Improving Wordpress site speed

by 24 replies
27
Using GMetrix and running the site through their speed analysis tool, I have managed to improve the page speed grade to B and YSlow grade to B , however, the site isn't fast enough. I get speeds usually between 3.5 and 4 seconds.

What steps could I take to bring it down to under 2 seconds?

These days Google puts significant weight on page load times in ranking sites and actually sent me a message couple of months back saying some of the more popular pages weren't loading fast enough.

I get zero to very low marks on the following:

Specify image dimensions
Use CSS selectors
Add expires headers
Use a content delivery network


By the way, for caching I am using WP Super Cache, not WP Total Cache.

Also, can site speed be improved if I were to upgrade hosting from Hostagtor Baby plan to its Business plan? The site gets several thousand uniques a day so I suppose puts a bit of demand on the resources of the shared hosting. The Business plan is also shared hosting but with bigger web space. For example, under current hosting I can only keep the two most recent backups of the site before space is used up.
#website design #improving #site #speed #wordpress
  • Read some stuff on my blog:

    http://www.cookielessdomain.com/blog...ordpress-blog/

    Changing hosting plan is a good idea, too.
    • [1] reply
  • Thanks for your advice. I think I will change over to WP Total Cache from WP Super Cache. Its actually something I have been considering for some time.

    I may consider dedicated hosting; however, I am not an expert coder (just know the very basics) by any means so I don't want to be left in the dark if there was an issue with the hosting. Do you get the same support from the hosting company if you change to a dedicated from shared?

    I am currently paying under $7 a month for the hosting and don't want to spend anything over $20.

    I get the impression if you move to a dedicated then you get less support from the hosting company.
  • I run my own dedicated server (in Germany) and I have installed everything on my own.

    Debian 6 netinstall, the packages needed for LAMP and ISPConfig 3.

    Everything free to use... and it works great.

    I have installed additional modules for Apache to speed up all my sites and everything is configured correctly.
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Michael71,

      Which hosting Provider do you have to host your server? If I didn't mistake, your host server is free? It's reliable and how is the internet speed? I'm considering to host my website on my own. I saw a advertisement on Linkedin from profitbricks. But I have no experience with the cloud hosting. It's worthy to have a cloud hosting providers?
      • [1] reply
  • Yes, change hosting plan is also a big help, but it needs not to be dedicated server. VPS would be the choice with less pricing and decent dedicated resources.

    Both VPS and Dedicated Server should be managed because we don't know how to manage it by ourselves. It is a pain to manage the unmanaged vps or dedicated server.
  • yes go to dedicated or VPS, you got a lot of visitors per day... to speed up your site changing your hosting plan is good idea
  • Completely useless information here.
  • Without seeing your URL, it's very hard to give you accurate detailed help. I'll try my best to give advice based on my interpretations of google's points.

    Specify image dimensions
    - put image dimensions on each image. this helps the page appear to load faster instead of constantly bouncing around as the images load one by one.

    Use CSS selectors
    - did you code your own website? or did you hack a template?

    Add expires headers
    - same question as above

    Use a content delivery network
    - either use smaller images, less images, AND/OR optimize your images for the web with photoshop or irfanview


    I don't recommend activating a cache plugin until you've done everything else first. It looks like your site might be a mess and design/coded ineffectively.
    • [2] replies
    • You have no clue about the messages from Page Speed...

    • dear i have also wordpress speed issue,you have talked about to add expires headers.....how it is possible to do so...? kindly have some suggestions
  • One thing you could do that I recently started is lowering HTTP requests by using CSS data URIs. Here's a great post on it: CSS Data URIs – Use Them In All Browsers Now! | Jon Raasch's Blog

    If you have any questions, feel free to message me.
  • Get managed dedicated hosting (VPS minimum) and host your images on a CDN like Rackspace.
  • You may want to look at hosts designed for WordPress with your range of visits per month.

    A WordPress plugin called, "Use Google Libraries" can be effective at speeding page loads, since it uses Google's fast servers to load all those Javascripts for your pages.

