Wordpress is most popular CMS for bloggers and almost every blog uses Wordpress as their platform. It is because of its functionality features and well-coded structure. Wordpress is powered by many plugins and themes which make it perfect for bloggers, but adding so many useless plugins can make a blog damn slow. For more info: http://www.pattronize.com/blog/17-ways-optimize-and-speed-wordpress-sites

1. 17 Ways to Optimize and Speed Up
WordPress Sites
Sara J
Internet Marketing & Local SEO
Pattronize InfoTech

2. Select a Good Web Host

3. Select a Good Web Host
• Its important to find, which server we are using.
• I would recommend to go with Bluehost, Hostgator.
• They are provide cost efficient packages, brilliant customer
support, with excellent server speed.
• If you want to go with the managed Wordpress hosting then
Bluehost, WPEngine and Inmotion hosting can be perfect choice
for you.

4. Use A Cache Plugin

5. Use A Cache Plugin
• WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache can help your website with
amazing speed.
• Server uses cached copies when someone visits a page, instead
of utilizing server resources to generate the pages
• 1 Million+ active websites
• Add-on’s helps to reduces access of MySQL, number of PHP &
HTTP requests
• For expertise W3 Total Cache plugins will be a good choice other
can go with WP Super Cache

6. CDN to Speed Up Your Website

7. CDN to Speed Up Your Website
• Static resources like images, JavaScript, CSS & other small files
makes site slower if you don’t have a CDN configured.
• CDN makes content and data delivered from nearest data
centers
• Decreasing the load on your host increases blogging speed.
• Cloud Flare offers free CDN service.
• Max CDN should be your alternate choice for CloudFlare.

8. Optimize Uploaded Images

9. Optimize Uploaded Images
• Images can be heavier for your blog, its best to optimize the images
before uploading to your website
• Resizing your images or scaling down using CSS will increase loading
time for your blog/website.
• People use images of various sizes for their blog, which is reduced to
save storage & increasing speed
• WP Smush will make the process easy to optimize images on your site.

10. Use a Better Theme

11. Use a Better Theme
• Choose a WordPress theme that comply with HTML and CSS standards.
• Custom designed WordPress theme will avoid usage of unwanted
plugins and customizations.
• In most cases WordPress theme you purchase will come with inbuilt
features & SEO optimized.
• You can improve your site speed if your theme follows HTML and CSS
framework best practices.

12. Enable Gzip Compression

13. Enable Gzip Compression
• Compression mechanism enabled on your site/server will Gzip the
whole content from server and delivers with reduced size to user.
Browser will render the data and display as HTML.
• You are free to enable the Gzip compress from cPanel form your web
host
• There are many other ways to enable Gzip compression.
• Use a caching plugin suggestively,W3 Total cache (Plugin by default
comes with Gzip compression mechanism)
• You can do it also by tweaking your .htaccess file

14. AntiSpam Plugin to Control Spam

15. AntiSpam Plugin to Control Spam
• Receiving too many Spam comments will make your site will
bound to become slow.
• One most popular plugin ‘Akismet’ helps to block all your spam
comments
• Setting up this plugin is simple, Open an account on Akismet
site & opt for a free API from the site. Update the API Code on
your website plugin configuration section to activate.
• Make sure you don’t have any open folders, files. Open files are
easy to hack and inject spam code on your site.

16. Use JavaScript in Body & CSS
in Head

17. Use JavaScript in Body & CSS
in Head
• Optimizing CSS & JavaScript can improve site loading time.
• CSS in head section and JS in body or in Footer.
• Remove any render blocking scripts at the head section.
• Use asynchronous mode to make sure your page is not blocked
while loading in browser.
• User compressed or min files for CSS and JS instead default
developer version. This will reduce the size of the file and
unwanted loading time.

18. Use CSS Sprites
• CSS Sprites is an single image contains all small images used in the
website
• This eliminates multiple image downloads during page load.
• With the help of CSS we can show any portion of the image in any
place or page within the website
• Alternatively you can also use Data URI’s instead of direct image
file name
• All these will reduce huge loading time.

19. Install well Coded Plugins

20. Install well Coded Plugins
• Plugins will help to automate many activities and saves our time.
• Faulty or not well coded plugins will create issues within the
website and affects website loading by a huge margin
• Choose a plugins which have good reviews and ratings.
• Read reviews about the plugin before you install.
• Check Compatibility for your wordpress version.
• Update latest security fixes to your site.
• 'Plugin Performance Profiler‘ tool helps to identify plugins which
affects website loading time

21. Optimize Database Tables

22. Optimize Database Tables
• The optimizing database is must, for speed optimization of your
WordPress blog.
• MySQL database should be optimized for stop loading spam
content.
• Use PhpMyAdmin to stop spam comments, trashed post, old post
revisions and other things which reduce the optimizes of blog
• WP-optimize or WP-DBManager make your job easy by doing above
activities

23. Use Responsive Design

24. Use Responsive Design
• You don’t require a separate site for mobile devices. Developing a
responsive site will make your job easy
• You can manage content, image and other resource in a single
location or file.
• It enables your blog to use few resources as possible, when a user
opens your site from the mobile device, it will show up low-
resolution images and when from a desktop site it will show high-
resolution images
• You will see a good loading time for both mobile and desktop.

25. Replace PHP with HTML

26. Replace PHP with HTML
• HTML is 20 times faster than PHP. It is always recommended to
use HTML instead of PHP
• Use HTML for PHP to display a text for image.
• Using PHP will keep your servers busy all the time.
• loading speed of your site will be improved, by replacing with
HTML.

27. Turn OFF Trackbacks & Pingbacks
• Trackbacks and Pingbacks can be a major problem when you look
through your blog.
• A trackback is a reverse server link automatically created when
someone links to your blog. These trackbacks use your server and
database resources.
• So turn off the options of trackbacks and Pingbacks of your site
from navigating to WordPress Discussion Setting.

28. Delete Old Post Revisions

29. Delete Old Post Revisions
• Each update made to your post will have a revision data in your
database. When you are about to publish blog post and double
check it before publishing
• Revision data will consume space on the web host and can
decrease loading site time
• Consider installing Revision Control plugin that will automatically
remove any old post revisions from your database

30. Optimize Widgets

31. Optimize Widgets
• Widgets makes blogs smarter and more functional.
• Widget stores unnecessary CSS & JavaScript, which will make
websites slower.
• Site speed can be increased by updating CSS and JavaScript files of
the widgets regularly.

32. Plugin Maintenance

33. Plugin Maintenance
• Plugin maintenance is a basic activity which should be done for
any WordPress site.
• Leaving installed plugins without care can leave you in deep
trouble.
• If plugins are not updated on a regular basis then they would
become vulnerable and extremely dangerous. This will an open
backdoor for hackers to hack your site.
• Updated version plugin can perform better and optimized CSS
and scripts can help your site load faster.

34. Conclusion
• A slow site is the worst nightmare for any blogger. Any blog
makes its first impression with the loading speed.
• A blog speed is measured with many online tools
like GTMetrix or Pingdom Speed tool. These tools will provide
suggestions to speed up your site.
• Above tactics will make amazing speed in your blog
• You can find out other important information about speed
optimization on Google Pagespeed Insight.