Optimizing Wordpress Site for Speed on the Cheap?

by 35 replies
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Hello. Does anyone know of a way to optimize a wordpress website for speed for little to no money? I tried a minify plugin and it completely messed up the look of my website so bad that I had to immediately deactivate it.
#search engine optimization #cheap #optimizing #site #speed #wordpress
  • Hey there you can use:

    Jetpack by WordPress.com
    Supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users.

    W3 Total Cache
    Easy Web Performance Optimization (WPO) using caching: browser, page, object, database, minify and content delivery network support.

    WP Super Cache
    A very fast caching engine for WordPress that produces static html files.

    • [1] reply
    • I use WP Super Cache. And it works really good.
  • Switch your host to Site5 cloud hosting (£25/month). Wack WP Super Cache on there and welcome to the world of 600ms loading times.

    Also, to anybody thinking I work for Site5 - you're clueless. I just promote outstanding companies where credit is due.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks, guys. I am using Godaddy. Can I still get 600ms loading times with them?
  • Install w3 total cache and setup Amazon Cloudfront CDN. Youll have decent load speeds for your visitors worldwide

    Also move to a better hoster Site5, Arvixe are 2 of the best.
  • If you really want to speed up the site, dump Wordpress, but that is a whole other issue...

    The plugins suggested will help. Better hosting will help. GoDaddy sucks. I mean really, really sucks. Most pornstars suck far less than GoDaddy. I would recommend just about any other host than GoDaddy.

    WP-Optimize is another good plugin that can help.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • I have used HostGator, Beyond Hosting and GoDaddy and I can say I did notice much of a difference between the three. GoDaddy's new user interface is fast and very easy to use and their customer support is top notch (has been for me anyhow).

      Of course there are many different plans, I have never tried one of their VPS plans or dedicated hosting, that could be a entirely different ballgame.
      • [1] reply
  • Banned
    The problem isn't the core WP files for page speed. It's either the theme or plugins that slow down a page loading time, both can be corrected. Don't use bloated javascript themes or unnecessary slow plugins.

    I don't use anything to speed up my pages, just simple small file size themes. The theme file size on the download zip file will usually tell you If a theme is bloated or not, small KB zip files are compact source code themes. Large MB theme zip files are bloated.
  • SSD Cloud Hosting with sufficient hardware - it doesn't appear the above $25-$30 cloud host offers SSD's. Get a real host like ASmallOrange. http://asmallorange.com/hosting/cloud/ A real Cpanel, 2 2.5GHz core VPS on a SSD and 2 gigs of ram for $30 a month. Or you can use that ghetto thing above...

    Anyways..
    Minify everything reasonable.
    Plugins (most of them) as listed about.
    Smush images.
    CDN (I suggest maxcdn)

    Really, hosting on dedicated hardware & SSD drive + the CDN are the big elements. Of course, apply common sense. Using a smaller jpg in place of a largeer pgn for example (site wide)... etc etc etc....
  • What is a CDN?
    • [1] reply
    • If you don't know what CDN is you don't need it at all. Don't waste money. It is worth if you have huge amount of traffic. My advice is to tray different plug-ins and see whats working for you and spend no more then 20$ month for some dissent host. That's it.
      • [1] reply
  • Content Delivery Network -> Definition-> Content delivery network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • [1] reply
  • ^ LOL!

    Of course, nobody has brought up nginx... Just putting that out there as well.

    I suppose that if you want to be ninja about it you can go with digitalocean (who I love using for small projects) and setup wordpress/nginx. https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...n-ubuntu-12-04

    And if no Cpanel scares you, there's really no need for it at that point if you are at competent. You can even do SSL's under this configuration without much effort: https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...r-ubuntu-12-04

    DigitalOcean deploys 'droplets' in less than 90 seconds that you can easily clone on the fly anytime you want. They also use SSD's

    Further more, for $5 per droplet, you can deploy a lot of individual droplets for anything that you may need a lot of IP's for and don't care if they are on the same overall host. (wink wink, nudge nudge bh'ers)

    I should mention that if you are a newbie and need to open a support ticket for dumb things, digitalcoean isn't for you. They are cheap because they expect a certain amount of competency on your part.
  • The main issue here is GoDaddy. I used them once for hosting some WP blogs, and it was unbelievably slow. I switched to another host (a cheap one) and it worked just fine.

