Whether you're a freelance writer with a professional site, an author with a site to promote your books, or a blogger, website speed and stability matters.
So for this week's "short share" feature, let's look at some tips for speeding up your WordPress websites.
This infographic comes from MadLemmings.com.
How many of these tips have you used to speed up your website? I'll vouch for both the P3 WordPress plugin and Pingdom's site speed tool. I use both of them regularly to pinpoint potential problems, and they're great. If you use something else, I'd love to hear your tool recommendations in the comments below.
Jenn Mattern is a professional blogger, freelance business writer, consultant, and indie author. She runs numerous websites & blogs including All Freelance Writing, Freelance Writing Pros, NakedPR, and Kiss My Biz.
Jenn has over 20 years' experience as a professional writer and editor and over 20 years' experience in marketing and PR (working heavily in digital PR, online marketing, social media, SEO, new media, and thought leadership publication). She also has 19 years' professional blogging and web publishing experience (including web development) and around 17 years of experience as an indie author / publisher.
Jenn also writes fiction under multiple pen names and is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association.
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Nice tips! I use CloudFlare (included with Bluehost) and I’ve used W3 Total Cache in the past.
The theme you use can really affect site speed, too. Years ago I bought a beautiful premium theme for a site of mine that more than tripled the site’s loading times… ugh!!! If your site is suddenly slow, try to think of any recent changes you made… certain themes and plugins can have a big effect.
Just to add to what KeriLynn said, make sure you use the P3 plugin mentioned in the infographic. It not only lets you know how fast or slow each of your WP plugins are, but if you check the “Detailed Breakdown” tab it also tells you how quickly your theme is loading. That should help you pinpoint problem areas so you know if the issue is with a specific plugin or your theme.
Hi Jennifer! I’m kind of new to this whole website thing. What type of software do you use to benchmark/test website speed with? Is it just the websites (GTMetrix, etc.) you mentioned or do you also use software? Also, do you know of http://www.giftofspeed.com and http://varvy.com? I found quite a few good tips on these sites which helped me out, maybe helpful to your visitors! XX Marja
I use web-based tools only — Google’s and Pingdom.