If you want to manually optimize WordPress website, know that the process might be a little different but it’s easy. In fact, it’s among the major factors that contribute to your digital growth. With 43% of all websites using WordPress as a host, there are hundreds of new plugins, themes, extensions, and addons that can affect your site’s speed if it’s not optimized.
While you want to integrate different widgets and plugins to manually optimize WordPress website, you’ll also have to consider the loading times. Going from one expert to another just so you can get through the loading-is-taking-forever phase and other website optimization struggles once and for all is time intensive.
To manually optimize WordPress website, you need ultimate and ongoing solutions to make sure that your website has faster loading times and is responsive to offer users an optimum experience.
In this blog, we will tell you top ways for WordPress speed optimization that will help you optimize your WordPress website without needing professional help and tools. They are all easy to follow for even novices.
Let’s dive into it right away.
Main Factors that Hamper WordPress Speed Optimization
Before we get to the actual problem-solving for manually optimize WordPress website, it’s important that we know what’s pulling the website down and restricting its potential use.
WordPress Website Type
The sooner you know the type of website you have, the better the turnaround time will be. There are two types of WordPress websites: Static and dynamic.
Static sites:
Data not changing frequently. Everything is saved in the site’s database, so it runs pretty well and has fewer to no speed issues. So If you have a static WordPress website, a little maintenance here and there would be okay.
Dynamic sites:
Data is updated frequently. The servers use external databases to call on what the user is looking for. This kind of website needs optimization. Due to loads of traffic coming in, they will have to perform optimally.
Poorly Coded Plugins and Extensions
Anybody can create a website on WordPress considering how effortless the entire process is but what haunts them later is increasing the website’s loading time. And so, we love to use plugins to manually optimize WordPress website.
They are user-friendly, simple and refining but that doesn’t mean that we load our website with these plugins. A plug-in with many dynamic built-in features will drag down your website. So, while selecting a WordPress theme with a restricted set of items and symbols, be careful.
Optimized Images
Slow loading sites are one of the most prevalent issues readers encounter while using a website especially if its a blog. When you are adding images in your website, they have to be optimized to help manually optimize WordPress website. Unoptimized images impact website’s loading, its search ranking and conversions.
Let’s get to the real business now.
Optimize Your WordPress Website WITHOUT Using Plugins
Before we get into the optimize WordPress website manually, we’d suggest you begin with noting the website’s current speed or loading time to compare the results and see what works best for the WordPress website you are using.
You can use certain tools for that or ask a professional to give you unbiased feedback about what’s working and what’s not.
If you decide on tools, here are some you can use:
- Google Search Console (GSC)
- Screaming Frog
- Google Optimize
- GTmetrix.
These tools will be enough for starters and tell you the current loading score of your site so you can find relevant ways to manually optimize WordPress website.
You can aslo manually optimize WordPress website without plugins, you might have to get a bit technical. However, some of the tips are effortless and give a quick turnaround.
Non-Technical Solutions
Choose the Right Hosting Type on WordPress
WordPress server, as a host, maintains all of the data on your website under one roof, which is admirable, but it’s also a potential cause behind the website’s slow loading times. So, when it comes to the right hosting type, WordPress has three common hosting types that help with manually speeding up WordPress websites.
Three Types of WordPress Hosting:
- Shared hosting
- Managed hosting
- DIY VPS WordPress hosting
Shared hosting will give you a tough time ($3)
Although the subscription for shared hosting per month is around $3, the optimization and hidden cost will make it into hundreds in a snap. You’ll have to put a lot of effort into optimizing the website (1-2 speed levels) and keep it running.
Do It Yourself or Virtual Private Servers Hosting
DIY VPS hosting on WordPress is a medium option for people who want to balance quality, budget-friendliness, and (3-4) speed. You can either use VPS browsers from third parties or go for DIY maintenance, but that’s only an option for tech-savvy people.
Managed hosting ($25 to $150/mo)
This type of hosting saves a lot of your time and effort. The speed levels are around 4-5, handling traffic as required. In most cases, you’ll also get back-end support from the host, and this type is quite customizable and scalable for heavy traffic websites.
Your website speed has a lot to do with the type of website hosting you have subscribed for. If your hosting services aren’t up to the mark, you know that it’s time to switch.
Use The Right Theme And Styling Elements
Numerous WordPress websites have themes that include performance optimization elements like lazy loading, which ensures that pictures do not load till the user reaches that section of the webpage, or integrating CSS and JavaScript, which reduces the number of net requests a browser sends.
Many different ‘speed loading’ themes also offer recent enhancements to optimize wordpress website, such as preloading, which loads the website before another user clicks on it.
It’s advisable to check the WordPress-enabled theme for certain settings, make sure they’re activated, and switch off any style features you’re not using, as most of them require an extra dose of programming languages.
Clear Website’s Cache
Many WordPress themes are badly written that don’t help with optimizing wordpress website speed, and there’s a good chance you’re using one that makes needless database requests. In this instance, you must replace any unnecessary PHP and database calls with simplified HTML.
Redis and Memcached are two cache clearing techniques that can make your WordPress website run faster by caching all requests. It takes less time to serve the most common queries this way.
Technical Solutions
Update PHP Languages
To optimize wordpress website, you should use the PHP programming language and its supporting frameworks. With each new version of PHP, the average loading time goes up by 10-20%. The latest PHP 8.0.3 version was released in March of 2021, but it’s probably that your browser doesn’t support it, so going with version 7 would be good too.
Also, loading a website in HTTPS mode helps big time. You will have to make your browser use the newer HTTP2 protocol, which increases the speed with which the browser can access the website compared to the previous HTTP 1.1 protocol.
Please remember that many low-cost servers do not offer HTTP2. Thus, if your host does not support this protocol, it is an indication that their infrastructure is outdated or inadequate.
Check On Multimedia File Sizes
Any website that’s out there for a great user experience uses images and videos. If you use the same format, make sure to reduce the size of multimedia files before you upload them on your website. Compress the size so they don’t lag or hamper website’s other processes.
Compressed pictures significantly lessen the page load times by proven 1-2 seconds, optimizing websites along the way. You can either do it yourself manually or use a tool as a resource. It is critical that you employ the right compression techniques that can reduce image sizes by 20-50 percent while retaining graphics performance.
Some of the top tools for image compression are:
- Photopea
- Photoshop
- Caesium
The tools extract more information from your featured pictures, but they can also lower the graphic quality slightly, so use with caution.
Make Use of Google Tag Manager
If you have a website and want to manually optimize WordPress website, you already know Google Tag Manager. If ynot, here’s a quick catch-up.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free monitoring tool and administration system that provides users to upload tags, or bits of code to their websites in terms of monitoring and gathering marketing data.
So, moving tracking code from Google Analytics and Google Adwords to GTM and triggering it with a Window Loaded Prompt can dramatically reduce their influence on connection speeds.
The tag is fired with this trigger once the whole page’s data, including any embedded materials, has been completely loaded (images, scripts, etc.).
This trigger can be found by navigating to Triggers:
(in the GTM interface) > New > Window Loaded.
GTM also helps to control whenever the tag fires-the earlier the tag fires, the less of an effect it has on the page’s speed.
Takeaway
The most notable benefit of managing your website’s loading speed is drastically enhancing the user experience. Optimize wordpress website speed by focusing on the UI and
Moreover, manually optimize WordPress website will boost your SERP rankings in the SERPs. And besides, lower bandwidth usage on your web host and quicker website load on the user end can directly benefit you in the long run.
