Analyze and optimize WordPress loading time
Having a fast loading website is a must these days. It’s a part of the user’s experience that has to be continuously improved. People don’t want to wait anymore for your pages to load and if they don’t load fast, they won’t stay. It’s that simple.
This blog, which runs on WordPress, was loading slow for quite a while and when i first ran the tests, i was amazed by the low score i got.
Thankfully, the services below don’t only show the faults, but also suggestions on how they can be fixed.
This way, i could see which plugins are slowing my blog down, which scripts and css files i have to compress and got the chance to work a bit on it so i am going to write down a few pointers in case you’ve got a slow loading website.
The links listed below will help you analyze your pages and point right away what needs to be improved.
And if you don’t know what to do about certain settings, don’t need to worry. All the links i provide you with for the scan will provide you with extra info and help.
So, here we go.
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Analyze the loading speed and get the suggestions
GTmetrix
PingDom Tools
Google’s Page Speed
Yahoo’s ySlow
Web Page Test
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Compress, minify and cache
For this, i recommend the WordPress plugin “W3 Total Cache“. It’s the best but be careful; don’t get excited and check everything, or you’ll end up with a css’less website. It can get messy.
Just follow their instructions and you should be fine.
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Defer parsing of JavaScript
This is the part i had troubles with but then i found a code somewhere on a forum and used it. It worked.
The code Google provides didn’t work for me.
So to fix that, add this code to your footer right before the end of the body tag “</body>” and of course, replace my link in the code with yours.
window.onload=function(){
var mycode;
mycode=document.createElement(“script”);
mycode.type=”text/javascript”;
mycode.src=”http://www.carolsvault.com/”;
document.getElementsByTagName(“head”)[0].appendChild(mycode);
}
</script>
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Optimize images
One thing i noticed on the results i had was that my images were not optimized. For a moment there i thought that i might have to manually optimize hundreds of images, but i found a tool that does that in bulk.
WP Smush.it is an WordPress plugin that lets you optimize your images to reduce bandwidth and loading time of your pages.
These are just a few steps that you can take to greatly improve the loading speed on your pages and my recommendation is: don’t overreact with the settings and changes.
If you give up too much to performance, you will lose quality.
That’s my latest report and although i want to score as high as possible, i think i will take the A offered by ySlow and see what improvements i can do later on.
That’s it for now. Enjoy pimping your website and if you need any help, just check the links provided or drop a line in the comments box if you have any other suggestions.