    I test page load speed on Pingdom - it has good tests and lets you easily determine which elements are slowing your page. Pingdom Tools
    Be sure to set the "Settings" for the desired test location.

    If you're image files are too large, learn how to do cropping and/or file compression with the free GIMP image editing program (unless you already own an Adobe image editing program).

    Hope this helps...
    _jim coe
  • [DELETED]
    • [2] replies
    • I had a look at your video and I can see how the site would speed up as a result. I might look into buying CDN space.

      I get a score of 78 out of 100 on Pingdom and the speed is now around 3.5 seconds after tweaking a few things.

      To be honest, my concern is not so much accessing the site from traditional computers but from tablets and mobile as 30% of my traffic is now mobile/tablet. I find it takes 5 to 7 seconds to load some pages from the iPad. On the computer its quite fluid.
    • Before wasting money by using a CDN you should know how to reduce http requests and you should also know how to optimize your own webserver.

      css-sprites, combining css/js, minifying css/js, using mod_deflate, mod_headers, mod_expires, ...

      This is a typical problem of Wordpress. Every plugin loads several files (css/images/js) and themes do the same.

      Get familiar with W3 Total Cache and learn how to decrease http requests.

      I run about 50 sites on my dedicated server, several blogs with 6000+ posts, several thousand users every day,...

      I never needed a CDN.

      If I would need a CDN I would first try Cloudflare (free, afaik).

      (You all seem to be real "experts" here... :| )

  • Yeah man, the CDN would work great for you. On pingdom, our website went from a 48/100 to an 87/100 lol.

    The CDN is also compatible to serve cache to all devices. The cool part was, it also really increased the load time on my safari browser on my Iphone 5. I highly recommend MaxCDN 39.00 a year account. They also give you 30 day money back promises.
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks for the video by the way.

      Your auto site loads super fast on my computer (almost instant) but load times are significantly slower on the tablet.
  • Does your Ipad allow cookies? If it doesnt, then thats going to be why : )
  • Once the speed is fixed, do I have to let Google know or is it something their crawlers will take care of anyway?
  • Nothing to do for you then...
  • Have a slow site? There are dozens of possible reasons why this could be the case. Below are some steps you can take to speed up your site or decrease load time:
    1. Better hosting = faster server - The most common reason for slow sites is a slow server. If you are on cheap shared hosting, it's likely that your host has many thousands of other sites on the same server. Since all those sites share the same server resources, there's not much you can do to offset the lack of speed.
    2. Plugins - Lower number of plugins. Many plugins load several files, are poorly coded, or simply have broken links which cause slower sites. Deactivate all your plugins and retest your site to see if any plugins are causing slowness.
    3. Cache - Install a cache plugin such as W3 Total Cache. Furthermore, try Cloudflare if you're really tech-savvy.
    4. Ads - Lower number of ads which results in less external requests for data. Each ad is served by an ad network which has to deliver that ad to your site (i.e., takes time)
    5. HTTP Requests - Lower number of http requests to site by reducing the number of posts visible on your homepage.
    6. Social Networks - Remove any third-party scripts taking too long to load (example: facebook, twitter, youtube, etc.)
    7. Images - Lower the number of images displayed on your homepage
    8. Images - Optimize your images for the web (save for web). Unoptimized images will slow down sites.
    9. Images - Do not use very large images
    10. Broken Links - make sure there are no broken images or links on your site
    11. Redirects - Avoid redirects on site
    12. Videos - Lower number of videos to see if that improves site speed.
    Please note that there are many factors that contribute to your website's load time, and identifying the one or more reasons is a time-consuming process. Be patient, and perform the process of elimination.
  • The thread is from early 2013, and was abandoned by the original participants months ago. Please stop posting to it.
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed

  • 27

    Improving Wordpress site speed

    Using GMetrix and running the site through their speed analysis tool, I have managed to improve the page speed grade to B and YSlow grade to B , however, the site isn't fast enough. I get speeds usually between 3.5 and 4 seconds. What steps could I take to bring it down to under 2 seconds?