How can I improve the performance of my WordPress website?
This article will outline some tips and tricks for improving the performance of WordPress websites hosted on your Web Hosting package.
To ensure that your site runs the best it can, you can check out our list below on possible ways on improving its performance and in turn improve its efficiency.
Please note: before you begin, please make a backup of your website. This will allow you to revert to your original setup, should you need to.
Update your plugins
Adding multiple plugins to your WordPress site can hinder your overall page loading times, especially if any of them are out-of-date.
To update your plugins, check out our Support article: How do I update a WordPress theme or plugin?
Running a high number of plugins on your WordPress account can also slow down the performance of your website, as each of these plugins may run, or attempt to run, every time your site is loaded. Caching plugins like WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache can cause issues on a shared hosting environment as they are more designed and suited for VPS and dedicated packages. If you find that you are experiencing high loading times, and have plugins installed, try uninstalling them one by one, to see which one was affecting your site’s performance.
For details on how to do this, please read the following article: How do I deactivate a WordPress plugin?
Optimise your images
Displaying unnecessarily large images on your pages can have a strong effect on your loading speeds as well as your search engine rankings. Try condensing any large images down to 1024px x 1024px.
There are plenty of tools and plugins that you can use to reduce the size of your images without compromising on their quality, such as Kraken.io and WP Smush.it – the latter of which will automatically reduce the size of your images, including ones you’ve already uploaded. It’s better to have a 480×360 image rather than a 2400×1800 image squashed into a 480×360 space.
We also recommend that you only use JPGs and PNGs for your images. JPEGs should be used for photographs and complex art, while PNGs are for text, logos, cartoons and simple colours.
Use GZIP compression
GZIP Compression is used to lower the amount of data that is sent to your visitors, which means that your website will load faster.
This is done by adding the below code to your .htaccess file. Your .htaccess file allows you to configure your server. If you don’t have one already created, you can do so by creating one with the file manager or by uploading via FTP. If you do have one, simply add the following code to the bottom of your file:
# gzip
# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
# remove browser bugs
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
Header append Vary User-Agent
Cache your browser
Caching allows your vistor’s browser to remember images on your site. This means that once they’ve visited once, the user won’t need to download the image again, which vastly increases the load time of your website.
This also applies to other elements of your page, such as scripts and stylesheets.
To enable browser caching, you will need to add the below code to your .htaccess file, in the same way as you did with GZIP Compression.
## BROWSER CACHING ##
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”
ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”
ExpiresDefault “access 2 days”
## BROWSER CACHING ##
Minimise your code
Essentially, this means removing white space from your code. This white space is used to make your code easily readable to the human eye. However, from a computer’s perspective, this just leads to an increased file size, increasing the loading time.
Taking out the white space can be done by hand, or there are third party tools that can be used to do this for you. These are especially useful if you have long pages of code: HTML Minifier and Better WordPress Minify.
Put your Stylesheets and Scripts in the right places
By ensuring that your stylesheets (.css) and scripts (.js) are in the right place, this can do wonders towards improving your site’s speed. Your stylesheet should be linked at the top of your page code, while your scripts should be added at the bottom of the page code. Placing these incorrectly can mean that your browser has to process the entire HTML document before it can display the page, meaning that any visitors will see a blank page for a few seconds before seeing your content.
Optimise your database
One of the best ways of improving the performance of the website is to tidy up your database. This can be done for you by using phpMyAdmin; which will clear any unnecessary data from your database, leaving just the information you need to keep.
Simply click on a title below to skip to the most appropriate FAQ. You can also click the Top button to return and make another selection.
Web Hosting plans purchased after July 2020 / Premium Hosting plans purchased after August 2020 (cPanel)
From your Hosting dashboard, select phpMyAdmin.
Select the database from the left-hand column
Select the Check All link at the bottom of the list. This will select all the tables in your database. From there, choose Optimize table from the drop-down menu alongside it.
Once complete, you will see a message that your SQL Query has been executed successfully.
Web Hosting plans purchased before July 2020 / Premium Hosting plans purchased before August 2020
Start by logging in to your legacy Control Panel. For details on how to do this, please read the following article: How do I access and manage my products?
From there, select Web Hosting or Premium Hosting within the ‘Manage active products’ section, depending on which product you wish to use.
Next, select Manage opposite the ‘(bought before XX/XX/XX)’ option.
This will show you an overview of your current hosting packages. Click Manage for the account you wish to use.
On the next page, select Manage for the domain you wish to update.
From your hosting control panel, click on the MySQL Databases button in the Web Tools section.
For the Database you want to edit, click on the Manage button.
From your phpMyAdmin control panel, click on the database from the left hand side column.
Click the Check All link at the bottom of the list; this will select all of the tables in your database.
From the drop down list underneath the list of tables, select Optimize table.
Once complete, you will see a message that your SQL Query has been executed successfully.
