13 WordPress plugins to speed up website loading: how to speed up your website with WP

WordPress plugins to speed up website loading

An updated collection of free plugins for a WordPress site that will fix code errors, cache pages and make loading faster.

In the article:

1. Search engines love fast loading
2. What determines the website loading speed
3. Plugins to speed up website loading on WordPress

The first thing that affects the user’s experience of the site is the speed of its loading. If the site does not load in the first three seconds, most likely the user will close it. Even if an ideal sales funnel is built on the site, usability is thought out, something profitable and useful is being sold, the client will not see it, because he will not wait for the download.

Search engines love fast loading

Search engines also encourage faster downloads. Yandex says that more than 40% go online with 3G Internet, so heavy pages will load very slowly. The problem of a long server response is considered critical: if the average response time of all pages is longer than three seconds, you will see a warning in Yandex.Webmaster

Google in July 2018 launched the Google Speed ​​Update algorithm , which lowers the search results for sites that take a very long time to load. Online stores are especially at risk because they are usually functionally overloaded.

Many website owners and SEO specialists have complained about a significant drawdown after the algorithm update. Position monitoring services did not show any significant changes:

But sites that took a really long time to load dropped in the SERPs. Interestingly, according to the analysis of Barry Schwartz, owner of the Seroundtable portal, the update hurt health websites the most :

Affected 42% of the official resources of medical institutions, private sites about health and fitness, healthy lifestyle. The reason for this bias in the results is unknown, more precisely, there is no official answer, but there are versions that we talked about in the article ” How to promote websites in medical topics .”

Even if your site is far from the topic of health, you still need to work on speed.

What determines the website loading speed

Website loading speed depends on several factors, each of which can be accelerated as far as possible.

Server parameters, hosting

Server response time is the time it took between the network and the server to return the first requested byte of the HTML file. The longer this time, the longer the user has a white loading screen instead of a website. It is bad if the server response time is more than three seconds, Yandex.Webmaster will display a notification about a critical error.

Server response speed, layout, CSS and JS optimization affect the loading time of the main part of the site.

Often the problem may be that there are not enough hosting resources – CPU and disk system speed. Usually it is advised to find an SSD hosting and use CDN networks to reduce the time of content delivery – the system will choose the server closest to the user.

According to John Mueller , Google determines site speed by the big picture, not by milestones. Fast First Byte Load (TTFB) is not enough, it is not an indicator of a good user experience. The overall load and render times are important, so it’s worth working on all the options available.

Sites load more slowly on smartphones than on desktop, especially from mobile Internet.

So it is especially important to monitor the download speed from mobile, the indicators can differ from the desktop ones by almost two times. The first screen should appear no later than one and a half seconds later, and the entire page should not load for more than two seconds.Read on the topic:” 

How to speed up loading: optimizing the code at the top of the page “: asynchronous loading, jQuery, minification and merging, caching and other methods.

Some SEOs advise to reduce the number of language settings that are loaded by WordPress as standard, and so remove some of the download from the hosting.

To do this, in the root directory, you need to find the wp-config.php file, in which to find the line

define ('WPLANG', 'ru_RU');

And replace it with this code:

if (strpos($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], 'wp-admin')) define ('WPLANG', 'ru_RU'); else define ('WPLANG', 'ru_RU_lite');

Site page weight

The loading speed also depends on the weight of HTML pages – heavy pages with complex functionality and heavy media files will take a long time to load. To make the page lighter, you can customize HTML elements with CSS, use media compression, configure caching, minify the page code.More about this in the article ” 

How to reduce the weight of the site and speed up page loading “: gzip, brotli, minification and other methods.

Redirects

Redirects slow down speed – the server connects to one page, receives a redirect response, and goes to another. If the site has a lot of 301 redirects, check by traffic sources, maybe in some cases it is worth replacing the link with the redirect to the final page.

Redirects from HTTP to HTTPS can also slow down the process, in this case HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) technology will help – then the browser will automatically make internal redirects, immediately make a request for HTTPS and redirect users to a secure connection. To do this, you need to enable the HSTS function in your personal hosting account or register the HTTP Strict Transport Security header. But we advise you to test the function first to make sure all pages are accessible.

Plugins to speed up website loading on WordPress

Plugins to speed up website loading on WordPress

For WordPress site owners, we have compiled a selection of plugins that work with acceleration, page caching and optimization. All plugins from the collection are translated into Russified and free.Read on:

What to choose: SaaS, IaaS or PaaS? Comparison of cloud software models

Optimize Database

WordPress backs up posts when you save and edit them, they are all stored in the database. To improve the speed of work, you can optimize the database – carry out a revision using a plugin.

Capabilities:

• deleting backup copies of posts with the ability to set the allowed number of copies for storage;
• removes spam comments, unused tags, pingbacks, trackbacks;
• optimizes database tables;
• creates a log of optimizations, there is a setting for automatic optimization.

