Tips To Optimise Wordpress For Better Performance

By Author: Johan Smith
Total Articles: 38
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WordPress websites need proper optimisation to perform well and get loaded faster for better user experience. Having a fast website is also important if you want your site to rank high in all the SERPs like Bing, Google, etc. Because of these reasons, it becomes essential to build an optimised site even if you are working with WordPress. 
 
Here are the optimisation tips unboxed by a WordPress developer of Australia. 
 
Enable dynamic caching to create a fast site with WordPress:
Adding or enabling dynamic caching to a WordPress site can have a great impact on its loading time. Today, there are so many services like APC, Varnish, etc., that can be used for enabling dynamic caching but with proper server configuration. You can also install and activate the right plugin to enable dynamic caching just with a single click. This is the first and the most important tip to keep in mind if you want to end up with a fast WordPress website. 
 
Use Content Delivery Network that’s a CDN:
CDN or Content Delivery Network is the server network that helps your site to get visible and perform equally everywhere around the world. With a CDN, it becomes possible to get customers across the globe. This results in more leads, more conversions, and more revenue. Actually, what happens is that CDN clone copies of a site on different locations. Keep this in mind while optimising a WordPress site. 
 
Optimise the graphics including images and videos:
Graphics like images, videos, widgets, etc. make a site look visually appealing. But, using heavy graphics can make a site slow and a poor-performing one. Hence, using optimised graphics is always important. 

Use images of the right sizes for your website. Do not use or upload too heavy or big images and graphics as this can increase the loading time of the site thereby making it a slow one. 
You can even use Sprites for the themes. It is nothing but a CSS technique, which uses one single image for showing or displaying multiple elements on different pages of the site. With this, instead of loading multiple images, your website can just open and load a single one. But, consider Sprites only when you have selected and designed the theme. Hence, always choose the theme that supports and makes use of Sprites. 

 
Minify the CSS and JavaScript files:
Minifying the JavaScript and CSS files helps to remove all unnecessary data like comments, double spaces, empty new lines, etc., thereby lowering the sizes of the files and making the site load faster. You can find many online tools for minifying these files. 
 
Leverage browser caching:
By leveraging browser caching, you can choose for how long the browsers of the visitors can cache the images, JS, flash files, and the CSS files. However, if the resources are cached, the server notifies the browser of the visitor and can replace the cached content with a new one. You can add the lines to the ‘.htaccess’ file for WordPress to enable this strategy. 
 
Optimise the database:
Optimising the database can help you speed up your WordPress site. Optimise it frequently to ensure there is no unnecessary data in the database making it heavier. 
 
Just keep these tips and strategies in kind to create high performing, fast, and innovative websites with WordPress. 
 
Johan Smith is an experienced WordPress developer in Australia associated with a leading company, GetAProgrammer. The author has written this article to help out the developers build highly optimised sites with this popular and easy-to-use framework.