Optimize and speedup your WordPress blog

There are various ways to make your WordPress blog super speedy. Follow these 20 steps to make your WordPress blog rocket fast. We all know that slow sites may be penalized by search engines. So follow these steps and make your WordPress blog super fast.

1. Check your Blog loading time

First of all check your blog loading time from HERE. If your page load time is less than 2 seconds then I think no need to optimize your website or blog. But if it is 8 seconds or more then you must try to bring its speed to 2 seconds.

2. Minimize dynamic PHP and database queries

Try to replace PHP queries with HTML code. Fow example you can replace PHP query in your header.php file of your theme with static HTML code.

<title><?php bloginfo(’name’); ?><?php bloginfo(’description’); ?></title>

<style type=”text/css” media=”screen”>@import url( <?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url’); ?> );</style>

3. Update Regularly

Update your WordPress regularly because every update comes with performance enhancement.

4. Disable Unused Plugins

Disable unused plugins which are activated but your don’t want those.

5. Reduce White-Spaces

Reducing white-spaces will improve loading time of your page.

Example of whitespace:

.theme { font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; color: #2233FF; }

Example with less whitespace:

.theme {font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15px; color: #2233FF;}

6. Use external Scripts

Use external javascripts and avoid writing script in header page because if external script will be there then browser will load that script in cache and pages will take less time if it is using same script.

Example of using external script

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”example-script.js”></script>

7. Make static URLs

Make following URL static in your header.php file

• Stylesheet URL
• Pingback URL
• feed URL

8. Remove Generator code

Remove WordPress version display from header.php i.e.

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress 3.0.1″ />

9. Minimize external website’s scripts

Try to minimize external call of Amazon, eBay, facebook, twitter, digg, etc. If possible try to put simple link to these since if you are putting javascript code for button of these then your page will take lot of time to load.

10. Reduce image size

Check your images size including logo. Try to minimize size of logo (here I mean reducing image size in KB not in its dimension)

11. Display less posts per page

Try to display less number of posts in home page or category page. You may put page number button to open next page for displaying more posts.

12. Host images/media on other server

Try to host your images on image hosting server like flickr, photobucket etc. These server have capability to handle lot of load which your small/shared server can’t.

13. Don’t upload videos on your server

Do not upload videos on your server. Upload your videos on youtube.

14. Compress Scripts

Compress your JavaScript upto 60% from here.

15. Compress CSS

Compress your CSS by using this plugin.

16. Validate your page

Validate your blog/page from W3C to find any issue which might be making your blog too slow.

17. Use progressive rendering

Use progressive rendering by loading CSS file at the top of your page and loading JavaScript at the bottom of your page (near end of HTML tag </html>)

18. Use IFrameWidget plugin

You may use IFrameWidgets WordPress Plugin that can stop slow loading JavaScript widgets from breaking your page.

19. Repair your database

Use this WordPress plugin to repair your database by checking all tables and fix and errors.

20. Use WordPress caching plugins

Use WP Super Cache WordPress Plugin to cache your pages so that no need to dynamically create page every-time.

Do not forget to compare your blog loading time before changes and after changes from Pingdom and Website Speed Test

Happy Speedy Blog