As the most popular CMS in the world, WordPress needs to meet its users’ ever-growing expectations. The average WordPress user wants everything to work fast.
Some plugins and themes on WordPress can work wonders at improving speed. This article presents six of them. There are tens of plugins that can optimize response time, but these make a difference.
Table of Contents
1. WP Super Minify
This plugin often appears in tutorials on how to install WP plugins. It can bring together, cache, and compress inline CSS and JavaScript files. After you install it, the plugin automatically analyzes JavaScript and CSS files and gets rid of unnecessary lines, spaces, and characters. These processes ultimately speed up your WordPress site.
2. W3 Total Cache
This plugin speeds up websites by reducing page loading time. If your WordPress website gets thousands of queries daily, you’ll find it very helpful.
When does a database query occur? This happens every time someone opens one of the pages. The plugin stores the most frequent database queries so that they don’t have to be repeated. All the different pages open instantly as a result.
There are three caching modes: browser, object, and lazy load. The default version is the browser cache function. The plugin establishes the best time limit to cache website resources. This prevents excessive caching periods, which can slow down the website.
In object caching mode, W3 Total Cache tests the object caching methods to cut down on page loading time and database queries. The server has to support Memcached or Redis for active object caching to improve website speed.
Finally, lazy load mode cuts down on the loading time of pages rich in images. Lazy load runs automatically in Chrome and Mozilla.
3. WP-Optimize
WP-Optimize is a multipurpose content optimizer. This plugin is a must-have for every blogger. A blog has to be current to rank high in Google search results.
Whenever you edit a post, WordPress automatically generates a revision copy. This can become a problem. For example, you make two revisions, which is perfectly normal for a blogger, but that yields two revision copies. Ultimately, revisions pile up and slow the website down.
WP-Optimize resolves this issue by removing all revision copies except the last one. It can also improve your speed by deleting spam comments. It evaluates the comment database and removes comments you haven’t approved as well as the ones it perceives as spam.
4. Smush Image Optimizer
Visually appealing images can make your content stand out. Without them, SEO efforts won’t be as effective as they otherwise could. Mobile phones today have powerful cameras that can capture jaw-dropping images, catching even the most minute detail.
However, these images can be bulky and increase loading time. Smush Image Optimizer can compress HD images without sacrificing their quality. It can process dozens of images all at once, eliminating idle colors and unnecessary metadata. The plugin supports all image file formats.
5. Perfmatters
This plugin is focused on performance. When you activate it, it scans your WordPress site for default settings that might have an adverse effect on performance and adjusts them. It also gets rid of any unnecessary HTTP requests to the server by deactivating specific page scripts.
Perfmatters also controls WordPress’s heartbeat. This is not literally a heartbeat, but an API service, which sends regular requests to the server to carry out certain tasks. The plugin monitors this function’s CPU use and the number of requests made. It does this so your website doesn’t stall.
6. WP Rocket
The final choice combines the strengths of all the plugins discussed above. Rocket is a multifunctional plugin that prevents the slow loading of images, reduces Java scripts, and compresses content.
Among its unique features are Google Analytics integration and Direct Cloudflare. Analytics localizes JavaScript files and moves analytics code to the bottom, speeding up your site. Cloudflare ensures quick loading from multiple locations.
