If your business isn’t on the internet, chances are, in this day and age, it doesn’t exist. These days, your business needs to be on a website and a quickly loadable mobile application. Let’s be real, people are very quick to dismiss a mobile app or website when it does not load within seconds or even milliseconds after clicking it.
People do not have enough patience to wait for a site to load. Increasing loading speed is a daunting task due to the many problems that may arise in the process. Optimization and improving speed come at the cost of reducing some of the key granularities of the site.
You need to find an equilibrium between loading speed limitations and seamless functionality. Here are 6 best practices to employ on your journey to WordPress Optimization.
1. Reduce Size of Images
Website images are great for increasing external traffic but that adds the responsibility of increasing the page speed to compensate.
Whoever designs the site will need to resize the images to reduce the file sizes. Using image compression applications like WordPress Smush can help speed up file shrinkage. This is especially helpful if you have a really big website with a multitude of images to process. It may seem intuitive to reduce file size to increase optimization, but it is often overlooked.
2. Disable Disengaged Plugins
While plugins easily allow new feature availability and functionality to a website, it is easy to lose track of the ones that are already in use. Look closely at your list of plugins and assess whether they are necessary to keep, toss, or update.
Any plugins that are unused are slowing the site down and should be immediately removed. This will significantly reduce the time spent loading the page as WordPress will not spend unnecessary time reading and loading the configurations of unused plugins.
3. Optimize Tables in PHPMYADMIN
Database optimization queries can be run right from the phpMyAdmin interface. PhpMyAdmin is an application that allows you to access your raw database. It allows you to open the database that belongs to your WordPress site and check the boxes of the tables you want to optimize.
In addition to the “Optimize Table” function, you can also run the “Repair Table” query from the same phpMyAdmin menu which could repair damaged and corrupted tables.
4. Refine Web Tracking Techniques
There is an integrated function and automated notification that tracks when and exactly where your page is shared online. While it is especially useful, the automated notification function uses up valuable server resources away from the functions that increase the speed of the website.
There are plenty of great tools that track inbound traffic like Google Analytics. Therefore, there is no need to have this functionality turned on. Disabling automated notifications that track inbound traffic will noticeably speed up the website.
5. Utilize Content Delivery Network
When content is within reach and accessible, the faster it is to obtain and download. Content Delivery Networks use smart caching to store confined versions of your webpages which ultimately reduce the distance and time to complete a request.
Content Delivery Networks have proven to be helpful for integrating into international networks to ensure site consistency regardless of where the visitor is geographically located.
A Content Delivery Network provider provides businesses the ability to seamlessly serve their content on an International scale.
6. Keep Track and Test
Last but certainly not least, understand that optimization is a continuous process that constantly tracks the performance of a site. Frequently set benchmarks and test the load speed and times for script execution to identify any congestion in the design.
By conducting regular testing, you will find the areas that need the most adjustment and tweaking. There are free tools that analyze every element on each page that provides precise recommendations for where to improve development.
For a better understanding of the user interface and ensuring fewer lapses in the flow of the website, if you have the technical acumen, you could set up automated synthetic testing or real user monitoring to better focus your development efforts.
Notable Plugins
1. Yoast SEO is a must-have WordPress plugin. This plugin is sure to improve SEO on your site. Not only will it simplify your content optimization, but it will also teach you about SEO in the process.
2. Askimet is installed with nearly every new WordPress installation. You simply activate it and your site will automatically be protected against spam. It is a really useful plugin if you want to get rid of any spam problems you may have encountered in the past.
3. Smush Image Compression If you really want to attract visitors and get their attention, you might want some tantalizing imagery. But as you may already know, high-quality images are very large. So, to reduce the size of images without giving up quality, you might want to use a plugin like Smush Image Compression. There are paid upgrades to utilize this function to the fullest.
Final Thoughts
Like it was mentioned before, WordPress optimization is an ongoing and highly detail-oriented set of small tasks and adjustments. It is an essential task to regularly perform should you want to maintain good data quality on your website.
Optimization can be done in a variety of ways. You can make use of a plugin that allows you to compose and automate entire processes or it can be done manually.
Database optimization is usually a maintenance service that can be offered to clients if you have a WordPress business.
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