How To Make Your WordPress Site Load Faster

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Making your WordPress website (or any other platform) load faster is something you should really be concerned with, specially if you are in a shared hosting environment. Not only is a fast loading website good for search engines, it is first and foremost, an important factor for user experience(*). Studies has proven that a slow website can cause you more harm than good and while there are great but expensive solutions out there, fortunately, there are some ways in which you can improve your websites performance without the need to invest a lot of money. Actually, in a lot of cases, you can achieve this by only investing more of your time and effort, to get things done.

(*) User Experience (UX) is something that I will be repeating over and over during my next posts. Why? Because this is what will make the difference for your website to stand out. What users love, will also be loved by search engines.

Ways To Improve Your WordPress Sites Performance

WordPress is simply a great platform, and there are so many things you can do with it, that it is easy to get overwhelmed. Need something? There’s most likely a plugin for that. Plugins makes our lives easier, and improves user experience. The downside is that it consumes resources and could hamper our sites performance.

With that said, and thanks to WPMU.org, I found another way to add to the countless possibilities on how you can decrease further you sites loading time. A few milliseconds here, and another few there, can all add up. The other way that I will show you today, is to make use of jsDelivr, a free CDN for JavaScript and jQquery plugins. This is another one of those tat I like because it does not require to be a “tech” guru to make it work, as are, the recommended solutions below.

Anyway, before talking about jsDelivr, following are all the methods you can apply to enhance your WordPress sites performance. Actually, you should start here first. In order to avoid repeating it again, just head over those articles, and then come back here, if you need more 🙂

Also, don’t forget to use free CDN services such as CloudFlare or Incapsula and browse through Google’s extensive PageSpeed tools.

What is jsDelivr CDN?

This is what jsDeliver say’s:

jsDelivr is a web service for webmasters and developers.  Almost none of the plugin developers allows direct linking to hosted versions of their plugins on their server because they cant handle such traffic. So the users always have to download the plugins and host them on their own servers.

What we offer is the possibility to the developers to offer direct links for the files of their plugins without worrying about bandwidth and high server load, and to users the ability to offload their websites from the javascript/css/images that the plugins use, effectively making them a lot faster.

Different plugins for popular CMSs are planned to be released in the future to help the users use our service without changing any code.

jsDelivr is sponsored by MaxCDN, so that allows them to offer the service for free and don’t have to worry about the generated traffic. Cool!

How To Install and Activate jsDelivr CDN?

Using your WordPress backend, install and activate the plugin from here. Once installed and activated, run the update CDN data. Takes a while.

JavaScript CDN

Once completed, run the “scan your website”. This process will scour through your scripts and will locate does that have a “match” on their library. This process also takes a while and if you think that it is taking too long, just hit refresh.

WP CDN scan

The plugin will now show you a list of scripts that have a match. Check those and enable. The yellow ones can also be enabled, but check them one at the time to see if it does not break.

CDN plugin scan

You are finished.

Does it work?

It does, but it depends whether or not you have scripts that are in jsDelivr’s library. If they are not there, then it would do you no good, although I am convinced that it will grow and eventually you will be able to use it. Just scan your website once in a while, specially if you have installed a new plugin or changed a theme.

Anyway, here on iBlogzone, the difference in speed was minimal, but on one of my client’s website, I saw a substantial difference.

Before jsDelivr

before jsdelivr

After jsDelivr

after jsdelivr

That’s it! I hope this helps you a bit. As I said, it may or may not work for you, but unless you try, you will never know. Just make sure to test your sites performance before and after, to see if it did. If I do find more ways to help increase WordPress performance, I will certainly update this post.

Have you heard about jsDelivr before? Have you tried it yet? If you did, what was your experience with it?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

52 thoughts on “How To Make Your WordPress Site Load Faster”

  • well it works for me,from 1,13s to 0,8 😀
    not too much but worth to install 😉

    • hi DiTesco, Thanks for sharing this post! I really like fast loading sites because if your site loading fast than automatically tou got higher ranking because this is one of the best factor in google search engine score. so thanks for these awesome tips.

