WordPress is used by more than 43% of all sites on the internet, making it the most used platform worldwide for building websites and webshops. WordPress offers a lot of functionalities and expansion options, making it suitable for any site. Speed is often an issue.
The speed of your website is very important for the user experience. Research by Kissmetrics shows that 47% of all visitors expect a webpage to load within 2 seconds, 40% drop out even if a webpage takes longer than 3 seconds to load. A 1 second delay can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions.
By means of our tips in this article you can also speed up your WordPress website.
1. Use fast WordPress hosting
The web hosting your site runs on plays an important role in the speed of your website. Using fast hardware and the right software can significantly improve the loading time of your WordPress website. It is also important that your website is as close as possible to the visitors of your site to keep the response time low.
What does DigitPipe do to improve the speed of your WordPress site?
- We use the latest hardware, we use processors with a very high single thread performance since PHP and therefore WordPress only runs on 1 thread per request. We also use fast NVMe SSDs for the storage of your site.
- Unlike most providers, we use the LiteSpeed web server including automatic LSCache caching for WordPress. LiteSpeed supports all software that can normally run on Apache.
- We support all the latest PHP versions.
- Websites run in a protected part of the server. A slow website of one of our customers can therefore not cause delays on the websites of our other customers.
- Our servers are located in the Netherlands and are connected with multiple fast fiber optic connections. This keeps the server response time low.
Click here to view our WordPress optimized web hosting plans.
2. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
By means of plugins you can extend your WordPress website with more functions. A disadvantage of plugins is that they slow down your site. One plugin does this more than the other, that partly depends on the quality of the plugin.
So don't install too many plugins, and remove plugins you don't need. If you do need a plugin, use a plugin with a good reputation and a recent update.
3. Use an optimized theme
Use a theme with features to optimize the speed of your site. For example, ThemeFusion 's Avada theme has a built-in performance wizard that allows you to optimize images, use lazy loading for images, preload fonts, and remove unused content from stylesheets (CSS) and javascript files.
4. Keep your site up to date
It is important that you regularly update WordPress itself, plugins and also themes. New versions are regularly available that incorporate various improvements. Sometimes a security problem is discovered, which is why it is important that your site remains up to date.
With DigitPipe you can have your website automatically updated via Installatron so that you don't have to worry about this anymore. Installatron is included for free in all our web hosting packages.
5. Make use of caching
By means of caching on the server or in the browser of the visitor, the loading time of a website can be greatly improved.
With DigitPipe's web hosting, the LiteSpeed Cache plugin is automatically installed. This plugin integrates with the LiteSpeed web server for automatic page caching and smart preloading. This plugin also works on other web servers, but you will miss a few important functions that make a big difference in the speed of your site.
6. Compress Images
Compress the images on your website so that it takes less time to get the image to the visitor. ThemeFusion 's Avada theme has a feature built in to compress images.
If you use another theme without this functionality, there are also a number of plugins that can do this. You can also use the FileOptimizer program to optimize the images before uploading them to your site.
7. Use HTTP/2 or even HTTP/3 and QUIC
Using HTTP/2, multiple requests can be sent over a single TCP connection. This means that a so-called TCP handshake does not have to take place every time, which saves time. Nowadays HTTP/2 is enabled by default by almost all hosting providers.
HTTP/3 is an even newer and faster protocol that uses QUIC instead of TCP to save even more time. Because HTTP/3 is so new, this is rarely offered. All DigitPipe web hosting packages use HTTP/3 and QUIC by default.
8. Use the latest PHP version
Always use the latest PHP version that is supported by your version of WordPress (and plugins). Speed improvements are regularly made in new PHP versions. Especially the difference between PHP 5.x and 7.x is significant, sometimes an upgrade from PHP 5 to PHP 7 can even halve the loading time. Also, an upgrade from PHP 7.x to PHP 8.x can sometimes reduce a quarter of the loading time.
Our web hosting packages support all the latest PHP versions. You can easily switch between the different versions in DirectAdmin. So is something not working properly after an upgrade? Then you just go back to the previous version.
We hope that these tips have helped you to make your WordPress website even faster. Could you use more tips to further improve your website? Check our blog page regularly!
Curious what it costs, our fast WordPress web hosting packages with free LiteSpeed caching, HTTP/3 and Installatron with automatic updates? It's great! Click here to view the packages.