Part of our new year’s resolutions is to become a better blogger.
A powerful software like WordPress can help you jumpstart the process the easy way. Tons of training resources can be found online. Plus, a large collection of themes and plugins are available when you decide to build your site further.
The downside to this infinite number of possibilities and products is that your site may end up suffering from some indigestion in the long run.
Lengthy load times and site running slow are pet peeve that will drive your readers away if you do not pay attention to these few guidelines.
This week I learned how to increase the performance of my WordPress site.
1. Start by testing your site speed. A list of online services below will allow you to diagnose what may be causing your site to run slow.
- Gtmetrix
- Pingdom
- Yslow, firebug extension addon for Firefox
- WebPagetest
- Google PageSpeed Tool
2. Removing unnecessary plugins will increase your site performance noticeably. Too many files and media will clutter your site which will cause your site to refresh slowly.
3. Regularly clean up your database.
- clean out spam comments.
- eliminate unwanted plugins leftovers. Even after being deleted, tables will remain in your database.
To do so, we can count on another plugin: the Garbage Collector. There is indeed a plugin for everything!
4. Use a CDN. A CDN (content delivery network) hosts a copy of your site in differents places around the world so your readers are directed to a server closer to their location. The benefit is maximum speed for your site with pages loading faster. MaxCDN offers good plans.
5. Caching to reduce the number of server requests is another effective solution to boost site performance. W3 Total Cache is a popular caching plugin that will dramatically improve the speed and performance of your site.
I hope that these notes about performance will help you create a better user experience for your readers
To read more about the topic :
- WordPress Speed Optimization Guide
- 18 Useful Tricks To Speed Up WordPress & Boost Performance
- P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)
More tips to come…
Sandy
