Now, before you run off to move hosts, do check that there aren’t other factors at play. Most hosting companies will run a check for you on your usage / speed or show you where to find information about how your database is performing. You might also need the latest version of php. Finally, my cloud hosting is a big step up from shared hosting which many people have and I pay for that accordingly.

Before jumping ship, do ask your current host what other options they offer to improve site speed. But cheap shared hosting will undeniably affect your load speed.
 

3. USE A CACHING PLUGIN

 
One of the quickest and easiest ways to speed up your site is to add a caching plugin. Caching means creating static versions of your pages and showing that to visitors instead of having to reload all of the assets on a page every time. Cached pages can be loaded a lot faster and this is particularly useful for mobile visitors to your website. Good caching plugins will also offer additional features like combining script and code files and lazy-loading images.

I’ve done a little experiment on one of my own sites that’s been bugging me for a while. I’ve used the free W3 Total Cache plugin. It gets consistently good reviews and has over a million installs. Here are my before and after results.

A dramatic improvement. I got it down to a grade A and a one second load just by working my way through the settings. Some people say that W3 Total Cache has overly complex settings, so I used this tutorial to guide me and I found it really straightforward.
You can see that there is a still am amber warning at the top and guess what? I don’t even care because my site is now loading really fast and I have an A grade. Done is better than perfect!

Here’s the site which is now super speedy in case you want to check it out. I’m really pleased because the site is very image heavy and that’s always a challenge.

PS. Before you install and activate a caching plugin, make sure you take a full back up of your website. Some of the more advanced controls, which minify Jasvascript and CSS code can clash with certain themes and plugins.
 

4. SIZE YOUR IMAGES CORRECTLY IN THE FIRST PLACE

 
You’d be surprised how many people upload full resolution images, which are several megabytes in size, to WordPress, thinking that they are going to be automatically optimized. Unless you have some kind of file compression plugin installed, that’s not going to happen. It’s much better to get the sizing and compression right in the first place and build it into your workflow.

Essentially there are two steps – exporting or saving your images at the correct size as well as running them through a further compression tool like the excellent Jpegmini. Here’s a detailed blog post I wrote on the subject and below is the video walkthrough showing how I export from Lightroom, or batch re-size plus how to use a compression tool.

5. USE AN IMAGE OPTIMIZATION PLUGIN TO REDUCE THE FILE SIZE OF IMAGES UPLOADED IN THE PAST

 
If you’ve always compressed your images before uploading them and you’ve installed your caching plugin, you might already have a blazing fast website and your work is done. But, if you think you haven’t always been great at saving your images at the correct size or haven’t been using a compression tool, this could really help.
When might you need it?

• If you have uploaded images in the past without saving for web.
• If you have saved for web but not compressed your images, then this will help you.
• If you have uploaded full resolution images in the past.

Note: What you don’t want to do is compress the same images 2 or 3 times and end up with dreadful image quality. One compression is enough, either before you upload using Jpegmini or Blogstomp or by using a plugin.

Hundreds of articles have been written comparing the plugins out there, so I’m not going to re-invent the wheel. This is a great blog post from Elegant Themes which covers the main free plugins and gives a side-by-side comparison. In addition to that list, I’d also recommend Imagify, which I’ve been hearing really good things about. So, in the interests of fairness, I added WP Rocket to one of my websites and then ran it through Imagify in Ultra mode. (I did end up paying a one-time fee to crunch all the images on the site.)

The before results are after caching but without image compression. Again, a noticeable improvement with no visible loss of quality.

I hope this article has taken some of the fear out of tackling site speed. As with all major updates to your website, make sure your site is fully backed up so that you can easily roll back to an earlier version if you’re not happy with the results.

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