How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site

To a great extent, we’ve written about the impact of speed on your users’ behavior. And, of course, if there’s an impact on user behavior, there’s an impact on search engine optimization. Most people don’t realize the number of factors involved in typing in a web page and having that page load for you.

Conversely, if you spend hours every week on developing content… trying to shave a few bucks off your infrastructure environment doesn’t make any sense. It’s like writing a blog post and putting it in a bottle instead of ensuring its delivery. Slow websites hurt business.

While WordPress runs hundreds of millions of websites, the chief complaint of many who leave the content management system (CMS) is the out-of-the-box site speed. If you load up WordPress on a cheap hosting platform, add a free theme that’s poorly written, and add a ton of plugins… you’re likely going to be battling speed issues.

How WordPress Works?

As with most CMS platforms, WordPress is a front-end for users, a back-end for administrating and easy editing and adding content, and storing that content in a database. When a user requests your web page, here are the essential series of steps that produce the page:

1. Domain: The domain you use is looked up in a domain name server and routed to your host.
2. Host: Then, your domain is looked up on your host and resolved to your WordPress site.
3. WordPress: WordPress loads initial settings.
4. Permalink: The permalink slug in your URL is looked up in your database and resolves to a Post ID where the core content and any additional post metadata are looked up and resolved.
5. HTML: Your web server (typically LAMP) assembles the page using PHP from your theme.
6. Files: additional files, like images, scripts, fonts, and stylesheets are loaded from the site or a third-party site.
7. CSS: Your HTML is styled utilizing cascading style sheets.
8. JavaScript: Client-side code is loaded for your browser to load additional interaction with the content.

Your page is now loaded!

What Slows Down WordPress?

• Hosting: The memory, computing power (CPU), and bandwidth available from your host determine how quickly the web server can interpret code, assemble, and present your page. If you’ve been on a host for years, chances are that you’re running on outdated hardware, and it may be time to migrate to a faster, modern environment.
• Network: If you’re running a business in Indianapolis but your server is hosted in Las Vegas, even with fiber infrastructure, every mile adds latency. To solve this, companies deploy content delivery networks (CDNs) that cache site assets regionally or globally, ensuring faster delivery to users wherever they are.
• Database Queries: Querying and retrieving data from a database consumes time. Modern hosting providers like Rocket use automated caching to store a fully rendered page, so repeated database calls are unnecessary unless the data changes. Plugins can further optimize caching. Over time, database tables can become bloated or poorly indexed, so routine database optimization is essential.
• Settings: WordPress loads initial settings and transients during page execution. These can accumulate over time or result from poorly written themes and plugins. Many plugins and themes fail to remove their settings upon uninstall. Periodically auditing and cleaning up your wp_options table can help reclaim performance.
• WordPress Themes: Themes control your site’s front-end design but often include inefficient or redundant scripts, bloated CSS, or unnecessary page builders. Premium themes from reputable developers are typically optimized for performance, while poorly coded or feature-heavy themes can significantly slow your site. A lightweight, modular theme that only loads the assets it needs will outperform one that tries to do everything.
• WordPress Plugins: Plugins extend functionality, but every one adds overhead — additional PHP execution, database queries, and script requests. Too many plugins, or a few inefficient ones, can devastate performance. It’s crucial to regularly audit your active plugins, remove unnecessary ones, and, when possible, consolidate overlapping functionality into custom code in your child theme.
• Server Scripts: One of WordPress’s greatest strengths is its open ecosystem, but it also introduces performance risks. Many plugins and themes are written by developers with varying levels of expertise. Poorly optimized PHP or JavaScript increases CPU load and slows page assembly. Streamlining server scripts, removing deprecated code, and reducing dependency chains can lead to significant performance gains.
• Third-party Scripts: External scripts such as analytics, advertising, tracking pixels, chat widgets, and social embeds can dramatically affect load time. These scripts often load asynchronously, but excessive or poorly optimized use can block rendering and inflate overall load time. Audit and prioritize essential third-party scripts, lazy-load or defer the rest, and host critical assets locally when possible.
• File Sizes: JavaScript and CSS files often contain unnecessary whitespace and comments. Minifying and combining them reduces file size and improves load speed. Similarly, large, uncompressed images are a major contributor to slow page load times. Image compression and responsive formats (like WebP or AVIF) are simple yet powerful ways to cut load time and improve Core Web Vitals.

