The Ultimate WordPress Speed Optimization Guide 2022

The biggest challenge to most WordPress users is WordPress Speed Optimization. We want the fastest website on the internet, but that’s easier said than done. There are many ways to speed up your WordPress site and we’ve created a guide for you that focuses on 4 different solutions for optimizing your load time and page speed performance.

The speed of your website is also an important ranking factor: In addition to easy operation, appealing and extensive content, and a positive reputation, fast loading times are the be-all and end-all to be found more easily in the search engine.

Your website should load in 3 seconds at most. Less than 2 seconds loading time and a page speed of over 90% (desktop and mobile) are very good.

So if your WordPress website loads slow or do you want to optimize it for visitors on mobile devices? in this post, I give you some tips to help you achieve a fast website

WordPress Speed Optimization Guide 2022

1. Enable Caching

With a caching plugin, your WordPress website is completely built once and then the finished version is cached. This significantly reduces the loading time, as the server does not have to regenerate the website each time it is accessed. LiteSpeed, our web server software, offers a good and simple solution for this with a corresponding plugin. You can find out how to install and configure the plugin in the article «Configuring LiteSpeed ​​Cache for WordPress». You can find additional tips for configuring the plugin in our blog post «From simple caching plugin to sophisticated performance tool: LiteSpeed ​​Cache for WordPress».
Note that the plugin is rapidly evolving and new features are constantly being added. In the official LiteSpeed ​​documentation, you will always find up-to-date information about the functions and their configuration.

Of course, there are a variety of other plugins to cache your WordPress site. We present the most popular plugins among our customers in our blog article “Caching Plugins for WordPress: The 8 Most Popular Our Customers”.

2. Use Fewer Plugins

Each installed plugin is loaded when the website or the back-end is called up and thus also affects the loading time. Therefore, check whether you really need all installed plugins. You should remove plugins that have already been deactivated, as these are no longer updated and therefore pose a security risk. Also, make sure to always install the latest version of WordPress and keep the plugins up to date. Since WordPress 5.9.3, this work has become easier thanks to an integrated update function.

Read my post about best wordpress plugins in 2022

3. Choose a Simple Design

The design can have a big impact on the speed of your website. The more images and additional content are loaded, the slower a website becomes. And vice versa, a slim design ensures an optimal loading time.

Please note that many of the WordPress themes on offer are designed to cover as many different areas of application and design options as possible. This has advantages for your own application and variety of designs, but it often has a negative effect on speed. The more setting options a theme has, the more complex and extensive its programming is. In addition, the installation of additional plugins is often required.

On the other hand, if you have a personalized theme programmed by a web agency or web designer, you can better control that your theme stays lean.

4. Host the Assets Locally

You shouldn’t rely on the speed of external servers and you shouldn’t embed content such as JavaScript, images, and fonts directly from another website. If these are slow to load, it can slow down your site from loading.

You can make an exception for videos, since services like YouTube or Vimeo, for example, are optimized for this purpose.

5. Optimize images

Optimize the images of your website for their intended purpose, because: the smaller the file size of the image, the faster it will load. Therefore, compress the images before you upload them It is also helpful if you serve images in modern image formats such as WebP or AVIF.

There are also useful plugins for this image optimization. If you use the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, as mentioned in the «Activate cache» section, you can immediately use the image optimization functions it contains. These are explained in detail in the LiteSpeed documentation.

In addition to LiteSpeed Cache, there are other plugins such as Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, and Optimus.

6. Compress / Minify JavaScript and CSS

If you developed your WordPress theme yourself, make sure the code stays clean and remove unused parts. Additionally, you should compress CSS and JavaScript code. Most caching plugins offer so-called “Minify” functions that save you from having to install any additional plugin. Here, too, the LiteSpeed cache plugin offers corresponding functionalities that are described in the official documentation.

7. Optimize WordPress blog settings

Keep homepage lite

Most visitors go straight to your site’s home page. If you have a large selection of blog posts or products listed there, this can have a negative impact on the loading time. In general, we recommend that you keep the start page lean and offer extensive content on dedicated subpages.

To reduce the number of blog posts, adjust the default values ​​in the “Settings” > “Reading” menu. If you use WooCommerce for your online shop, you can find the setting in the “Design” > “Customize” > “WooCommerce” > “Product catalog” menu and define how many products per row and how many rows per page should be displayed.

Otherwise, a “lazy load” function can also help. When the website is called up, this only loads content that is actually visible in the browser window. When scrolling through the page, the additional content is then loaded step by step. This is particularly important for large files such as images. In order to use lazy loading, you probably guessed it, you will find corresponding functionalities in most caching plugins. In the LiteSpeed ​​Cache plugin, you can enable lazy load as described in the LiteSpeed ​​documentation.

8. Offload WordPress Cron

Do you have a website that requires a lot of resources and have you already reached the limits of your web hosting’s processing power? In this case, outsourcing the WordPress cron can help. To do this, add the following line to the wp-config.php file of your WordPress site:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', 'true');

Then create a cron function in the my.cyon account with the following value:

wget -q -O /dev/null 'https://oliverorange.ch/wp-cron.php' >/dev/null 2>&1

The smallest possible value is recommended as the time interval, so leave the default settings as they are. If you have any questions about creating cron jobs, our guide «Creating and editing cron jobs» will help you.

This optimization can be a relief for heavily visited websites since the WordPress cron is not executed every time the website is accessed, but only for the specified time interval.

Note that the smallest possible time interval varies depending on the web hosting offer. You can find an up-to-date overview on our website in the “Web server” section.

9. Validate source code

Faulty WordPress or plugin code, as well as broken links, can affect the loading time of your website. While the website is developing, temporarily use a plugin like Query Monitor that shows you errors. You can also use the W3C Validator to check your website for errors.

10. Optimize Database

Regular optimization of the database keeps it as lean as possible and can save storage space. Here, too, a corresponding functionality is already built into many caching plugins. For LiteSpeed Cache, you can find the feature documentation on LiteSpeed’s website.

However, there are also plugins for optimizing the database, such as «Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions». Or you clean up individual tables via phpMyAdmin in your my.cyon account. You can find instructions on how to do this in the article «Optimizing/cleaning up the database».

11. Cleaning up your WooCommerce Database

If you operate your online shop with WooCommerce, it can happen that temporary entries that WooCommerce creates for visitors to your website are not correctly removed afterward. These entries are also called «transients». Please check whether there are many such transients in the “wp-options” table in your website’s database and whether they can be removed. There are plugins such as “Transient Cleaner”, “Delete Expired Transients” or “WP-Optimize” that offer such functions.

How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site

1. Run performance tests.
2. Choose a reliable hosting provider.
3. Update everything.
4. Use the latest version of PHP.
5. Delete unused plugins.
6. Install high-quality plugins only.
7. Use a lightweight theme.
8. Optimize images.

Is WP-optimize plugin good?

WP-optimize It’s an accessible, simple, and highly efficient plugin that has all the things you need to keep the website fast and fully optimized. the plugin also helps enhance SEO, keep customers by decreasing user bounce, and helps you do more with few server resources.