Boost Your WordPress Speed: Smart Tips for Faster Web Hosting
WHY SPEED IS CRUCIAL:
21 How-To Tips for Making Your WordPress Site Lightning-Fast
WHY IS WEBSITE SPEED IMPORTANT?
INTRODUCTION
Recent studies clearly demonstrate that how quickly your website loads plays a significant role in its success. In a digital era where technology moves at breakneck speed, and internet connections grow ever-faster, your visitors expect instant access. With attention spans shorter than ever, you typically get just a brief moment to capture your audience, and you don’t want to squander it with sluggish loading times.
Whether you’re running an online shop, offering services, or simply blogging, a slow website will inevitably drive people away and dent both your traffic levels and your earnings. In fact, if it takes longer than a second for your site to appear, you’re at risk of losing visitors—and it’s definitely time to optimise.
Here at Digitalberging, we have developed a system that focuses on speeding up websites using powerful tools and the latest technologies, specifically for our WordPress clients. Having a modern, fast web host is vital, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. There are a number of practical site tweaks and techniques you can use to significantly improve your WordPress website’s loading speed, and we’re eager to guide you through them.
1- HOW TO IDENTIFY AND PRIORITISE SPEED ISSUES
BENCHMARK YOUR SITE
Begin by determining whether your site truly has a speed issue. The simplest way to check is by running some speed tests using benchmarking tools. A few trusted, free options include:
GTMetrix (https://gtmetrix.com)
When you test your site with GTmetrix, you receive a single report containing insights from both Google PageSpeed and Yahoo’s YSlow. It conveniently sorts the areas to fix by how urgent and impactful they are.
Pingdom Tools (https://tools.pingdom.com)
Pingdom presents results across several tabs—the most helpful being the Waterfall tab, which details how long every website element takes to load, and the Performance Grade tab, which suggests steps to speed things up (similar to GTMetrix).
Many other tools are out there—by all means, run multiple tests if time allows. Generally, however, the above two tools are more than adequate to give a solid overview of your website’s speed health.
How to Gauge Results: Speed checkers often offer a score, but don’t obsess over the grade. If your site loads in less than a second, you’ve aced the most critical part!
TYPICAL SITE SPEED CHALLENGES
If your tests reveal problems, it’s time to dig deeper. While each website is unique, common culprits slow down most sites. Troubleshoot by examining:
- An excessive number of posts on the homepage
- Too many plugins or social media widgets clogging pages
- Themes overloaded with unnecessary features
- Large and unoptimised images
HOW TO PRIORITISE YOUR FIXES
Your audit may generate an extensive to-do list. To avoid getting bogged down, order tasks by impact and effort. Not every fix yields big results, so consider:
- How challenging will the problem be to address?
- How much will fixing it improve your site’s speed?
Use these answers to build a “priority list” that puts the most effective changes at the top—so your website gets faster, faster.
2- HOW TO OPTIMISE PAGE SIZE & CONTENT
1. SHOW FEWER POSTS ON YOUR HOMEPAGE
Cutting down the number of posts displayed on the front page helps your site load more quickly and is easily adjusted from the dashboard. In WordPress, simply go to: Settings -> Reading Settings -> Blog pages show at most
Change this number to anything lower for faster loading.
For a smooth user experience, try a plugin like YITH Infinite Scrolling. This makes new posts appear automatically as visitors scroll, similar to social feeds.
2. HOW TO SPLIT LENGTHY HOMEPAGE POSTS
If your main page includes lengthy articles, break them into manageable chunks using the <!–nextpage–> tag within your post text. This adds numbered pagination links so readers can navigate content in smaller portions, reducing initial page size and loading faster.
This trick transforms one bulky page into several leaner, faster ones.
3. CONSIDER STATIC IMAGES OVER SLIDERS
WordPress sliders rely heavily on JavaScript, and not all slider plugins are optimised for speed. Plus, sliders can be clunky on mobile. If your design allows, trade the slider for one well-chosen image to boost speed and create a cleaner look.
If a slider is a must-have, Soliloquy is a popular, lightweight choice, also available in an advanced version. Meta Slider is another reliable, free alternative.
4. USE THE RIGHT IMAGE SIZES
Images are a key part of any website, but oversized photos take longer to load and can slow down your website. Here’s how to ensure your images are working in your favour:
The server during site loading.
If your aim is to show an image at 300×300 pixels, make sure you upload it at that size. Avoid uploading a large image such as 1024×1024 pixels and then downsizing it with HTML or CSS.
