How do I increase the loading speed of my WordPress site?

We have received a lot of questions on this topic, so today we wanted to write about how our WordPress websites have such good speed.

There are several ways we can make our site load faster:

• Using a caching module
• Using a CDN
• Image optimization
• Using a new version of PHP
• Lazy Load
• Database optimization
• Choosing a suitable web hosting package

So, we’ll write a little about each one and try to help you increase the upload speed of your site.

1. Using a caching module.

Pages built into WordPress are “dynamic”. This means that they are built when you or your visitors access a page or post. To build and display content, WordPress runs a process, which involves several steps. The more visitors you have, the more WordPress will work, the greater the resources required, as well as the processing and processing time of the required information. That’s why we recommend using a caching module. It can help you increase the speed of your site, and it can be accessed two to five times faster. How does it work? Simple.

Instead of going through all the steps we talked about earlier, your site will display the “ready-made” page with a copy created by the caching module of your page. You will find many caching plugins, but we will recommend two modules tested by me and not only, modules with very positive reviews, namely:

• WordPress Fastest Cache – If your web server is using Apache / Nginx
• Litespeed Cache – If you are using Litespeed

To avoid making a very long article, you can read details about them by scouring the internet a bit, forums and Facebook groups being full of information.

2. Using a CDN

Visitors to your site can be spread across the globe. The greater the distance from the physical server, the more the loading time is affected. That is why it is recommended that the server be in the same country as your visitors, or use a CDN.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used by servers located all over the globe, servers that store the “static” content from which your site is composed, and then distribute it to visitors from the closest location to them.

I do not use a CDN because this blog is in Romanian and is intended for users in Romania, the server being here, so I will mention a single CDN that I have used in the past and I was very pleased with it, namely: CloudFlare

3. Image optimization

We all know the importance of images and the word that flows through the people, namely that “an image makes a thousand words”. But why do we need image optimization? Images take up a lot of space, a photo can have 2MB, 5MB, 10MB, etc. When an image is uploaded without being optimized, each time a visitor accesses the site, it will need to be processed and then processed, so the larger the upload time, the greater it is.

But in this case, the technology also saves us and we can compress the images without losing their quality, or possibly … losing very little of the original quality.

For image optimization I recommend TinyPNG, it is a module that does its job well and can help you resize an image from 4-5MB to several hundred kb.

4. Using a new version of PHP

WordPress is mostly written in PHP, and the latest versions of PHP (from 7 up) are 2 or even 3 times faster than their grandparents and great-grandparents. This will make your site load a lot easier if you use such a PHP version. Before changing the PHP version though, make sure that all modules and themes are updated, as well as the WordPress platform so that they are compatible with the new PHP versions. This blog uses at the time of writing this article, version of PHP 7.4.

5. Lazy Load

Lazy Load helps us greatly in optimizing loading times. Remember that earlier we were talking about all those steps that WordPress takes to display content? Well, lazyload helps you to display large content or the one that gets harder to load (eg photos, videos, iframes) only after the site has fully loaded and you need that resource (e.g. when you reach it by scroll). The caching modules mentioned above can help you turn on the lazy load option so it shouldn’t be a big headache for you.

6. Database optimization

Once you have used WordPress for a longer period of time, its database will increase considerably as well as the number of irrelevant information. The larger and more complex the database, the more time your site will take to reach the required information. You do not have to worry too much, because you can use the Wp-Sweep module that will perform all the necessary steps to clean your database.

7. Choosing the right hosting package

In vain do we all the steps listed above if the server that processes the information is either old and resource-free or is not optimized or not built properly, right? That’s why I recommend that when choosing a hosting package, keep in mind the following tips given by me:

– Choose an SSD web hosting package (SSDs have much faster read/write information than traditional HDDs)

– Verify that the resources allocated to the account (Virtual Memory, PHP Memory, memory_limit, CPU) are as large as possible. The larger the resources, the faster the information can be processed. For example, this hosting account has the following specifications: 2GB physical memory, 20 Entry Processes, up to 100 processes, 256MB memory_limit.

– Do you have a well-optimized web server? I recommend choosing a hosting package configured with Litespeed (or at least Apache with Nginx proxy), CloudLinux to make sure you have the guaranteed resources as well as Memcached or Redis. Trust me, it will help you tremendously.