Tips To Optimize Your Wordpress Site For Page Speed
So, your page doesn't load as quickly as you'd like? And you have tried everything in your power to get the best load time?
Don't sweat it- I'm here to save the day. ;)
You need to realize that page speed optimization as you know is pretty simple when stripped to its skeleton. I'm not going to throw too much technical jargon at you, mostly because the technical aspect is not of *paramount* importance.
What's the point of Page Optimization?
Well, for starters, it gives your readers a hassle free experience. Nobody likes reloading the page twice because it's taking too long to load. They might as well check your competitor out. If this is not reason enough to convince you, note that Google largely prefers pages that load quickly over pages that take ages to load.
- Reader Satisfaction- Check
- SEO advantage- Check
Let's get down to the basics:
1. Get rid of any plugins you don't need.
This is tricky. You wouldn't have installed a plugin in the first place if you didn't need it. What I'm asking you to do is; strip down to the absolute basics. Don't go around installing plugins for trivial things that can be done by adding a couple of lines of code. Use only those plugins which you are think are absolutely pivotal to your blog's running.Tip: If you're a blogger, try and get your hands dirty with some coding experience. Saves you a lot of trouble when your ass is in trouble.Let's take 'Jetpack' for instance. I have nothing against Jetpack but it happens to be one of those plugins that drastically increases your page loading time. I'm not suggesting that you don't need it. You probably do. But then, is it worth the trade-off? Does Jetpack make your blog sassier? Does it provide insights that are of unspeakable importance to your blog? No? Then why do you have it installed?Like I said, I have nothing against Jetpack. Ask yourself the same questions before deciding to do away with a plugin. But I strongly suggest you to get rid of Jetpack.
2. Why so many themes, yo?
You just re-designed your blog and it looks better than ever. You've never been happier with your design and aren't planning on changing it anytime soon. Do you still have every other theme you ever installed in your Dashboard? GET RID OF THEM! They dramatically take a toll on your page load time and definitely not in a positive manner.
3. Install WP-Rocket.
Why? For the simple reason that it has got options that will make your life easier. You get access to features that can save you a lot of time while optimizing your page speed. And promise, it doesn't affect your load time too much. :) Why only this plugin? It happens to be the best plugin in the market in this space right now.
4. Smush your images.
Your images consume a huge chunk of your loading time. What can you do about that? Well, there's a fix. Install WP-Smush. This plugin essentially decreases the effect images have on your page loading speed. The best part? You get to delete it after its job is done.
5. Install WP-Sweep.
This plugin deletes all of the junk that you've managed to amass over the months and years. Don't worry, it deletes nothing of importance. This plugin can boost your loading time by quite a bit. You can get rid of this plugin when its job is done too. This is where it gets a tad bit too technical for newbies to handle. So, do this only if you're fairly experienced and know what you're doing.
5. Activate Cloudflare.
Cloudflare is a CDN (Content Delivery System). I'll google that for you - "A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver web pages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server." Saved you some time, eh? :)Well, Cloudflare happens to be the market leader and is pretty reasonably priced. And the best part is, you have both the free and the paid variants. So, you can always choose the free one, see if it works for you. It has some amazing features.
6. Using Genesis, Hmm?
Genesis has been a talk of the town because of the Features it offers like, It’s blazing speed, The looks of it’s child themes, and other features. :) In a research of my Page Speed optimization techniques, I found that a code which you should add in your child theme can speed up your blog. Here’s the code you need to add into your child theme’s Functions.php file.
// Defer Javascripts// Defer jQuery Parsing using the HTML5 defer propertyif (!(is_admin() )) {function defer_parsing_of_js ( $url ) {if ( FALSE === strpos( $url, '.js' ) ) return $url;if ( strpos( $url, 'jquery.js' ) ) return $url;// return "$url' defer ";return "$url' defer onload='";}add_filter( 'clean_url', 'defer_parsing_of_js', 11, 1 );}Bonus:
if(!is_admin()) { // Move all JS from header to footer remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_print_scripts'); remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_print_head_scripts', 9); remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 1); add_action('wp_footer', 'wp_print_scripts', 5); add_action('wp_footer', 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 5); add_action('wp_footer', 'wp_print_head_scripts', 5);}To Conclude, You’ve learnt to optimize your wordpress blog/site for Page Speed.