Speed up my blog? Load pages faster

by thedog
7 replies
Hi guys.

I'm working on a site that has a lot of random images, loading on each page.

The images are a little heavy, so each page takes a bit to load... is there any way I can speed up this process... some sort of magic wordpress plugin, something that can load the images in the background.

I'm also using wp super cache... does this really help?

Any advice appreciated, as always.
#blog #faster #load #pages #speed
  • Profile picture of the author Derek Soto
    Load time can be important for both SEO and more importantly for user experience. What I would do is remove any unnecessary plugins. Then If I was not satisfied with my load time I would then remove pictures until I am satisfied with the load time. If it's necessary for your audience to see these pictures, I'd have some on one page and then have them click to a new page if they want to see more. If you keep all the pictures and have a really slow load time, your visitors will lose patience and leave.

    for plugins I only know of super cache, but you're already implementing that...
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  • Profile picture of the author erichammer
    I have a few suggestions for you. First of all, if the images are too big, resize them to be smaller. You can do this before uploading them using Gimp. If you can't or don't want to do that, consider using a plugin which creates thumbnails of the pictures. This way, the pictures will load quicker and when people want to see the detail, they can click the thumbnail to see a larger version.

    Second, consider using a CDN (Content delivery network). It seeds copies of your blog all over the world so that the stuff loads faster because there are less lags for it to bounce through (i.e. it will have a copy stored in Germany for German users and another in New York for New Yorkers, another in California, etc. and so on). I use MaxCDN. John Chow had a coupon code on his blog for them a while back which gives you 1TB of transfer for $30 for the first year. For most blogs, that's plenty. Just go ahead and google John Chow MaxCDN coupon.

    Finally, as has been noted, tighten up your site as much as possible. I'm constantly evaluating running plugins and removing those I feel add no value to the blog. It's very easy to get caught up with them but it can be a real drag on load times.

    Good luck,

    Eric
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  • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
    Here's a useful online tool for optimising your images:

    Online Image Optimizer: Optimize your GIFS, JPGS, and PNGS online.

    And here are a couple more articles on speeding up page load times:

    Gzip Compression: Speeding Up Site Load Times | WealthyDragon

    and:

    Make Site Load More Quickly | WealthyDragon

    (The first one links out to an excellent article on SEOMoz on page load times)

    Cheers,

    Martin.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sheila Atwood
    I have had great success with the Smush it plugin. I has compressed my images and improved load time.
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  • Profile picture of the author Christian Little
    I'm inclined to agree with the CDN suggestion. The W3 Total Cache plugin would also be good, and it works with most CDNs - you just provide your login credentials and it will handle the uploading for you.
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  • Profile picture of the author ArticlePenguin
    You could use one of those plugins that makes images small, but then when you click them they pop out and load. That way the page loads faster...think its called lightbox?
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  • Profile picture of the author haymanpl
    5 Easy Ways To Increase Your Site Speed Using The Best Website Optimization Tools

    You can compress your images but you will also lose qaulity when you do this

    Simple WP Super cache plugin for wordpress is the easiest and most effective way to increase page loading speeds

    W3 Total Cache is a better plugin but needs more configuration and probably only better used if you choose CDN as well
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