WordPress CMS (Content Management System) is the most powerful blogging platform I have ever come across. I noticed recently that a lots of blog loads slowly which lead to a research. While carrying out the research I notice that a lot of wordpress users have experienced their blog loading very slow one time or the other. A lot of advice have been given but I am going to share what I know about this problem with you because I have experience it some time ago.
There are a number of factors that affects the load time of a wordpress blog, they include hosting, themes, plugins and database. In this post we will consider each of the factors that affect the speed of a wordpress blog, and how to optimize a wordpress blog for speed.
Choosing A Good Host
Before creating your blog, you were faced with a serious decision, choosing the right host. Well the importance of that research you carried out before choosing a host have to do with your blog’s speed when you have started generating massive traffic. For a wordpress blog to work properly it needs a memory and a CPU on the server where your blog is hosted. Sometimes these resources are not sufficient enough to make your blog function to its full capacity. This is where you need to reconsider your hosting plan. First of all, make sure you choose a reliable host with credibility and upgrade your plan to suite your need. For even better performance, you should consider a Virtual private server (VPS) or Cloud hosting.
Use A Good Theme
If you are aiming for speed, then you need a good theme with clean coding, built for speed. You have little to worry when it comes to theme selection, because themes framework just made things easier. With a framework you have all the coding needed for your blog to give optimum performance. The best two framework I know of are genesis and thesis framework. I use genesis so I can write a book on it and that’s what I will recommend if I am being asked to recommend a framework.
Limit The Usage Of Plugins
I know this might not be appealing to plugin programmers but if you are one of them, no personal feelings attached. I do not condemn plugins or go against them, in fact plugins are the livelihood of wordpress and bloggers can’t do without them, they add more functionality to a wordpress blog. What I am against here is the use too many wordpress plugins. The last post I wrote “How Many WordPress Plugin Might Just Be Too Much”, I explain how too many wordpress plugins will slow down your blog. So my advice for you is not to stop using wordpress plugins but to reduce the number of plugins. Only make use of plugins that are very important.
Use A Caching Plugin
To optimize the performance of your blog, you need to use a caching plugin to cache pages. This will help your blog to load faster. This plugin access your blog’s database, caches all your pages and serve them to visitors without loading it from your database. This makes your blog to load faster. W3 Total cache is one of the most important plugin a wordpress user must have.
Use A CDN (Content Delivery Network)
CDN is very important if you are serious about speeding up your blog. CDN takes your css/java and image files and place them in different servers located around the globe. Whenever a visitor loads your page, the CDN allows a faster download of your site by serving files from a server that is closest to your visitor. A CDN should work hand in hand with a cache plugin. I will recommend MaxCDN, but if you know of any other CDN service you are comfortable with, ride on.
Clean Your Database
Database is basically a place where everything on your wordpress blog is stored. To make your blog load fast, you need to clean up your database by removing auto saved post, spam comments and so on. To optimize your data base you can either use WP-Optimize or WP-DBManager. Using one of the plugins above will enable you remove unwanted stuffs like draft post and spam comments from your database and save some space.
These are just a few optimizations to help a wordpress blog load faster. What about you, do you have any tip not motioned on this post; your sharing is highly appreciated.
I am a passionate blogger who loves to share tips and experiences. I love to connect with bloggers and you can connect with me on facebook, twitter, linkedin, pinterest and google plus one.
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Hi Apollos,
I use W3 Total Cache and WP-Optimize on my blog and they really do their job. It’s important that my site loads fast because a lot of people don’t have patience to wait more than 3 seconds for the pages to load.
I’m not using a CDN at the moment but I’m thinking about it. I’ve heard a lot of people say good things about Max-CDN so I’m definitely going to check it out.
Have a great day Apollos, cheers.
~Philip
Thanks for leaving a comment. Using a CDN along with a caching plugin is really great, it going to improve the speed of your blog greatly.
You couldn’t be more correct, speed is very important. If your site isn’t fast enough people will leave before it gets a chance to load. Thanks ofr the great tips.
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Hello Apollos.
Recently couple of times, I was told that my site is slow, so this post is quite useful for me. I am doing everything but CDN. Hope I explore more on that and use it someday.
Thanks for sharing
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