5. SHRINK IMAGE FILES WITHOUT LOSING QUALITY
To easily reduce image file sizes without sacrificing quality, try the free plugin EWWW Image Optimizer. It compresses your images efficiently while preserving clarity, and also removes unneeded data like your camera’s model details or GPS information.
While a single image may only save a few kilobytes, optimising every image on a page can considerably boost your site’s loading speed.
6. LIMIT THE USE OF EXTRA FONTS
If you use services like Google Fonts, keep in mind that every different font weight or character set (e.g. bold, italic, Latin, Cyrillic) increases load time.
Audit your website and only include the exact font styles that you actually use.
If you’re only using a specific font for a tiny portion of your website, consider reusing an existing font elsewhere to avoid unnecessary font loads.
7. HANDLE LARGE NUMBERS OF COMMENTS EFFICIENTLY
An abundance of comments can slow your website as it makes each page more dynamic (meaning cache is refreshed more often) and increases the HTML size per page view.
For sites with heavy comment activity, switch from the standard WordPress comments to a plugin such as Epoch. This upgrade streamlines comment management, helping high-traffic blogs run much faster.
Another alternative is Disqus, a third-party service which hosts comments off-site (not on your server), further reducing the strain on your site.
8. TURN ON GZIP COMPRESSION FOR YOUR WEBSITE
By enabling gZIP compression, you allow your site’s HTML and some static resources to be compressed before delivery. Visitors’ browsers then unpack the content for display. This is a much faster process than transferring uncompressed files.
To activate gZIP compression on WordPress, simply add the following lines to your .htaccess file in the root WordPress directory:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
9. MINIFY AND BUNDLE JS & CSS FILES
Minification and combination are two simple ways to cut down both the file size and number of JavaScript and CSS files loaded on your site. Minifying removes white space and unnecessary characters, shrinking file size.
Combining merges multiple files into a single file, reducing the number of HTTP requests needed to load your website. Popular plugins such as WP Rocket for premium users, or WP Super Minify for a free option, can help automate this process.
10. UTILISE CACHING FOR FASTER LOADING
Caching stores a ready-made version of your website, so repeat visitors can access your pages far quicker. When you make content changes, the cache refreshes after the next visit – ensuring updates display but keeping load times low for everybody else.
The easiest method is to install a caching plugin. This saves static copies to the server hard drive, meaning your content doesn’t have to be generated from scratch each visit. Try WP Rocket if your budget allows, or WP Super Cache for a cost-free solution.
Some hosts offer caching on the server side, which stores cache in server memory (RAM) rather than disk. This delivers even greater performance improvements, as accessing memory is much quicker than reading from a hard drive.
3- OPTIMISATIONS
WordPress themes and plugins form the backbone of your site and have a big impact on performance, since every visit requires code from them to be run. These essential elements also benefit from optimisation.
11. CHOOSE TRUSTED THEMES FROM REPUTABLE DEVELOPERS
When picking a theme, either choose one from the official WordPress directory or buy from a well-established and trusted company in the WordPress ecosystem.
Investing time to research your theme and developer will save headaches in future, especially as you spend more time adding content or customising your website. Read through user reviews, look for real user feedback, and check that your provider has a positive reputation in the community.
Try to avoid themes made by anonymous designers who don’t engage with their users or support their products.
Quality theme code is important as it affects every area of your;?>
For instance, some WordPress themes add extra plugin-like features, such as displaying related posts beneath your articles. While handy, these additions can cause your site to load sluggishly due to inefficient MySQL database queries. You don’t need to be an expert developer to have an excellent website—just make sure the theme you pick is built with performance in mind by professional developers.
12. AVOID OVERLY FEATURE-RICH THEMES
While shopping for a theme, you’ll often come across options boasting they’re a one-size-fits-all solution packed with features, sliders, and dynamic carousels. However, these elements all require additional JavaScript and CSS files, which can bloat your site and slow things down, particularly when most of these features are left unused.
It’s best to choose a theme that includes only the essential functions you actually require. Extras like sliders and carousels can always be added later with a plugin if you need them, rather than being built into the theme by default.
13. ALWAYS USE A CHILD THEME TO CUSTOMISE SAFELY
WordPress is regularly updated to introduce new features and provide performance enhancements. While quality themes also receive updates periodically, custom changes can easily be lost if you edit the core theme files directly.
A child theme lets you update the main or ‘parent’ theme safely, while all of your custom tweaks remain intact. Creating a child theme is straightforward—simply follow the official guide on WordPress.org.
