What To Do if Your WordPress Site is Loading Slow Page load time plays a significant role in the success of a website. The faster a website loads the better is it for your business as most visitors are likely to scale through different sections of your website easily. However, on certain occasions you might find that your WordPress website loads slow which can harm the marketing potential of your website. What do you do in such a case? Well, there are a few basic things that are applied during WordPress theme development can go a long way in speeding up the load time of your website. •
Upgrade To the Latest WordPress Release and Plugins – The WordPress CMS is being constantly developed and with each new release there is a significant jump in its performance and efficiency. Thus, if you are using an older version of the CMS, it would be advisable to switch to the latest version to improve the page load time of your website. Even in the case of plugins, make sure you are using the latest version.
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Clean Up Codes – Did you use a WYSIWYG editor to code your WordPress website? If yes then you need to manually code your website as auto generated codes are most often bulky and contain bugs which slows down a website. Handcoded WordPress websites that pass through the W3C validation are faster and more efficient.
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Get Rid of Unnecessary Plugins – In WordPress theme development, it is quite common for you to use plugins as they make your web development process a lot easier. Most of us get overwhelmed with the plugins and go on a plugin installing spree which often slows down the website as each plugin adds to the page load time of the website. You need to run through your list of plugins installed and deactivate those that no longer add value to your website. This will make your webpages load significantly faster.
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Use Cache Plugin – These plugins go a long way in improving the performance of your website. They do this by caching browser, page, scripts, objects and database which ensures better performance in subsequent page loads. Common elements of the websites can be reused to cut down the page loading time significantly. In fact, installing a cache plugin is a must to improve the speed of a website.
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Keep PHP and Database Queries to Minimum PHP and database queries add to the load time of the website as there should be a constant to and fro communication between the client and the server. Thus, cutting down on PHP and database queries can help you make the website load faster. Use these queries only when you feel they are absolutely necessary and in other cases, try replacing them with static HTML pages that take less time to load.
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Optimize Images Images tend to slow down the load time of a website especially when they are large. However, since you can’t do without images, you need to optimize them. This can be done by installing the WP Smush.it plugin as this helps in reducing the image file sizes and compresses the files improving their performance. It also strips unused colors from the indexed images further reducing their size.
It would be ideal if you hire the services of a good web design company, which has expertise in WordPress theme development. They will carry out a detailed analysis of the website and take measures which improve the performance without hurting the visual aesthetics and functionality of the WordPress website. Remember, lack of speed while loading pages can lend a killer blow to your website.