Slow websites lose visitors and sales. Eight practical changes, from caching to image sizes, that make the biggest difference to WordPress speed.
Visitors are impatient. When a page takes too long to load, many simply leave, and search engines take speed into account too. The good news is that most slow WordPress websites can be made much faster without a redesign.
1. Turn on caching
Without caching, WordPress builds every page from scratch for every visitor. Caching keeps a ready-made copy and serves it instantly. On Twerple plans that include it, Boost adds Redis caching to WordPress in a few clicks. See Making WordPress faster with Boost and Speeding up your website with the page cache.
2. Use a recent version of PHP
Newer PHP versions run WordPress noticeably faster than old ones. Check that your theme and plugins support it, then switch. See Changing your PHP version.
3. Resize and compress your images
A photo straight from a phone can be many times larger than a web page needs. Resize images to the size they are shown at, and use a modern format such as WebP. This alone often makes the biggest difference.
4. Remove plugins you do not need
Every active plugin adds work to every page. Go through your list, and deactivate and delete anything you are not using. Look out for plugins that do the same job twice.
5. Choose a lightweight theme
Some themes load sliders, animations and fonts on every page whether you use them or not. If your theme is heavy, a lighter one can transform your speed.
6. Keep the database tidy
Old post revisions, spam comments and leftovers from deleted plugins slowly bloat your database. Clean them out from time to time, after taking a backup.
7. Limit what loads from other websites
Chat widgets, embedded feeds, tracking scripts and web fonts are all loaded from other servers, and each one can slow your page down. Keep the ones that earn their place.
8. Make sure your hosting fits
If your website is still slow after all of this, it may have outgrown its plan. Busy shops and membership websites in particular need more CPU and memory. Upgrading on Twerple keeps your website exactly as it is; see Understanding your plan limits and resource usage to check how close you are to your limits.
Test as you go
Measure your website before you start, then after each change, using a free speed-testing tool. Change one thing at a time, so you know what helped. And take a backup before big changes, or try them first on a staging copy of your website.