies to pretty much any kind of WordPress site. But the biggest victims of large image files are eCommerce sites that need to add a picture (or several) to each item description.
This is where image compression tools can save the day.
The main difference between most compression tools is the type of compression they do. Since almost all process the image files either through lossy or through lossless compression.
Lossy compression will decrease the image size significantly, but at the price of cutting down the quality of the image. On the other hand, lossless compression will preserve the image quality. No matter how many times you compress and decompress the image.
Images in JPEG format are considered to be lossy, as opposed to the ones in PNG that are considered lossless. WebP format is a great mixture of the two compression types. It cuts the image size more than the PNG format while preserving the image quality, unlike the JPEG format.
Our favorite image compression tool is ShortPixel, and we strongly recommend you give it a try. This speed optimization plugin is very easy to use. It will reduce your image sizes by 90% and notably improve your site’s performance.
Lazy Loading
Another important speed optimization technique after image compression is lazy loading.
Lazy loading makes the initial page load go much more smoothly by not loading the images and videos at once. As the visitor scrolls down the page, certain items will load in as others load out. This allows the CPU usage to remain consistent and improve the overall loading times for pages that uses lazy loading.
The most well-known Speed Optimization Plugin used for this improvement process that we highly recommend is Lazy Load. The Optimization plugin itself is free, but the largest advantage that it has over other similar plugins is its simplicity. Lazy load is designed to lazy load images, videos, or other assets on a page, and nothing else.
Speed Testing ToolsÂ
To pick the best speed optimization plugins for your website. Or even to find out if you need to move your site to another host. You should test all of your site’s parameters first.
Below, we are going to list some of the most popular and most convenient speed testing tools that should help you get more precise average results. It’s important to note that no tool is perfectly accurate.
The results found with one tool can differ from those found with another. To get the results that are the closest to your real website statistics. You should run your site through a few of the tools we mention below.
SiteSpeedBot
SiteSpeedBot is our speed testing tool of choice. It’s user-friendly and supplies you with useful information such as the number of received requests. The fully loaded time, the cumulative layout shift, the total blocking time, etc.
The diagnostic will take somewhere between a minute or two, and you’ll receive a full rundown on every aspect of the site that you’re testing.
SiteSpeedBot also brings FCP (render start) and LCP (render mostly finished) timing calculators. As well as a calculator that counts the number of sent-in site requests.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix is one of the oldest and best-known speed testing tools. Their website states that this testing tool has been used on 700+ million sites.
This tool lets you keep track of how your site is doing. And even alerts you when your page slows down. On the other hand. You will learn that some parameters GTMetrix tests are outdated and no longer relevant in terms of site speed, such as site rankings.
Google PageSpeed Insights
This tool is built to help you get the most precise numbers in terms of the Google ranking system. PageSpeed Insights is outstandingly user-friendly. It will feed you the results in no time. The biggest downside of this tool is the fact that it ignores the geographic location of the website. Which implies that testing the site from different locations will provide you with varying results. It’s important to note that the real benefit of this tool is the technical checklist, rather than the speed testing tool.
Pingdom
Most speed testing sites will feed you statistics and then let you wander around looking for a way to boost your site on your own. Pingdom is different. It will always provide you with an actual suggestion on how to improve each side of your site’s performance that seems off in any way.
Pingdom tests and grades all aspects of your website, and even gathers info on content types that you have. Pingdom’s greatest weakness is that it’s not frequently updated to track any new parameters.
Database Optimization plugins
When it comes to database Speed Optimization Plugins, our suggestion is always WP-Optimize. This plugin will let you perform a SQL data optimization procedure that operates inside the WordPress backend console and allow you to delete any accumulated data bloat.
Over time, your site picks up and stores junk data that uses space in your storage, but isn’t of any use for anything. This unnecessary data is a result of your database growing all the time. WP-Optimize is our tool of choice when it comes to disposing the unwanted information and clearing out the memory space.
- Asset CleanUp
Asset CleanUp’s main feature is a script manager which lets you choose which JavaScript and CSS files you want to disable. It comes with numerous settings which you can mingle depending on what your site needs. Other great features with built-in Asset CleanUp are bloat removal, reconnect, and CDN rewrite.
- Autoptimize
These guys will configure Autoptimize to specifically suit your site. So you don’t have to mess with the settings by yourself and risk breaking something. You can also pick if you want them to configure your critical CSS. If you decide to go for the pricier package. Autoptimize even guarantees to return the money in case your site’s score doesn’t significantly improve when measured in Google Pagespeed Insights or Lighthouse.
Conclusion
This concludes our post on the best speed optimization plugins for WordPress sites. We hope you enjoyed the read! We suggest you try some Speed Optimization Plugins, except AMP, of course, for they should make a world of difference to your website speed and performance.
If you require any help, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team!
