Learn How To Improve WordPress Speed and Overall Performance
WordPress Speed and performance is one of the first things people ask about. Everyone wants their website to load faster and we’ll cover some simple ways you can improve your WordPress Speed. One of the premier content management systems that you will be able to use today is none other than WordPress. This is a system that is easy to install, and easy to use to build just about any kind of website or project you want to create. From e-commerce solutions to blogs to full scale animated pages, there’s a lot of power underneath the hood of this software element. If you are working with this and you find that it’s starting to slow down a bit, perhaps it’s time to look into a few things that will help you speed things right back up.
Check For WordPress Updates
The first thing that you should do is simple, check for WordPress updates. The software is updated by a diverse group of programmers at any given time. You don’t need to run the “beta” version if you don’t want. You can wait for the stable version to ensure that you are able to get the right solution moving forward. If you do not update your WordPress install, you will find that you open yourself up to a variety of issues, including hackers, and information break down. Check for updates, and keep the database updated as well.
Upgrade Your Plugins
Once a plugin is installed, it’s easy to forget about it. A lot of programmers are guilty of this. Don’t allow yourself to lose control of your page, upgrade these plugins and make sure that anything antiquated is deleted. If you have something installed that just hasn’t been updated in a long time, then it shouldn’t be on your WordPress install. Doing so will cause a great deal of damage to the code, and could end up causing issues with your database. Upgrade these as often as you can, and if something hasn’t been changed in over a year, look to see if it’s even still viable.
With the release of WordPress 4.6 you can now upgrade your plugins seamlessly and without losing the current page you’re on! You can read the full WordPress 4.6 Release Notes here.
Cache Upgrades
One of the things that WordPress is known for is faster loading, with Cache changes. You can find plugins that will help you get “turbo cache” and other elements that speed up the loading process. There’s a few tweaks that you can make to these once you download and install them, but the key is to have faster overall cache. If you don’t, your page will load at the normal rate, which could be somewhat limited. One of my favorite WordPress caching plugins is W3 Total cache. It’s a free caching plugin for WordPress and it pretty much works right out of the box.
Only Allow Snippets On The Home Page
One of the old tricks that people used on WordPress is to have all the information to a blog post or page up front. That’s ok in theory, but if you want faster loading times, you’ll want to just allow 100 – 200 words of each post up front, and then the rest of the post upon a click through. That leaves a lot less to load on the home page, and more likelihood that people will read the interior of your pages, without leaving too early.
As you can see there are some quick things that you can do to speed up your WordPress install. Just remember, if you see slow down, don’t assume there’s nothing you can do. There’s always a fix, which is why so many people rely on WordPress. There are various things you can do to improve WordPress Speed and we’ve covered a few of the basics.