    Right now I'm using a VERY cheap host, and it still works just fine. Stay away from GoDaddy.

    nadavs
  • Well, then I'm glad we've been properly introduced.

    Next time I hope you bring some data or information with you...
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • If it's a site I actually care about I shoot for the sub-second range, 400-700ms which is perfectly doable with WP with dedicated hardware as well as having the files & database are stored on SSD's + using a CDN like MaxCDN. For hobby sites, I don't pay the same attention at all. In fact I don't move sites to premium hardware/service/CDN until they have proven to have traction and make sales.

    MR. god. please teach me your ways. i have a site i really care about and is around 1-3. CDN is all foreign to me, i guess i could google it..
  • It's pretty straight forward. I'm on my way out the door but quickly:

    -Start with a solid base of good hardware, SSD's and reasonable network congestion. ASmallOrange Cloud VPS'es are okay.
    -Setup a CDN, MaxCDN is my preferred choice.
    -Minify/Consolidate CSS & Javascript
    -Cache your pages.
    -Make sure you have Gzip enabled if possible.
    -Keep pages a reasonable size. Any page approaching 1MB is too large and could probably be done using 400-600kb instead.

    There's all sorts of other things you can do like getting away from apache and going the Nginx route, or litespeed, or adding indexes to mysql for any kind of weird queries your specific site may commonly produce that aren't already indexed - or you could go way out in left field and replace mysql entirely with something else, although really - a properly indexed mysql should be just fine.

    The question is how far do you want to go with it, and those answers are beyond the limitations of this thread.
    • [1] reply
    • I definitely second this.

      Some other posters mentioned disabling some plugins and using a theme without a bunch of junk, which I definitely recommend as well. Another big thing a lot of people don't realize is to watch the size of images. Don't upload a large image and then resize it down. Resize it to the size you need before you upload it, and then upload it.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • W3 Total Cache and W3 Super Cache are the best known plugins for this.
  • Yeah, I may have jumped on him pretty hard. I have a problem with non sequitur arguments, but it's my problem. I should simply shake my head and move on.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • To speed up your WP sites, you can:
    1. Use caching plugins like W3 total cache
    2. Minify your scripts, can be done with W3
    3. Use compression, can be done with W3
    4. Optimize your images, with EWWW Image Optimizer
    5. USe a faster hosting plan, perhaps at least a VPS, SSD will speed it up even further
    • [1] reply
    • Just install Hyper Cache EXTENDED (not Hyper Cache) that is special optimized for shared hosting.

      Be sure you set the server speed limit that your pages will keep serving from cache if above.

      And of cource find a real hosting company and a semi-dedi plan (a high end shared).
  • Make your website smaller with less images. All these plugins aren't necessary. Think Craiglist.org or Reddit.

    After you reduce the clutter, use Wordpress managed hosting or install a caching plugin. Not rocket science.

    I do these steps and all my sites load under 2 seconds. You can hire me to do this for you.
  • Banned
    But I can't hear bad things about HostGator, even you are on shared hosting......

    I think, the company leads all those tiny hosting companies...., it has strong history, good reviews by its customers, and it is still in promotional phase.... affordable too....
  • I am on Godaddy Managed WordPress Hosting from couple of months and never face any problem or downtime so far. Support is excellent.
  • Can anyone recommend a good SSD host with good support response times? We just moved a couple of test sites to A2 recently - and the 2 tickets we've put in have seen responses in days not hours - not good.

    Not quite techie enough for Digital Ocean yet...any other personal recommendations?

    Melody
  • [DELETED]
  • Firstly , You Can Install CloudFlare Then Give a Try To Optimize Your Site Code Structure...Slow Coded Script Results Low Speed ....

    Also UnInstall Useless Plugins ...
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