7 ways to speed up a WordPress blog

No one likes to wait for a web page to load – if a site is taking too long to load, the visitor is more likely to close it and move on. This is especially true for blogs, which are meant to be seen and read. Today, I will share with you several tips on how you can speed up your blog running on WordPress.

1. Eliminate unnecessary plugins

Don’t use too many plugins – they will noticeably slow down your website. Imagine them as too many apps running at the same time – they will affect the overall performance of the blog. Keep the number of the plugins low – let’s say from 5 to 10, but don’t go over 20.

2. Optimize your Database

All the information for your blog posts and comments is stored in a database. So, to speed up the loading speed, you can optimize this database. There are two ways to do that – with the WP-Optimize plugin, or manually. The plugin is the easier way, but always remember point 1 of this article. If you want to do things manually, follow these instructions: 1. Inside your web hosting Control Panel, locate and open PHPMyAdmin – you can find it in the Database Manager section. 2. Once logged in, select your database. 3. Click “Check All” at the bottom of the page. 4. Choose “Optimize table” in the drop-down list next to it. 5. Done!

3. Cache your Database

Another way to speed up the work of your database is to cache it. This way, you will reduce the number of queries made to the database each time a user visits your blog. You can cache your database with the DB Cache Reloaded plugin.

4. Disable Post Revisions

Post Revisions exist since WordPress 2.6 and they are useful when there are several writers working on the same blog, or if you make constant changes to your blog posts. If left enabled, this feature will create multiple entries for a blog post in your database, effectively slowing it down.

5. Use a Cache Plugin

You can also create static versions of the most visited web pages. This way, you will reduce the queries made to the database. And static HTML pages load much faster. There are a lot of cache plugins, but be careful with their configuration – if they are left untended and not properly configured, they tend to use too much CPU power.

6. Optimize your images

Have your images optimized – you can use Photoshop’s “Save for Web” function, which will save the image with a good balance between size and quality. Here is a list of other image optimization tools: Online Tools:

• PunyPNG
• Smush.it
• Online Image Optimizer

Desktop Tools:

• Shrink O’Matic
• PNGGauntlet

7. Optimize your CSS and JavaScript files

Another way to speed up your website is to optimize the CSS and JavaScript files – this way you will reduce the size of the files and save some disk space and decrease the server load. There are several tools you can use to do that. To compress the CSS files, you can use several tools:

• WP CSS plugin
• CSS Optimizer
• CSS Compressor

To optimize your JavaScript files, use:

• JavaScript Compressor

Originally published Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 at 8:54 am, updated July 8, 2011 and is filed under The Free Reseller Program.

Tags: wordpress, website optimization

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