6 Ways To Optimize WordPress Performance
Here are a few great tips to help you optimize your WordPress installation delivered by Ben Metcalfe at WordCamp 2012 in Miami, which will help you push your site into the high-speed Autobahn!
Keep your plug-in updated
Duh! Okay, this is obvious considering the recent malware intrusions on web hosting servers around the world. But, you can never be reminded often enough
Deactivate unused plug-ins
Not only will this save space, it will also protect you from any vulnerability that have not yet been patched by developers who are slow to keep their software up to date in the face of growing software hacks.
Start using caching!
The well known one of course is W3 Total Cache but he also recommends WPSuperCache and BatCache. Caching plug-ins speed up your site and lead to a number of wide-ranging benefits for users who visit and re-visit your site.
Avoid using the Google SiteMap Generator Plug-in
You didn’t see that one coming, did you? According to Metcalfe, this well-known Google Sitemap plug-in rebuilds itself from scratch each time your sitemap changes rather than incrementally adding new changes as they occur. Instead, select another leading plug-in from the WordPress repository that overcomes this limitation. By the way, and this is again obvious, you should only download plugins from WordPress repository and not third party sites which may be phishing genuine ones or may include malware in the download.
Consider using a CDN
A CDN, otherwise known as a Content Delivery Network, allows you to store images and large files on third-party clustered servers around the world whose sole task is to bring content geographically closer to your website visitors, thus speeding up page download times. One company that we recommend for CDN services is VPS.NET. Quite a few developer hands went up at WordCamp confirming they used CDNs, illustrating how popular this method is becoming in optimizing WordPress performance.
Hit the database repair and optimize button!
If you login into our PHPAdmin account on your WestHost server platform, you will see picklist values on your MySQLtable instances called “Repair Table” and “Optimize Table”. These will sequentially interrogate your database tables and auto-repair any hidden issues. This may well translate into faster database speeds for your WordPress Data.