How to Increase your Wordpress Blog Speed.
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A follow up to my previous post called “decluttering your blog“, so we have reduced the clutter in our blog but it still loads slow so now we will look at how we can optimize the loading speed of your blog. This is a key element which many people over look and it can affect the numbers of viewers who will read your blog.
None of us want a slow loading blog that takes so long that readers actually close your page before it stops loading up. Many things can affect it from a poor web host down to unnecessary widgets and pictures etc. So how do we optimize our Wordpress blog for the best performance?
Here are a few tips:
Use A Minimalist Theme
Flashy and attractive themes look great on our sites, but all those plug-ins and fancy graphics actually slow the loading time of your blog, try selecting a minimalist theme that will reduce the file size and hence load much faster.
Compression of Javascript and stylesheets files.
A few simple methods are compressing javasrcipt by using a Javascript compressor, and for the stylesheets by simply removing the blank lines within your files will help reduce file size.
Optimize Images
Now images have become a regular feature in our blogs and they can affect the speed so we need to optimize them to suit there function on our blog. Programs like Photoshop etc will help you in a few clicks.
It’s important to save the files in the correct file extension:
- Save images that use a limited pallet as .gif or .PNG. An example would be a simply two tone logo or graph. Set the total amount of color to the lowest value possible without effecting appearance of the product
- For images that use the full color spectrum of colors, save as .jpg typically photographs will be done in this method
If you are saving files for the Internet, then you should use the “Save for web” feature which will give additional reduction in file size.
You should ensure that all images you use are cropped to remove any unnecessary parts, and resized to the correct final size. Don’t waste valuable bandwidth by using html code to resize an image.
Enable Object Cache
By default Wordpress doesn’t the enable object cache, therefore we need to modify the wp-config.php files which can be done easily by adding two lines of code:
define(’ENABLE_CACHE’, true);
define(’CACHE_EXPIRATION_TIME’, 900);
Never Rely on Other Sites!
If you need load information form other people website, for example blogrush you depend on there server. Badges, widgets, images, scripts may all be loading content from other servers. For optimal performance you need to rely as little as possible on other servers. If you must have these features then move them to bottom of page preferably in the footer.
To measure the speed of your blog’s loading time you may use website speed test which can be found in 6 important webmaster tools.
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3 Comments on this post
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Malignition.com said:
Some great tips that many bloggers need to put into use. The number of slow-loading blogs I come accross on a daily basis is sometimes disturbing.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:24 am -
Make Money Online said:
Blank space in code really makes processing slower!
Wow, thats really strange something thats not there has an effect.
I just try to keep a max of 3 posts on the home page so that there will not be too many pics.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:41 pm -
rilwis said:
Thank you for JS tool and the Cache tip. This’s the first time i’ve heard about this function included in WP. Thanks.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:03 am
