It’s no denying fact that with every passing day more and more people are using WordPress which is quite visible from the rising market share. At LUBUS we have been providing WordPress powered websites & solutions to our clients. We try to provide our clients with a handcrafted solution for more control over various aspects. These days more and more users are accessing the web via mobile devices and it’s much recommended to optimize the website for better rendering & speed.

When using readymade themes & plugins it often leads to slow down of the website due to various reasons. We often get clients asking us for website optimization, some even explicitly ask us to analyze website with “Google Page Speed” and optimize the website for the better score. We simply don’t believe in the metrics but rather believe in performance optimization.

We have done this for many of our clients and we would like to share that. You will get to know what all things need to be taken care what all resources or plugins you can use.

Google tools come in handy, they provide you with guidelines for optimizing performance, test your website with either “Page Speed Insight” or “With Google“.

Image Optimization

Images are an important part of the website and at the time its difficult to eliminate them completely. But it can lead to increase in page load time and size. It’s important that images used on the website are optimized for web. We love compressor.io handy easy to use an online tool to compress your images. If you would like to handle this automatically for images upload and also bulk optimizing existing images then “EWWW Image Optimizer” & “Smush Image Compression and Optimization” plugin is what you can use.

HTML/JS/CSS Optimization

It’s quite a common scenario to have several JS/CSS file loaded by a website which adds up to the request queue. Too many request and files can add up to load time & size. Minification can help tackle this by optimizing the files size & reduces the requests. For handcrafted solutions, things become bit easy as you have control over it. Still, we can achieve this by using “Autoptimize” plugin to optimize resources for you.

Google Fonts Optimization

Google web font come in handy for website typography and quite common to have it on your website. But that will add to Render-Blocking Resources. Hopefully “Google Webfont Optimizer” helps you with optimizing the font loading.

WordPress Caching

Requesting same WordPress post/page again can be resource intensive it’s good to serve them statically. “WP Super Cache” help you with serving content statically which leads to quick website loading.

Browser Caching

Every time user request website page/post statics resources like JS/CSS/Images etc are loaded for performance its best to leverage browser caching. Browser caching help in storing this static resource at user end & serve them when needed instead of loading them from the server. Adding the following to .htaccess to enable browser caching for static resources.

Server Compression

Most servers have GZIP enable which help is compressing various resources when request which help in reducing the pages size and load time. Add the following to enable.

Google Analytics Loading

Browser caching implemented above doesn’t work for google analytics javascript. Many workarounds are available when you google but we found “Complete Analytics Optimization Suite (CAOS)” helpful it enables you to complete optimize the usage of Google Analytics on your WordPress Website. Host your Google Analytics javascript-file (analytics.js) locally and keep it updated using wp_cron(). Easily Anonymize the IP-address of your visitors. Set an Adjusted Bounce Rate. Decide whether to load the Analytics Tracking code in the header or footer. And more!

Server Response Time

Server response time is an important factor considering performance optimization. Good web hosting is something which ensures best possible response time. Spinning your cloud server and using CDN can give your more control & performance.

Okay so now that you aware go ahead and get the most out of it. Have fun!