Does your blog load as quickly as you — and your users — would like? or does it take ages to load? Have you ever got frustrated waiting for a slow and sluggish site to load a single page?
In this respect, “first impression really counts”. That’s why it’s important to make sure that your site is loading reasonably fast with less waiting time, otherwise the odds of first-time visitors clicking away is pretty high.
How fast should your site load? According to this article, your site should load in 4 seconds before you start losing your visitors.
If your blog has a less desirable loading time, here’s some possible ways you can do-it-yourself to speed it up. Though it will not make your blog super fast-loading, it should improve it significantly.
5 Possible Ways to Speed Up Your Blog
Before we begin, it’s best that you run a test of your site’s speed with the Website Speed Test or Use Pingdom to get a detailed analysis of your blog’s loading time and performance. Both tools give you pretty good idea of how fast is your blog’s loading time.
1. Optimize Your Images
One of the reason for slow loading site is images, therefore every image should be optimized for web. Simply said, if you are using Photoshop, there is an option to ‘Save for Web’ which you can use to reduce the image size. Alternatively, you can use Online Image Optimizer if Photoshop is not an option.
You also need to ensure that all your images have the proper height and width defined, otherwise the browser will have to determine the size of the image which may slow down its loading.
Example of image code with height and width tags included
2. Compress Your CSS
Use CSS Compress WordPress plugin to removes comments, new lines, tabs, and gzip compresses (GZIP) any CSS file called with “”.
Just activating the plugin with the default Kubrick theme will reduce the CSS file from 8k to 1.7k. The plugin will work automatically – you don’t need to do any extra work.
3. Reduce PHP Queries
You might replace the PHP queries with static HTML, every time a page of your site loads, your browser just reads the HTML and reduces the time required to call up the php queries. Here’s 13 Tags to Delete From your Theme to speed up your site’s loading time.
If you think you are comfortable modifying those PHP tags, I strongly suggest that you do backup everything lest you mess it up.
4. A Must-Have Plugin
WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates HTML files that are served directly without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
5. Remove Unused Plugins
Lastly, if you have installed and collected a bunch of plugins – or widgets, it is about time that you do some spring cleaning to disable or completely delete those unused plugins – some plugins have tons of script and code, and even create database tables in your WordPress database. It’s best that you only keep those plugins – or widgets that you really need and delete the unnecessary.
I hope the above tips will give you a head start in optimizing your site and improve its loading time which in turn lead to better user experience. If you do have other tips with regard to speeding up your blog, feel free to share it with us here.
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A great checklist for beginners. Some are common sense suggestions (important to list them), and others are new approaches (for me). You really like your plugins don’t you Yan? I know who to talk to when I need something hehe.
Hi Yan,
Some of these ways are really new to me. Thanks for sharing such good information.
Peter Lee
Work From Home Business Blog
@Peter: You are welcome and thanks for being here again, Peter.
@Colin: You bet..I like to tinker with those plugins that would make my blog more functional and serve the need of my readers and I.
Good to see again, Colin.
Hi Yan!
Really practical advice here. Caching the code is a big step in speeding up the blog site.
Rhys’s last blog post..Now You Can Have a Top Money Making Blog
@Rhys: You are absolutely right about the caching. Glad you drop by, my friend.
Yan,
Do you have the WP Super Cache plugin installed? It sounds as a good idea to speed up blog o alsor wp based site. I was wondering if caching dynamic php files with the plugin shows e.g. newly sent comments immediately after submit. Or whether such cached page needs to be refreshed to see the new comment. I hope I make some sense!
Tks for the tip on the Plugin Super Cache,
Knocked about 10 seconds load time on my site!
Larry’s last blog post..What is this Thing called an RSS feed?
@Rado: Oh yes, I have it installed on my blog and I’ve seen a significant improvement on its loading speed.
Now I’m trying to make some sense to your question; are saying that you don’t see your comment upon submission? or are you saying that the plugin will only fetch the latest comment upon refresh?
To tell you the truth, for some really weird reasons , your comment has always been trapped by the Askimet right from the very first time you commented on this blog and I have to dig further into it to retrieve yours.
@Larry: You are welcome! Glad to see you around, Larry and hope you will participate in our dialogue more often.
I have noticed that a lot of blogs these days are using nofollow links. What’s up with that? Does the owner of the web page incur any benefit from making links posted on the page nofollow?
@Jay: The way I see it the only reason some more recognized blogs are not removing the nofollow tag is due to the fact that there is an increase in spammy comments and to the less recognized blogs, I guess it’s just a matter of being ignorance of the benefits of dofollow.
Does that sort of answer your question, Jay?
For GIMP users (free photoshop replacement) they can also install the “Save for Web” plugin which they can get here http://registry.gimp.org/node/33
EmmaB’s last blog post..Need Contest Sponsors
Good points, Yan
Interesting enough I just posted very similar recommendations on my blog few days ago…
In addition to your tips I also suggested to remove as many useless external widgets as possible.
Good blog you have going here, keep it up!
Webmaster Den’s last blog post..Getting most out of EntreCard network
@WD: Hey, I did mention about removing the unwanted widgets, you might have probably missed it somewhere but that’s a good point.
Thanks for your input and welcome to my little playground.
@Emma: Thanks for the recommendation. It looks like a good alternative for image editing. I haven’t used GIMP myself so will check it out later.
You are right. I think my site takes more time that you mentioned. Am i right? let me know.
I have to do what you have mentioned.
Nice post covers lots of aspects.
Stumbled!
Nihar
Nihar’s last blog post..Increase comments on your blog using SezWho
Hey just now tested on iwebtool. my site takes 1.86 seconds to load probably because i have wp super cache installed.