  • I recently switched by images and some scripts over to my CDN with Amazon (CloudFront) – what a difference it makes! I’m really eager to dwelve into this plugin, for plugins are one area that I was a bit too afraid to touch with my CDN – I don’t want to have anything go haywire with updates. This seems like the perfect solution.

  • One of the benefit on a good blog is the ability to load more faster so as to use it to encourage readers. i will also try the plugin to know how it work. thanks for sharing

  • It seems that these is very important in order to make your WordPress load faster. I will be able to bookmark them.

    • Great Plugin I install it and check my score on GTmetrix is 3.10s to 1.10s great improvement its work.. Thank you for sharing

  • That’s great DiTesco,

    Fast loading website is the first step in providing user friendly experience to your visitors. So it’s essential to have fast loading website. WordPress website has great ease to manage as you can find number of useful plugins.

  • If your WordPress site loads faster and performs better, it is a good sign for you. This is because more people will like to visit a site like this. Hence, I am very much satisfied with the useful information you have provide here in the post. I am going to make good use of it to improve the performance of my site.

  • Hello Dear

    your post is very useful yes i am totally agree with you this is great Ways To Improve Your W Performance really thanks for the sharing me

  • Great article. Can you tell me if Wishlist is stable/compatible with Thesis 1.8 (I think I’m running). I tried it awhile back and I think there were some issues? Thanks. Chris

  • Great post! After reading your blog, I finally came to know where I was lacking in bringing up my WordPress site. The way you have detailed about jsDelivr CDN is very impressive. Thanks for sharing such a great post!

  • Hi,

    Thanks for sharing this post! I have really been looking for some less-expensive way to make my website load faster. I know that users get irritated when a website loads so slow they end up closing the site instead.

  • Yes, making your WordPress site load faster is one trick you must know to retain visitors and potential customers. There are a lot of ways that you can do and one that is very effective is choosing the right size of pictures you post on your websites.

  • Yep!
    That was exactly we need as we run our business sites with WordPress.
    Will try it.
    However, anyone had a bad time with the jsDelivr plugin?

    • HI. As of now, all of sites are using this plugin and fortunately, did not encounter any problems, yet. The only thing that I noticed is that their library needs to grow more to better take advantage of it.

  • I do something similar on another site I have. I use Google libraries for some of the WordPress jquery. Instead of using the local ones included with WordPress I pull them from Google, which is fast and you can use the minified version. Works on other sites too. It doesn’t help a bunch, but a little. On another site I use w3 total cache to minify and combine .js and .css files, which speeds things up and reduces the number of requests. Some people say minify doesn’t work for them, but I never had a problem with a theme or plugin acting up when using it. Not sure if they don’t set it up right or something. W3 total cache is a little overwhelming for some.

    • Hi Ray. Thanks for leaving your thoughts. I use to use W3 and for some reason I was having problems to properly configure it up. Like you said, it can be quite overwhelming and I prefer to go the route of less complicated one. Either way, making use of cache plugins or others, like this jsDelivr, does make a bit of difference.

  • Excellent post, very detailed and informative, Thanks for the tips but I appreaciate more if you can go deeper into the sub-content.

    • Hi. I will be more than glad to go deeper.. Can you please elaborate on what clarification you need 🙂

  • Great post. After reading this pot i installed WP Super Cache to my blog. now its loading more faster than before.

    • Good to know that your site is loading a bit faster after installing WPSC. Try experimenting with different settings to see if it further improves your sites loading time. Also, making use of Incapsula or Cloudflare can help too. Are you using any of those?

      • it’s really irritating if a site take time to load. it’s also not good in terms with SEO. thanks for sharing an affordable plugin to decrease site’s loading time. I’ll definitely try this plugin to check it’s performance.

  • Great idea ! I have just installed Cloudflare on my blog with the help of your tutorial its working fine, Thank for recommendation 🙂

  • Awesome post, DiTesco! Your article is actually filled with helpful data that each WordPress web site owner ought to understand.
    Thanks for the good info! Keep rockin!

  • Its really a great information for me, fast loading sites will have an edge in search engines.Thanks for the great post.

