Over time, a WordPress site will start to load slower and slower and feel sluggish. We already know how valuable every second of load time is, and we don’t want our visitors waiting for pages to load.
Some common issues that can cause a slow site are large media files, poorly coded and outdated plugins or themes, but the most common cause is usually a slow host.
If your WordPress site has started to slow down, then you’ve come to the right place. This article will cover all the little tricks and tweaks that will help vastly improve and speed up your WordPress site.
We’ll cover some basic but constructive tips like upgrading your hosting, optimizing your images, installing an effective caching plugin, and updating WordPress plugins.
We’ll also look at more advanced techniques like plugin errors, caching conflicts, and bloated code.
We’ve optimized over 4000 WordPress sites now, so if you’re looking for help and someone to fix it for you, submit a free audit request here. Alternatively, if you’re looking to DIY, try our WordPress site speed test tool, which will give you detailed site speed optimization recommendations in about 90 seconds or so, no option or email address required.
Why is Your WordPress Site Slow?
WordPress’ websites may start to take extra time to load for several reasons, the most common including:
- Slow or Poor-quality hosting
- No Caching
- No Content Delivery Network (CDN) in place
- Pages Too Fat with uncompressed media
- Not redirecting to HTTPS
- Old or Unsupported PHP Version
- Out of date Plugins
- Bloated Database
- Low Resources or Disk Space
These are all issues that have the capacity to slow down a website, but there are also many things you can do to speed up your WordPress site.
How To Fix Your Slow Site Checklist:
Here’s the quick checklist for fixing a slow WordPress site. We’ve expanded each section further below in the article.
- Upgrade to better hosting
- Use caching
- Use a CDN
- Compress your images
- Lazy load media
- Redirect to HTTPS
- Use most current PHP
- Update plugins
- Optimize your database
- Disable unused and redundant items
- Advanced troubleshooting
- Detailed Guide to Increasing WordPress Speed
- Upgrading your hosting
We’ve worked on over 4000 WordPress sites, and the most common cause of a slow site is poor-quality hosting.
Shared hosting plans that offer unlimited sites and bandwidth are overcrowded, and your website will suffer the consequences. Many bloggers just starting a WordPress site steer towards cheap shared hosting. The fact is that you get what you pay for, and less expensive hosting will be slow, unreliable, and unstable.
Upgrading to a faster and more reliable hosting environment will instantly result in a much faster loading website.
It would help if you also looked for a hosting provider with data centers nearest your target audience. If visitors to your site are from the United States, choose a hosting provider with data centers in the US. If most of your customers are in Australia or Europe, then select a hosting provider with data centers closest to these locations.
Why is a good hosting provider so important to site performance?
Good hosting is like a smooth-running engine that can handle all of your website’s different types of traffic demands.
- Site speed: This isn’t just about site speed, but site speed is one of the most apparent factors affected by the hosting provider you selected. Site speed includes page size, download times, and how many requests are being made to access files on your website.
- Reliability: A reliable host also helps to ensure that your site is available when people want to visit it, whether they’re typing in your domain name or following a link you shared on social media. The more often your site is down or inaccessible, the lower its performance score.
- Security: Another key factor related to bad hosting is security; if something goes wrong with your hosting, and you become the victim of a cyberattack, it can really impact your website and sometimes even ruin it.
Hosting is the foundational component of every WordPress website. It’s a major reason some websites don’t perform well, and a big part of what makes sites fast and efficient. You can check your site’s performance at sitespeedbot.com for free and see how fast your site compares to others around the world.
If you’ve been experiencing performance issues on your WordPress site, it might be time to switch from one host to another. No matter how great your website is, if nobody can visit it, then you’re just wasting your time!
- Use a caching plugin
A WordPress site can speed up massively by implementing a good caching plugin. There are many great options; we found that WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache provided the best results.
AVOID using more than one caching plugin!
Having redundant caching plugins will cause conflicts and errors within your WordPress site. Hosts that provide premium caching, such as Kinsta and WP Engine, have blocked several caching plugins because of this.
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A Content Delivery Network, or CDN for short, is basically a large library of cached files located worldwide. If users from different countries access your site, they will get served content from the nearest location. These speed up access to your site dramatically, even if it’s stored on slow hosting somewhere else.
Cloudflare: The most common name in the CDN business is definitely Cloudflare! The basic plan provides an easy way to set up a CDN at no cost. It takes just minutes to set up and is compatible with most hosting accounts. You can sign up and have a CDN up and running in no time.
The main feature of Cloudflare is the ability to speed up your site by acting as a caching proxy server. The CDN will cache images, JavaScript files, CSS stylesheets, and so on. This speeds up access time dramatically because instead of WordPress serving uploads of different requests, they are served from the nearest geographical server, saving time.
Cloudflare also provides additional security by acting as a firewall. It can help stop common hacking attempts, DoS attacks, and brute force login attempts.
The Cloudflare basic CDN allows you to easily configure SSL security by simply checking the box when setting up the account. You will get an A+ SSL rating at no extra cost!
Amazon CloudFront: Amazon CloudFront is an alternative to Cloudflare, and many people swear by its speed. It’s free for the first year, only costs a few pennies per GB afterward.
It’s perfect for WordPress websites because of its WordPress plugin. Its user interface is very intuitive and incredibly easy to use, even if you don’t have much technical knowledge.
What’s more, it offers a free SSL certificate through its proxy server, so your website will be secure by default without any need for extra plugins or configuration! You need to take some extra time to install the free WordPress plugin.
KeyCDN: Another popular CDN option is KeyCDN. It has a free plan for smaller websites and very affordable paid plans.
It’s a little more complicated to set up than Cloudflare, but has various features. The free plan includes automatic image optimization and GZIP compression support, which is perfect for WordPress users. This will help save on bandwidth costs, improve speed, and reduce load times.
They also have a handy real-time speed testing tool that will help you determine how fast your site is currently performing and which files could be optimized to speed it up that offers a basic free plan in addition to paid options.
Using a CDN is definitely the quickest and easiest way to speed up your WordPress site. It’s also very inexpensive (if not free), so there really isn’t any reason not to do it!