14. OPTIMISE YOUR WEBSITE FOR MOBILE USERS
A growing share of web traffic comes from mobile devices each year. Tablets and phones are often the first choice for browsing, so it’s crucial that your website runs quickly and smoothly on these devices.
Mobile users often have slower connections (2G, 3G, or 4G), so avoid simply shrinking your desktop design. Instead, focus on a streamlined mobile experience. Here’s how to optimise for mobile users:
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Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check if your site works well on mobile and find areas to improve.
- Pick a theme designed for mobile-first use, or at least one that offers a dedicated mobile version. Remember to run tests on both desktop and mobile layouts.
- If your current theme doesn’t support mobile, try a plugin such as WP Touch to generate a mobile-friendly version of your website. However, native mobile functionality provided by your theme is always preferable for performance and usability.
15. USE ICON FONTS RATHER THAN INDIVIDUAL IMAGES FOR ICONS
Modern sites frequently use icons for navigation and interaction. Instead of uploading lots of separate image files, opt for an icon font, such as Genericon’d. Icon fonts allow you to add crisp, scalable icons just like typing a normal letter, which helps reduce the number of HTTP requests and improves performance.
16. DON’T DUPLICATE PLUGIN FUNCTIONALITIES
If a plugin you use already offers certain features, avoid installing a second plugin just for similar tasks. For instance, the Yoast SEO plugin can generate XML sitemaps, so there’s no need to install another sitemap plugin. Reducing overlap keeps your site lean and helps you maintain better performance and security.
17. KEEP PLUGINS UPDATED REGULARLY
Plugin updates often include security fixes, speed boosts, and useful new features. Core WordPress upgrades are designed to work well with up-to-date plugins, helping everything run faster and more reliably. Keeping your plugins current also lets you take advantage of modern PHP versions, like PHP 7, for a major speed upgrade.
If you’re not actively using a plugin, delete it. Removing unused plugins is good practice for both security and performance, and helps keep your dashboard clean.
18. CLEAR UNUSED PLUGIN DATA FROM YOUR DATABASE
When you delete a plugin, it may leave behind settings or options in your database. Use a tool such as Garbage Collector to help remove unused data left by old plugins.
While most plugins only delete their files, their database tables or option data may remain. This plugin scans for unused plugin options and lets you delete them. Always back up your database before making any deletions, just to be safe.
4- SERVER & HOSTING OPTIMISATION TIPS
19. ENABLE SERVER-LEVEL CACHING
Many hosting companies offer built-in caching for WordPress. At Digitalberg, for example, NGINX acts as a reverse proxy, supported by a plugin such as WP Fastest Cache . This saves the outcomes of database queries and PHP operations directly to server memory, so repeat visitors are served pages instantly from cache, bypassing lengthy server processes.
You can often activate server caching from your hosting control panel, reducing typical load times from seconds down to fractions of a second. Server caching also helps your site handle traffic spikes more efficiently. The graph below demonstrates how high volumes of visitors can be managed thanks to robust caching:
For larger sites, consider using object caching systems such as Memcached or Redis. These need to be set up by your hosting provider and can further speed up dynamic websites. At Digitalberg, Memcached is available as a simple one-click add-on for WordPress users.
20. USE A CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK (CDN)
If your website serves a global audience, a CDN (Content Delivery Network) can make a huge difference. Services such as Key CDN, Microsoft Azure, Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN, or CloudFlare distribute copies of your content across data centres worldwide. This means visitors receive data from the nearest server, reducing latency and improving page load times. Digitalberg clients can enable free CloudFlare integration, but any suitable CDN provider can offer similar benefits.
21. IMPLEMENT SSL AND HTTP/2 FOR SECURITY & SPEED
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypts data between your site and its visitors, ensuring their details remain confidential—a must-have for online shops or sites handling personal information. Previously, SSL could slow down websites, but new technologies like HTTP/2 now allow faster, more secure connections if your server supports it.
HTTP/2 enables browsers to send several resource requests simultaneously, leading to quicker, smoother websites. If you’re worried about SSL certificate costs, consider using a free option such as Let’s Encrypt to enjoy the benefits of encryption and HTTP/2 at no extra expense.
Need help setting up free SSL? Check out this guide: qureshi.me/freessl/
CONCLUSION
Speed optimisation isn’t a one-off job—it’s an ongoing part of maintaining a healthy WordPress website. Skipping it risks losing both money and visitors while harming your reputation and SEO.
By applying these practical steps—which range from site theme choices, plugin management, to server and hosting best practices—you’ll create a snappier, more reliable experience for every visitor, without needing advanced technical skills.
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