WordPress is a powerful content management system and has gained popularity over the last decade. With easy customization and a simple interface, many new and seasoned site owners are opting for WordPress to offer a unique site experience to users. However, like any other platform, WordPress needs to be maintained efficiently to optimize your site’s performance. Today, we will share six ways in which you can maintain your WordPress site’s performance.
1. Choose the right hosting plan and provider
The right web hosting plan is usually the difference between a well-performing website and an average one. There are several options to choose from, making it difficult to ascertain the right one for your site. The easiest way to approach it is by assessing the hosting needs of your site and looking for hosting types that offer those features. You can consider shared hosting plans if the hosting needs are basic or dedicated server hosting for critical applications that need a 100% control. You can also look at VPS Servers for Dedicated Server-like features at lower costs. Installing WordPress on a virtual server is easy too.
Also, after finalizing the hosting type, you need to select the hosting provider carefully.
2. Regularly compress files
Compressing files allows you to reduce their size, making them easier to download and increasing the page loading speed of your website. Usually, site owners combine CSS and JavaScript files together, resulting in a 60-80% reduction in file size. Considering the fact that most users access websites on their mobile phones, compression can help you achieve fast loading speeds. On May 28th, 2020, Google revealed that there will be an upcoming page experience update that will enhance the existing Core Web Vitals metrics
3. Plugin Management
Plugins make the world go round for WordPress. There is a plugin for everything, and many WordPress users tend to try several plugins before finalizing one. Usually, a WordPress site has several unused plugins lying idle and utilizing space. As the first step of plugin management, you must ensure that you remove all unnecessary plugins and only keep those you need. Secondly, ensure that all plugins are updated regularly.
4. Use Browser Caching
Browser caching is another effective way of improving the performance of your website. In browser caching, the browser stores the components of the pages visited by the user in a cache. The next time the user visits the same page, the browser loads the page without sending an HTTP request to the server. This helps in improving the speed and performance of the website. There are several WordPress plugins to help you store and manage caches effectively.
5. Image Optimization
One of the primary reasons behind slow websites is that the images are not optimized for the internet. With advancements in digital cameras, images have been growing in size every year. This means an increased burden on websites to load them without delay. Images usually contain a lot of unnecessary information that bloats their size. Image optimization can help you reduce it and ensure that your page loads quickly. WordPress offers many plugins and tools to optimize images.
6. Choose an efficient theme
Themes can make a WordPress website look amazing. However, they can also increase the load on your server, increasing the loading time. While a good-looking site is important, you must ensure that the looks don’t compromise the experience by increasing the time the page takes to load. Assess your site’s requirements and choose a theme that is effective and efficient.
Summing Up
These tips can help you improve and maintain the performance of your WordPress website. Remember, the hosting plan plays an important role. Even if you follow all the other tips but choose a wrong hosting type, your site’s performance can get negatively impacted. Compare plans and choose carefully. Good Luck!