Site Speed
30-90 minAdvanced
Speed is money. Faster sites rank better and convert better. Aim for <2s load time.
Prerequisites
- Admin Access
- Backup taken
Medium Recommended
Caching Plugin (The Big Gun)
The single most effective speed improvement.
1
Install cache plugin
1
WP Rocket (Best Paid), LiteSpeed Cache (Best Free for LS Server), W3 Total Cache (Free)
2
Enable Page Caching
3
Enable Browser Caching
4
Enable GZIP Compression
Best Practices
Do
- Use a CDN (Cloudflare)
- Minify CSS and JS
- Lazy load images and iframes
- Disable unused plugins
Don't
- Host videos directly on your server (use YouTube/Vimeo)
- Use 5 different font families
- Use a slider plugin (usually huge performance killers)
Verification Checklist
- GTMetrix Grade A
- Google PageSpeed Mobile Score > 80
- TTFB < 200ms
- Total Page Size < 1.5MB
Pro Tips
- Check your PHP version. Upgrading from PHP 7.4 to 8.x can give a free 10% speed boost.
- Use "Query Monitor" plugin to find slow database queries.
Common Issues & Fixes
Problem: Site breaks after minification
Solution: CSS/JS minification can break layouts. Exclude problematic files from minification one by one until it works.