At WP Engine, we have created a specialized environment fine-tuned for optimizing WordPress for the best performance. An optimized site is…
- Fast. Pages and media load quickly.
- Stable. There are no error messages or broken elements.
- Secure. It’s protected from malicious exploits.
- Engaging. It’s pleasant and easy to use across all devices.
In this article we will explore some helpful suggestions for optimizing WordPress for speed, scalability, and security, to ensure that you’re creating the best possible experience for your site’s visitors and users.
IMPROVING SITE SPEED
There are a number of factors which can affect how fast a visitor is able to load your site. Below we’ll explain some of the most common quick-fixes for improving site load time.
ENABLE CACHING
When it comes to your site’s speed, there is nothing more effective for optimizing WordPress than utilizing caching. At WP Engine we offer several caching layers in our Evercache system to help your site perform at its peak. Building cacheable sites allows our system to load static content — e.g. images, CSS, and Javascript files — from a dedicated caching source. Loading this content from the cache is much faster than loading it directly from the server.
You can learn more about caching in our article Tips Improving Site Cacheability.
ENABLE CDN
Another quick win for optimizing WordPress to increase the speed of your site is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN).
A CDN is a collection of servers located all around the world. These servers host your site’s static files, like images, CSS, and JavaScript. When a browser loads these static files, the request is automatically routed to the server geographically closest to the browser. This helps the content load much more quickly.
In addition, because your content is loaded from many servers in separate locations, bursts of traffic are less likely to cause issues, because the burst is spread out over hundreds of servers, rather than just one.
WP Engine offers the ability to put all of your static content on a CDN with little to no configuration required:
- We manage distributing the content and rewriting URLs in the code.
- We give you control over enabling or disabling the CDN as needed.
In short, you just manage your site as usual, and we take care of making it faster and more scalable.
CDN support is included at no extra charge for users of our Professional and Business plan. Personal plan clients can add CDN service for a small monthly fee.
More information on how to enable CDN is available in this article: How does a CDN work?
USE A MINIFICATION PLUGIN
Minification speeds up your site by reducing the number of CSS and JavaScript files that need to be downloaded. Multiple CSS files are combined into a single CSS file, and multiple Javascript files are combined into a single Javascript file. The combined files are also reduced in size, so they take less time to download.
You should take a backup of your site before using a minification plugin. That way, if something goes wrong — e.g. your theme, and other JavaScript from plugins, isn’t compatible with minification — you can quickly restore a working version of your site.
We recommend the Autoptimize or BWP Minify minification plugins.
COMPRESS SITE IMAGES
Large images can be a real drag on site performance. If you have large images on your site, we recommend using an image compression plugin.
Image compression plugins will automatically reduce the file size of the images on your site in a “lossless” fashion. This means there’ll be no perceivable loss of quality in the image, even though the file size has been greatly reduced.
We recommend the Smush.it or EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud plugins to compress site images.
There are some limitations to consider when using these types of plugins. For example, the Smush.it plugin has a 1MB cap on the size of images it can compress leaving larger images uncompressed.
STABILITY & SECURITY
KEEP PLUGINS UPDATED
Keeping your plugins up-to-date ensures that you will reap benefits from improved performance, increased security, and other enhancements on offer from the theme or plugin developer. Outdated software is the leading cause of malware on websites, so it is extremely important to update your plugins and themes often. Out of date themes and plugins can also cause issues and conflicts that adversely affect site performance.
To update your plugins, follow these steps:
- Log in to your WP Admin dashboard
- With Dashboard selected in the left nav, click ‘Updates’
- Under the Plugins section, you will see checkboxes next to the plugin name, or a Select All checkbox at the top and bottom. Select One/Many/All of the plugins you wish to update, and click the ‘Update Plugins’ button located above and below the section.
- Confirm selection, follow prompts to complete
Alternatively, you can also find the plugins that have updates under the ‘Plugins’ section in the left nav:
- Log in to your WP Admin Dashboard
- Select ‘Plugins’ from the left nav
- Under the page title, ‘Plugins’, there are categories pertaining to your plugins Click ‘Update Available’
- Select ‘Update Now’ below plugin description
- Confirm selection, follow prompts to complete
Please be aware: not all plugins offer update functionality built in to them. If you have purchased plugins from a vendor, it is a best-practice to validate the version on the vendor’s site and check for updates there.
KEEP THEMES UPDATED
Just as with plugins, it’s also important to keep your theme up to date. Theme developers often release updates to better secure your website, and also improve functionality and speed. Performing these updates can help ensure your site stays secure.
To update your theme, follow these steps:
- Log in to your WP Admin dashboard
- With Dashboard selected in the left nav, click ‘Updates’
- Under the Themes section, you will see checkboxes next to the Theme name, or a Select All checkbox at the top and bottom. Select One/Many/All of the themes you wish to update, and click the ‘Update Themes’ button located above and below the section.
- Confirm selection, follow prompts to complete
Alternatively, you can also find the themes that have updates under the ‘Themes’ section in the left nav:
- Log in to your WP Admin Dashboard
- Select ‘Themes’ from the left nav
- Under the page title, ‘Themes’, there are categories pertaining to your themes Click ‘Update Available’
- Select ‘Update Now’ below plugin description
- Confirm selection, follow prompts to complete
Please be aware: just as with plugins, not all themes offer update functionality built in to them. If you have purchased themes from a vendor, it is a best practice to validate the version on the vendor’s site and check for updates.
DISABLE AND REMOVE INACTIVE PLUGINS
Cleaning out old and unused code is an important step in optimizing WordPress on your site. If you have plugins that are no longer used by your site, you should disable and remove them. Plugins that may not be in use but remain active can still have hooks into your WordPress install, causing additional load on your site.
To disable a plugin, follow these steps:
- Log in to your WP Admin Dashboard
- Select ‘Plugins’ from the left nav
- Under the page title, ‘Plugins’, there are categories pertaining to your plugins Click ‘All’
- Under the plugin name, there are actions for that plugin. Click ‘Deactivate’
- Confirm selection, follow prompts to complete
USE A SECURITY PLUGIN
Security plugins add an additional layer of protection to your WordPress site. WP Engine helps provide security on the platform and server-level, but using a plugin for additional security is often a good measure. There are many plugin options fine-tuned for different uses – just be sure you check against the Disallowed Plugins list to be sure your plugin is allowed on our platform before installing!
USER EXPERIENCE
Optimizing WordPress also means ensuring your users stay engaged on your site. The end user experience is an important factor in generating active users and sessions on your website. Even if your site is functional, it needs to have a good design and layout across all devices in order to provide a positive experience.
RESPONSIVE THEME
Using a responsive theme ensures that your site will display properly across all devices, because the theme will adapt to the size of the screen. By default, WordPress will help serve the correct image size to users on mobile devices.
REDIRECT BROKEN URLS
If you’ve changed the location of a popular post or page, consider creating a URL redirect from the old URL to the new URL. This way if anyone tries to access the old URL they’ll be taken to the new location of the same content.
You can learn more about URL redirects in our article Setting Up Redirects.
USE A SEO PLUGIN
Using a plugin to help fine-tune your site’s SEO (search engine optimization) will help you in making your content easy to find, and easy to read. The most popular plugin for SEO is Yoast SEO, and WP Engine has recently released Content Performance for Business-level plans and higher to help ensure your content is engaging your site’s users.
