We get asked about how to optimize WordPress speed without plugins more often than you’d expect. And there are valid reasons why some site admins want to do WordPress speed optimization without plugins. Some sites are on a complex multisite installation or have extremely high traffic, and more plugins mean more complexity.
Below you’ll find our key recommendations for speeding up a WordPress website. Or any other site for that matter, without using plugins. Using these steps, you’ll be able to get your WordPress website to load extremely fast. BUT probably not as fast as it could if you were using plugins to do things like page caching and image optimization. So please keep that in mind.
Common Misconceptions
From what we see daily, there’s a frequent misconception that more plugins are ALWAYS worse when it comes to speed. However, that’s not the case, so if you’re avoiding plugins simply because of this. We urge you to rethink your position as there are some fantastic site speed plugins like WP Rocket out there that will make a world of difference to how fast your site runs.
Identify The Root Cause, So You Don’t Waste Time.
One common mistake we see people make when working on their site speed is randomly testing tools and tactics without identifying the root cause for the slow loading speed of their site. Before doing anything, we’d strongly suggest you run a site speed test beforehand to identify the low-hanging fruit.
How to Optimize WordPress Speed Without Plugins
Some recommendations below are a bit technical. So please leave a comment below if you have questions or need anything clarified.
Use a Good Host
Web hosting is of huge importance for everything you do online. Whether for your SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, or the inquiries, calls and emails your website generates. Better hosting means a better user experience, and a better user experience will increase your conversion rate.
This being said, it’s clear that having reliable, fast hosting will shortly pay off. A quality host is one of the key factors in WordPress speed optimization without plugins. A good hosting provider uses a solid-state drive (SSD) that operates way faster than the standard hard drive (HDD) and allows shorter page load times and better overall performance. Some hosts also offer the newer NVME disks, which are faster than standard SSD drives. Good providers have larger bandwidth and RAM, which also implies better speed and more power to your website.
Another important factor to consider is server locations. In most cases, websites will perform 1+ seconds slower outside the country where the server is located. That’s why it’s influential to use a server located in the country or continent where most of your visitors come from.
Surprisingly, in 2021, the price difference between high-quality hosts and garbage hosts is almost insignificant, so here’s a list of hosts we usually recommend:
- Cloudways offers cheap hosting packages starting at $10/month. These guys use VPS servers on a speed-optimized server stack to provide high speed while offering 60+ locations around the globe.
- Siteground stands out as one of the most affordable options. And still provides satisfactory site speed, making it a better choice than other cheap hosts.
- WPX Hosting is a dedicated WordPress host that does edge caching with its WPX cloud. And offers an amazing cost/speed ratio, with its data centers being located in the US and UK.
- Kinsta is pricier, but it’s one of the best choices for websites with a lot of traffic. These guys do page caching at the server level without a plugin, and so does WPengine.
Use HTTPS
Running a site in HTTPS mode allows the browser to use the newer HTTP2 protocol. Which speeds up how quickly the browser can download the site versus the older HTTP 1.1 protocol. Keep in mind that many cheap providers don’t support HTTP2, so if your host lacks this support, it’s an indication that their infrastructure is old or not up to scratch.
Use the Highest Version of PHP the Site Supports
PHP is the programming language or framework that WordPress is built on. Overall load speed typically increases 10-20% with each new version of PHP. In March 2021, the newest 8.0.3. A version of PHP was released. Most themes and plugins won’t support this version yet, BUT it’s worth checking the version of PHP that your site can support and switching to that – version 7.4 is the version before v8, and most sites should support it.
WPEngine has a free plugin that can test your site for PHP compatibility on any host. Often, you’ll have a couple of plugins that fail their automated testing, but more often than not, you check with the plugin vendor and confirm what version of PHP their plugin can support.
Use Cloudflare
Even with the worst hosting providers, Cloudflare can shorten your load times drastically. Even if you go for a free plan, it will make a huge difference in load speed. Here are the services Cloudflare offers to boost your site’s performance:
- DNS hosting is a service that brings your website to the user who typed its address into the URL bar. Cheap providers typically have slow DNS hosting, which results in failed or slow hookups, further causing a load time increase. Cloudflare is amongst the ten fastest DNS hosts globally (see https://dnsperf.com for rankings). In most cases, Cloudflare’s DNS hosting will speed up your site significantly.
- Cloudflare also provides firewall and security features giving better protection for your site reduces the load on the hosting as it filters some garbage crawlers and scrapers hitting the site. Which helps increase the site’s speed. This article details some of the rules we use to boost Cloudflare’s security and performance.
- The $5/month APO service effectively do page caching at the edge. Edge caching essentially means entire pages are cached on Cloudflare’s server, reducing the load on your hosting and putting the entire site closer to the visitor.
- The $20/month plan offers additional features like a full web application firewall (WAF), better image optimization, and a handful more website acceleration features.
- If you can’t use Cloudflare, use a CDN service (one that has image optimization built-in, like Bunny CDN).
Turn on-Site Speed Optimizations in Your Theme
Many WordPress themes come with speed optimization features, such as lazy loading. Which means that images don’t load until the viewer gets to that part of the page. Or combining CSS and JavaScript, which decreases the number of network requests a browser has to make.
Many themes also have more up-to-date optimizations. Like just in time preloading, which preloads the page just before a user clicks on it.
It’s worth checking your theme for these settings to ensure they’re enabled. And turning off any theme features you aren’t using, as many features load additional JavaScript and CSS.
