9 Ways to a Faster WordPress Blog

When you build a site or blog with WordPress, you want to make the most of it. We have to remember though, not everyone is visiting your blog with the fastest browser connection. Also, with the  of mobile browsing, we have to consider those users too.

Therefore, it is always important to optimize the loading time of your blog. In this article, I will give you 9 ways to decrease your blog its loadings time.

1. Get a Speed report

If you want to optimize your blog, you need to have a detailed report to see how your blog is preforming and how it loads. You can check how your blog is doing over at PingDom and iWebTool’s Speed Test. I suggest you try those tools a couple time on the same blog, to get some more accurate results.

2. Bundle your CSS & JS files

Every HTTP request a browser has to handle, takes more time. For example, if you use 5 JavaScript files (size: 10kb each) on one page, your browser has to load each of them separately. If you combine those 5 JavaScript files in just one file (size: 50kb), the browser needs less time to load that one file.

It’s about the same with CSS Files. You can better use 1 CSS file than spread out your CSS styles over (for example) 3 stylesheets. Read more about HTTP requests here.

3. Optimize your CSS & JS Files

When you are writing CSS or JavaScript, you will (most likely) not write perfect code. You always use (for the browser) unnecessary white spaces, enters or comments. When you put your code through a CSS or JavaScript compressor, all of that code is deleted and your blog might loads a few milliseconds faster!

You can read about CSS Compressors here, and about JavaScript compressors here.

4. Replacing PHP Requests with Static HTML

Some PHP codes are really necessary on your blog (like the_loop and wp_list_pages), but many are not needed. For example, if you won’t ever change your blog title and description, you can use the PHP tags to get that information from your WordPress database, but you can also just insert the title and description as standard text in your theme.

You can do that with a lot more PHP tags, and it’ll save your server some PHP Requests. Learn more about unnecessary PHP tags in WordPress.

5. CSS Sprites

CSS Sprites are based on the same principle as point 2. We are combining all our small images in just one large image and than position these images in the right way. The result: less requests and faster loading times. You can learn how to implant this technique on your blog by reading these articles: Alistapart & DivitoDesign.

Another very important part is image optimizing. There are numerous tools out there that optimize your images for the web.

6. Image Optimizing

Images on the web doesn’t have to be of the highest quality, because a image with higher quality has a larger file size. You have to find a balance between quality and loading time. There are multiple tools out there to optimize your PNG, JPG or GIF files.

For example, check out this site do optimize your images online, or this article on how to optimize your articles in your favorite image editor.

7. Delete Un-used WordPress Plugins

Many WordPress plugins add tables to your MySQL database or require you to add scripts to your page. Even while you are not using those plugins, the code and the tables are still loaded by WordPress. You should keep only the plugins you are really using and delete (or uninstall) the other plugins. You can always add them later again.

8. Optimize your MySQL database

You can clean up your MySQL database to delete all the information and tables you don’t need anymore. If you have access to PHPMyAdmin, you can optimize your database from inside that software. Here is a step-by-step guide:

• Login to PHPMyAdmin
• Look for the database where you have installed your WordPress blog
• Select Check all (see picture below)
• You have to choose optimize table from the dropdown menu:
  

If you don’t have access to PHPmyAdmin, you can use the WP DB-Manager plugin to do the job for you.

9. Use WP Super Cache

Not only will WP Super Cache help your server cope when you appear on a high-trafficked site like Digg, it will also make your blog much faster. All your PHP pages will be cached as HTML pages, which means your server has to do less PHP requests. That means your blog will load faster.

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