WordPress Performance Plugin

If you’re looking for a great plugin to help you optimize WordPress, we’d recommend Perfmatters.

Install Perfmatters WordPress Plugin Now

How Does A Fast WordPress Site Run?

If your infrastructure and WordPress site are optimized to run fast, the difference is significant:

1. Domain – the domain you are using is looked up in a domain name server and routed to your host.
2. Host – faster hosting platforms can reduce the latency involved in identifying and routing traffic to your server.
3. WordPress – WordPress loads minimal settings and is able to load faster.
4. Permalink – The permalink slug in your URL is looked up in a cached file, immediately displaying your page rather than querying the database.
5. Files – Minified files and compressed images are loaded. Your host may even compress the files with GZIP compression which can reduce file sizes by up to 70%.
6. Lazy Loading – Not every asset requires loading on your site to present your page properly. One example is images that are down the page. Lazy loading is a methodology that loads unnecessary assets only when needed – including scripts, images, videos, and more.

This infographic from PassionWP walks through a logical process of improving the performance of WordPress.

1. Reduce Server Response Time (SRT) – According to Google’s PageSpeed Insights, your optimal SRT should be under 200 milliseconds.
   • Solution: Migrate your site to a high-performing host like Rocket that has a solid infrastructure and built-in CDN. They’ll even help you migrate your site there.
2. Use a good caching plugin – While Flywheel has great server caching, you’ll also want to cache locally.
   • Solution: Migrate your site to a high-performing host like Flywheel that has great server caching and install a plugin like WP Rocket that has outstanding local caching.
3. Enable GZIP compression – GZIP is compatible with all modern browsers. Many modern hosting platforms automatically configure this but you may need to contact them.
4. Minimize Browser Requests – Themes and plugins that load a plethora of scripts, CSS, fonts, and media files from your site or others can significantly slow your site.
   • Solution: Using your browser development tools can show you how many requests you’re making and how slow they are. Some plugins like WP Rocket have advanced features to combine scripts and CSS and cache them so that you don’t have to make multiple requests. It also has the capability to lazy load images.
5. Optimize Your Database – Optimized queries, less data stored, and indexing tables can improve site speed.
   • Solution: clearing page versions, removing the storage of unnecessary data, and reindexing your database can all be done with WP Rocket.
6. Reduce The Number of Plugins In Use – The more plugins you have installed, the higher the number of requests to your server.
   • Solution: Upgrade your theme to one that has most or all of the features that you were trying to achieve with plugins. We recommend Themeforest, but be sure to buy a plugin that’s well-rated, has plenty of updates, and has high sales. Some plugins add unnecessary code to pages as well. For example, we found that Formidable has the capability to only include scripts and CSS on pages with forms so that other pages aren’t impacted.
7. Use A Well-Optimized Theme – Poorly developed themes are at the root of most issues we find with clients.
   • Solution: Upgrade your theme to one that has most or all of the features that you were trying to achieve with plugins. We recommend Themeforest, but be sure to buy a plugin that’s well-rated, has plenty of updates, and has high sales.
8. Compress and Scale Images – WordPress already has a fantastic feature to add specific image sizes that incorporate how to scale and crop them for different views.
   • Solution: Be sure your theme or child theme functions.php file has registered the appropriate image sizes for display in your theme. As for compression, WordPress doesn’t have this capability, so a third-party integration like Imagify or Kraken works great. WP Rocket also has an image compression add-on.

We maintain a full list of what we believe are the Best WordPress Plugins for Business. As new technologies emerge, and other plugins aren’t kept up, we replace them on that list. Here’s the full infographic!