Compatible up to version 5.2.3 of WordPress, requires PHP 5.0 or higher.

WP-Optimize

Plugin for database cleaning, image compression and caching.

Capabilities:

• deleting backups, spam comments, pingbacks, trackbacks;
• Massive compression of images in PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP and TIF format;
• caching: device specific cache, cache preload, extended file exclusion rules;
• gzip compression of HTML, JavaScript and CSS;
• setting up automatic cleanings on a schedule.

It works for free, there is a premium version with additional features. Compatible with WordPress versions from 3.8.

WP Fastest Cache

The plugin creates static html files from a WordPress site and saves them, that is, it caches pages.

Capabilities:

• caching pages in the browser for faster loading for users who have visited the site before;
• gzip compression;
• code optimization;
• reducing the size of css files.

The plugin is HTTPS compatible, supports SSL , CDN, Cloudflare. Does not work with Multisite mode. Compatible with WordPress versions from 3.3

PageSpeed ​​Ninja

The plugin improves the performance of a WordPress site, works with desktop and mobile display.

Capabilities:

• caching pages in the browser and on the server;
• gzip compression of files;
• optimization of the order in which styles and scripts will be loaded;
• compression of images;
• low resolution image preview;
• and other actions to speed up loading and lighten the page weight.

The plugin may not be compatible with some sites, so check the compatibility at PageSpeed.Ninja . Enter your domain, the results will appear on the screen and come by email.

Compatible with WordPress versions 4.0.1 and up.

PageSpeed ​​Module

The plugin opens additional page settings to speed up loading if the site uses an open source Apache or Nginx web server.

Capabilities:

• clearing the cache from modules;
• enabling developer mode to bypass PageSpeed ​​caching.

To work, you need to have the Apache or Nginx web server installed. The plugin is compatible with WordPress versions from 4.4.

Jetpack

A plugin from WordPress.com, it should work to improve the site design, provide users with a secure experience, and track marketing data. Some optimizers wrote that they do not see the effect, but it is better to test it yourself.

Capabilities:

• lazy loading of images to speed up work on mobile devices;
• themes for registration;
• support for statistics and analytics;
• automatic posting on social networks with publication scheduling;
• website statistics and analytics
• Elasticsearch – search for similar content on sites;
• spam filtering;
• daily reservations;
• payment system support;
• two-factor authentication for entering the site;
• and other opportunities for safe website operation and marketing.

Some features are paid, the price depends on the number of connected add-ons. There is a free minimum rate.

Compatible with WordPress versions from 5.1, PHP version from 5.6.

All in One SEO Pack

The plugin works with speeding up page loading, but is intended in general to automate the work with SEO site.

Capabilities:

• Google AMP support to speed up the loading of mobile pages;
• Google notification of site changes
• automatic header optimization and meta tag generation;
• Google Analytics support;
• built-in API that allows you to modify plugins for yourself;
• and other SEO functionality.

Compatible with PHP from 5.2.4 version. Compatible with WordPress from version 4.7.

WP Total cache

The plugin handles HTML page caching, combining styles and scripts, browser caching.

Capabilities:

• testing server settings to select plugin settings for comfortable work;
• import of settings if you are working with several projects;
• caching pages and objects;
• compression of CSS and JavaScript;
• tracking plugin work.

Requires WordPress 3.2 or higher.

WP Super Cache

Plugin for caching HTML pages. Doesn’t optimize JS / CSS, but the following plugin from the collection does it.

Capabilities:

• easy to enable and disable caching;
• setting up deadlines and pages for caching;
• setting up caching for the mobile version;
• CDN support;
• collection of statistics on pages.

Compatible with WordPress versions from 3.1, the minimum requirement is PHP version 5.2.4 or higher.

Autoptimize

The plugin works with code, scripts and page styles to speed up loading. Works well in tandem with the previous plugin.

Capabilities:

• JavaScript and CSS optimization;
• fix the code blocking the display of the top of the page.
• caching and merging scripts and styles;
• work with headers;
• moving scripts to the footer;
• simplification of HTML.

Compatible with WordPress versions 4.0 and higher, PHP versions 5.3 and higher.

AMP for WordPress

The plugin makes pages load faster by converting them to AMP. Such pages load quickly: all elements are static, so their positions and sizes can be determined before loading, and the layout is loaded immediately without reflow.

Capabilities:

• converting pages to AMP, then / amp / will be added to the URL of each page;
• displaying the site as “Native AMP”, then each address will have only one AMP version of the URL;
• updating the cache on a schedule.

Supports CDN. Compatible with WordPress versions from 4.9, PHP from 5.4.

Smush Image Compression and Optimization

The plugin reduces and compresses images for fast page loading.

Capabilities:

• compression of images when uploading to the site;
• compression already loaded from any directory;
• setting borders – maximum height and width, large images will be compressed and resized;
• configuring lazy loading;
• massive work with images.