Wordpress is one of the most popular platforms used for building websites. The only shortcoming of building a heavy site with wordpress is that it can become a little slow. Here are some of the basic precautions to take care of before you make your wordpress website live or even better if they are taken care from the start point of the website:
Optimise images and DB tables:
When a potential customer opens up your website, you only have a few seconds to grab the attention. The larger your images, the higher it takes for your page to load which makes the customer leave the website. The images that you upload on your site must be optimised using a tool like TinyPNG or you can also do this in photoshop. Luckily there are also some wordpress plugins available that can do image optimisation for the entire site just by the click of a button. This is not only good for the site performance but also for SEO. Google considers speed as one of the important factors for ranking.
Database needs to be optimised so that extra unwanted space can be removed and your database can run smoothly. You can do this manually from PHPmyadmin or even use database optimisation plugins provided by wordpress.
Compress CSS/JS:
Compressing CSS and JS is basically removing extra spaces from the code so that it gives faster response. There are plugins available in wordpress that can handle this for you so that you don't have to do this manually.
Build a lightweight theme:
Use the best framework right from the beginning that makes your theme light. Genesis of thesis theme frameworks work best for the themes. Thesis is an amazing framework which wont make your site slow with many plugins installed.
Use cache plugin:
A good cache plugin lowers the load time as the elements are cached. I recommend W3 total cache plugin. It is free, easy to use and works incredibly well without any issues.
Use good quality hosting:
For all of the above to work effectively, it is essential to have a hosting that is fast, that can handle traffic and has minimum down time. Do not go for shared hosting even if it looks like a good bargain.
Optimise images and DB tables:
When a potential customer opens up your website, you only have a few seconds to grab the attention. The larger your images, the higher it takes for your page to load which makes the customer leave the website. The images that you upload on your site must be optimised using a tool like TinyPNG or you can also do this in photoshop. Luckily there are also some wordpress plugins available that can do image optimisation for the entire site just by the click of a button. This is not only good for the site performance but also for SEO. Google considers speed as one of the important factors for ranking.
Database needs to be optimised so that extra unwanted space can be removed and your database can run smoothly. You can do this manually from PHPmyadmin or even use database optimisation plugins provided by wordpress.
Compress CSS/JS:
Compressing CSS and JS is basically removing extra spaces from the code so that it gives faster response. There are plugins available in wordpress that can handle this for you so that you don't have to do this manually.
Build a lightweight theme:
Use the best framework right from the beginning that makes your theme light. Genesis of thesis theme frameworks work best for the themes. Thesis is an amazing framework which wont make your site slow with many plugins installed.
Use cache plugin:
A good cache plugin lowers the load time as the elements are cached. I recommend W3 total cache plugin. It is free, easy to use and works incredibly well without any issues.
Use good quality hosting:
For all of the above to work effectively, it is essential to have a hosting that is fast, that can handle traffic and has minimum down time. Do not go for shared hosting even if it looks like a good bargain.
We hope the above round-up has helped you to understand how to make your wordpress website load faster. If you need professional help to nail this perfectly, hire wordpress developer India to take care of your WordPress website development.