Nihar’s last blog post..Increase comments on your blog using SezWho
Hey Nihar,
Oh yes your site loads much faster than the last time I visited yours. WP Super Cache really does a wonderful job indeed. Don’t you think so?
Hey, thanks for being here again. It’s been a while, huh? I guess it must have been good for you.
Cheers
Yan
great tip… my site is loading quick as of now though, but will certainly take this advices from you… ;-)
@Melvin: Thanks for the lovely commentary, Melvin. I’m glad seeing around here again.
Nice list Yan. I just removed 9 unused plugins. I didn’t realize they were loading even when inactive. I plan to try the WP Super Cache plugin but I worry about Permalinks changing and the possibility of duplicate content. I’ll have to look into it more.
Brian D. Hawkins’s last blog post..Links Worth Blogging About
@Brian: I don’t get it. Are you worried that installing WP Super Cache will affect your permalink? and what about duplicate contents? Not that I know of certainly… Do I miss anything here?
Anyway, good to see around, Brian..
I’m probably looking at it wrong. I was looking at the plugin site and it’s a little over my head :) It looks like it generates an HTML page identical to the .php and puts it in the supercache subdirectory as an exact replica of your permalink structure.
I was just just wondering if that is considered duplicate content or not. It’s probably not because I’m sure someone would have brought that up by now.
Brian D. Hawkins’s last blog post..Links Worth Blogging About
i didn’t know about css compression.
you can use Google Library java script to help improve speed
Hugo Santos’s last blog post..Tradionaloven.com – How to make your own pizza ovens
I loved the 13 tags link, very helpful and not a common tip. I love and use the WP-Super Cache. It’s an excellent plugin.
The Drunk Blog’s last blog post..Walker Texas Porn
@Hugo: Oh thanks for your input. I haven’t heard of it myself. How difficult it is to implement for any layman, may I just ask?
@TDB: The drunk blog? What a niche! It’s kind of refreshing away from the usual ‘money making blog’.
Anyway, thanks for dropping by and glad this article help you one way or another. Hope to see you more often here.
Thanks for sharing useful tips. Really need that for my blog as its taking a while to load.
@Rajiv: Welcome to my little playground. I’m glad you found those tips useful and I hope to see you more often here sharing with us what you know.
This post has been very helpful, Yan!Guess i have a lot to learn!thanks!
I love it….I am constantly working on ways to speed up my site. Honestly, if a site takes too long to load, I just leave, and I’m sure others do as well.
Sorry, but it’s true….unless I’ve read it before and know the content is good….I just tend to move on. However, I do wait a little longer than most may so…..just tweak them sites people. Other bloggers may understand, but the general reader doesn’t.
JK Swopes’s last blog post..IMwithJoe flips out on moneybites.com and Market Leverage
@Joe – In general if the site has too many widgets, it will slow down the upload time and that’s for sure not a very good first impression to the first time visitors. It’s that little thing that will either make it or break it.
I have been using WP Cache right from the very beginning and I’d strongly recommend this plugin to anyone for better upload time.
I use the wp-chache as well, it’s great. In the beginning I had tons of widgets because I thought that’s how you were supposed to do it…but, I soon took them down and stuck with my first instinct of a cleaner look :)
JK Swopes’s last blog post..Non-cash cashflow and indirect profits. How much are you really making?
mine is not WP but blogspot. So how?
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Hi Yan,
Thanks for these tips. I am thinking of installing the WP Super Cache you recommend. Did you notice any marked difference in the loading time after you installed it.
Peter Lee
@Sherry – Apart from #3 and #4, you can practically implement the tips on your blogspot. I’m sorry I’m not very well knowledgeable with Blogger so I’m not too sure if there is a plugin to speed up your blog.
@Peter – Oh yes, it is highly recommended or shall I say, indispensable tool. I’ve seen an increase of 30% in the loading time. If you haven’t got it installed, you are probably missing something here.
OK, Yan, I’ll do it tonite. Hey BTW I’m not able to access your blog via IE with a message saying that IE cannot open it (spelled out your blog domain too). All other urls seem fine so you may want to check it out. It’s fine using Firefox. Thought I alert you. Maybe those Santarinas causing it.
@Peter – I was panicked for a while but I google for the fix and it turned out that sitemeter was the cause of the problem. I wonder why they didn’t realize the issue. I have just taken it out from my site. I think I’d better off with Awstats.
Thanks for alerting me, Peter. You saved my day…
Hey Yan,
No worries. Just glad you were able to fix the problem so quickly. I was about to install the WP Super Cache but found out it’s for ver 2.2 onwards. My blog is using WP ver 2.0. I then looked at the WP Cache 2 (is that correct for my blog?) but it had 5 php files so I thought I check with you first. Seems complicated since so many php files are involved. Any advice how to proceed.
Peter Lee
@Peter – Uploading the whole unzipped folder to your plugin directory is the easy part, activation of it may be somehow different from one host to another. The only thing is that once you activate the plugin, all the instruction is pretty self-explanatory. It will self-detect any issue prior to installation.
Oh yes, there are 5 php files all in all. Good luck and let me know if you need anything else.
Hi Yan.
I hate copy-n-paste. I just read this article translated into Spanish, and alert you to take some action.
http://www.xeroblog.com/5-posibles-formas-de-aumentar-la-velocidad-de-tu-blog/
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More awesome links! Looks like I may have some uploading to do ;)
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Blog Revamp Update: Done – WOOHOO!
Best tutorial on the subject, however if u are using static HTML files wont it effect PHP Querys?
isnt WP-Supercache against Ggl Adsense policies. I m not sure but I read smwhere that one cant keep cached cpy for more than 15 days
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