  • i will try it when i go home this night. Are this plugin work well with w3 total cache

  • I think that a good design and better site loading time are also some very important that we should consider apart from high quality content and consistency.These two points are very important and they can help us to increase our leads as bloggers.Thanks for sharing this informative article.

  • Thanks for sharing such an informative article.I was not aware of many things that you have detailed in this post.I will surely work on improving my site load time because a slow loading website can be really frustrating for readers.The jsDelivr is a great way to improve the site loading time and the best part about this is that we do no require coding.

  • DiTesco I have a confusion, does the cache plugins like w3total cache help site to load faster?

  • I am using CloudFlare CDN For my site from W3 Total Cache and it is working very fine for me.
    Sometimes it cause JS Errors so not comfortable with Adsense 🙁

  • We recently installed this plugin and it has significantly improved our website speed. If you’re looking for a free CDN, jsDeliver is the way to go.

  • never heard about jsdelivr cdn dedicated for javascript and jquery files. 🙂 rest i implemented to experience good page speed score 🙂 great write up.

    Robin.

  • Hey DiTesco,

    That’s a good alternative to the other CDN servcices like MaxCDN, CloudFront etc. Are you sure they will support 100% Uptime and they will cover all regions of the world? Let me know

    Thanks
    Suresh

    • Hi Suresh. 100% is quite far fetched, and I don’t think that anyone can guarantee such a thing. However, 99,99% is likely 🙂 I have been using CloudFlare for nearly two years and although I have had some hiccups, the benefits outweigh the risk.. Some countries may be blocked due to their security issues, but if this happens, just whiltelist the IPs and you are good to go. Its free, and if don’t like it, just turn it off. A lot to gain and nothing to loose

      • Yeah, it’s perfect for beginners. Good find DiTesco and have you tested the Google speed services too?

        • I did most of it, but I was not able to actually test the “speed service”. I think they either abandoned it or I was just not lucky to picked as a beta tester. I do have a friend who was able to and he says that he is happy.. so that´s that 🙂

          • Apply for it right away you will get the invitations and It’s free for first month usage. Go for it mate 🙂 Heard that it’s better .

  • Speed is so important. A slow blog is like delivering a newspaper late — a day late! I’m obsessed with checking my speed and using plugins, etc. to speed loading.

  • I need this plugin, my website is loaded with images and it is slow so I really need something to make it load faster. I am thinking of using this or the CDN thing in my hosting, thanks for the tip.

  • I’m using CloudFlare along with MaxCDN and it works really great. My site loads a lot faster now.

  • Nice and useful post. For sure loading time of a blog is an important factor in SEO’s prospective. It encourages visitors to stay on you blog and lessen the bounce rate.

  • Hey DiTesco,
    Nice post and Thanks for sharing these tips with us as loading time is one of the important factor of a successful blog as if a blog having high loading time then may reader switch from one blog to another. The plugin mentioned by you really seems interesting and i am gonna installed it.

  • Well I am also using some caching plugins and a free CDN service by cloudflare so my question is does these services really works?
    Are these reliable? I still have some loading problem, images are not correctly loading because of cloudflare CDN. Any cheap alternative?

  • please write a post about “how to use wp super cache ” because many new blogger can’t able use this plugin in right way,….

    thanks

  • Hi ! In addition to this plugin for speeding up, there are a lot of paid options that are available these days in the form of CDNs which are inexpensive but deliver really well. When I was reading about CDN services, I also came to know that Dropbox can also be used as a CDN for images 🙂 Technically, Dropbox is not a CDN but we can use it like that. Thanks !

  • Ok, so I installed this plugin and my page speed test score on Google went up by 1, which is good enough for a single change, so it does work and I do recommend it.

  • Let me install this plugin and get back to you with the improvements in the page load time.. though I am already using W3 total cache.

  • Thanks for the Tip! It increased my page speed from 88-90 (GTmatrix)

    • Good to hear Venura. Glad these tips helped.. Can you tell me, what “changes” you’ve made to improve your sites speed?

  • Thanx mate for sharing such a great post about improving website speed !! Will Surely Bookmark This Cool Tut 🙂

  • superb post ….can you tell me which one is free & i should use that for my blog.Right now i am using cloudflare

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