8 Amazing Tips to Make Your WordPress Blog Load Faster

Are you looking for the best tips to improve your WordPress site speed?

A slow-loading WordPress blog is ignored by most readers, which is why I’m trying my best to help you improve your blog’s loading speed.

Getting uncountable traffic is the dream of every blogger. But what if the blog fails to sustain the incoming traffic?

Blog hosting issues, incompatible server load, and other issues may slow down the blog. A blog loading under 4 seconds is considered ideal. Therefore, it is necessary to speed up a WordPress blog and make the blog load faster to handle massive traffic.

I’ve finally decided that I’ll not only concentrate on getting more traffic, but at the same time I’ll also try to give proper time to speed up my WordPress blog.

Now I’ll let you know the best tips I’m following for making my WordPress blog load faster than before.

Note – You may feel surprised to know that this blog post was originally published in 2014. It has been republished with some updates in the year 2021. Having a fast blog loading speed has become more and more crucial. This is the reason to update this blog post with new tips to improve blog speed.

Find the Best Host for your Blog

Have you chosen the best host for your blog?

If you think your blog is working very slowly only because of slow hosting, it may be the right time to move your blog to another host.

As a blogger, I thought I could save money by choosing any hosting that comes at a meager cost, but now my thinking has changed. Nowadays, I look for the best hosting service providers, even if the price charged by them may be significantly higher when compared to other providers.

Don’t ever fall into the trap of advertisements like – ‘Host Your Blog Only at $2 per Month’. Every $2 hosting may not be bad, but at the same time, you may not get satisfied with every cheap hosting. Many hosting service providers provide the best service at a meager price.

A blog using shared hosting often faces downtimes and the inability to handle massive traffic. Changing the blog host or upgrading to better packages is recommended.

You can read the popular hosting reviews published on this blog for selecting the right hosting.

Make Use of Cache Plugins

Another very easy way to reduce the load on a server is by using cache plugins. Cache plugins do the task of reducing the queries sent to the server, which is why most bloggers use cache plugins.

WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache are very popular Cache plugins. I’ve myself used the WP Super Cache plugin, which really helped me make my blog load faster.

I’m making use of one more cache plugin, which is the WP Widget Cache plugin. This plugin is beneficial as it caches the output of blog widgets so that widgets won’t put any load on the server.

Update – I started using Hyper Cache plugin and found it to be beneficial.

 

Image Source: SplitShire

Make Use of Simple Themes

Your blog’s theme may be one of the reasons for the slow loading speed of your blog. Most bloggers try to have the most stylish theme for their blog, but they forget that such themes may make their blog load very slowly.

I always recommend bloggers to go for simple themes. You shouldn’t mind spending a good time looking for simple themes and making the blog loader faster.

Famous bloggers make use of the best WordPress themes. You should try to make use of the same themes. Sometimes choosing a paid theme may be better than going for a free one.

Compress Images for Making Blog Load Faster

You can reduce the load on your WordPress blog by optimizing and compressing the images you will use for the blog posts.

Try to save simple images that don’t use a wide spectrum of colors as PNG files. Saving images as PNG files can be beneficial as PNG files won’t cause any big load on the server. Images that use a wide spectrum of colors should always be saved as JPEG files.

You should try to resize every image you’re going to use in the blog posts. I make use of Microsoft Office Picture Manager for resizing the images. WP-Smush.it plugin is a very useful plugin for resizing the images very easily.

Many other free and paid plugins are available to smush or resize the images. If you make use of a lot of images on your blog, then you can even choose a paid plugin to smush your blog’s images.

Optimize Database

Optimizing your blog’s database can be very helpful in reducing the load on the server. You should try to delete all the spam comments and draft posts as the unnecessary burden may be caused.

For optimizing the database, you can make use of the WP-DBManager plugin. This plugin will properly optimize your WordPress blog’s database to reduce the load on the server. Regular optimization of the database is recommended.

Also Check: Full Time Blogging or Job? End Your Confusion

Make Use of Cloudflare

If you’re new to the blogging world, then you may not know Cloudflare, but most of the other bloggers already know Cloudflare as it is trendy.

Cloudflare is a content delivery network (CDN) trusted by every blogger. Cloudflare will help you host the static files like images, Javascript, etc on the related servers so that the load on the main server gets reduced.

I’ve used Cloudflare previously for one of my websites, which helped reduce the load on the server.

Make Some Necessary Adjustments

Here are some easy adjustments which you can make to improve WordPress speed

1. Delete unnecessary plugins – Inactive plugins may be causing excessive load on the server. You can delete all the inactive plugins and the active plugins that are not helpful. Making use of fewer plugins can definitely be very helpful, as it may drastically reduce the load on the server.

2. Have a Maximum of 6 to 8 posts on the main page – Do you think having 15-20 posts on the main page is necessary? I believe that you need to change your thinking immediately. You should try to have a maximum of 6 to 8 posts on the main page, which helps reduce the server’s load.

3. Latest WordPress version – You should ensure that you’ve updated to the latest WordPress version. At the same time, you should try to update the plugins too.

Keep Testing the Speed of your Blog

Thinking about whether your blog’s speed has increased or not?

You can use speed testing sites to test out the speed of your blog. I’m making use of the WebPage Test to test my blog’s speed.

By implementing the various ways mentioned in this post, I’ve seen good improvement in the speed of my WordPress blog.

Have a Proper Mobile Version for Your Blog

WPtouch Mobile plugin is a very popular plugin for having a proper mobile version for your blog.

You can also use other popular plugins for having a fast-loading version for the readers opening your blog from their smartphones.

Most people read blogs on their smartphones, and that’s why a fast-loading blog, especially for smartphones, is definitely the need of the hour.

Conclusion

Implementation of above mentioned easy-to-follow tips will definitely improve your blog’s loading speed. Improved speed will increase the income that you’re generating from your blog. Even if you don’t have the best knowledge about WordPress, you should implement the tips as mentioned above as soon as possible.