WordPress on it’s own can get pretty resource intensive when you start getting traffic. Fortunately there are a couple of easy ways to vastly improve the speed of the site and reduce the resource needs. This is good for you, good for us and good for everyone you might share a server with.
Caching
There are two fairly prominent caching systems for WordPress: WP-Cache2 and WP Super Cache.
WP-Cache2 is often the first caching system you should try. It doesn’t require that you use the permalinks system, although you can if you want to and you don’t need to edit any files.
WP Super Cache does require the use of permalinks and you may need to make some manual file edits, but since it’s caching is more advanced it completely relieves the use of PHP to generate your page so it will get the site running faster than WP-Cache2 can.
File Requests
Perhaps even more than PHP processing, additional page requests can really slow your site down. PHP Speedy WordPress addresses this problem by turning all of your separate .js file downloads into one file. The developer has a screenshot showing the before speed at 8.41 seconds and the after at 687ms. That’s a pretty impressive improvement.
Get the newest version here.
With the installation of just a couple extensions you can vastly speed up your WordPress site.