Is your WordPress site slow? Try these simple steps to increase your page loading speed:
- Upgrade WordPress software, current theme and plugins to their latest versions.
- Use W3 Total Cache plugin. This will increase page speed for repeat visitors and non-bouncing visitors.
- Deactivate and delete as many unnecessary plugins you can. Check the remaining plugins using P3 (Plugin performance profiling plugin). If you can implement a function by directly modifying the theme without using the plugin, then do it.
- Use smaller sized images in your posts. Use GIMP or PhotoShop and save the images as File->Save for web.
- Reduce the number of images / scripts you call from external sites.
- Reduce the number of Java Scripts called. Place them in the footer if you can. Don’t put them all in the header.
- Make sure your web host is ok. Check the page loading speed of a non WordPress site and others’ WordPress sites running in the same server. Go for WordPress recommended web hosts and [url=http://wp26.com/wordpress-web-hosting/]WordPress managed hosting. Just by changing to [url=http://wp26.com/go/wpengine/]WP Engine and [url=http://wp26.com/go/nodeki/]Nodeki Hosting, I could get sites to load under 1 second with no caching, cdn or tweaking.
- Use a light theme. Try changing to the default theme. If the site speed increases, then the current theme is the culprit.
- Reduce the number of posts shown in each page. Show excerpts instead of full posts in the archive and index pages.
- Use FireBug. Enable support for Network monitoring under the “Net” tab. This will help you understand what actually is slowing down your site. You can also implement the suggestions given by [url=http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/]Google Page speed. These may require the help of a good developer.
- Use a content delivery network service like MaxCDN, [url=http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/]Amazon CloudFront.
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