Many times, self-hosted WordPress Sites have a tendency to run a bit slower that visitors and site owners would like. This is especially true when the site has a large volume of traffic each day. Quite a few different things can contribute to a site running slowly, but it is something that users truly hate. One of the reasons that you might have a slow running site is the theme you are using. If you are using a code heavy theme not professionally designed, there is a chance that it could be causing your site to slow down. Always make sure that you use WordPress premium themes for your design.
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The following tips should help site owners who have self-hosted WordPress sites make their sites run a bit faster.
Are You Running the Latest and Greatest?
WordPress has different versions that come out all of the time. Each of the updates has a number of different features and enhancements over the previous version, and this means that the upgrade has the potential to make your site run much better and faster, which is just what you want. If you have a self-hosted site, you might not always be aware of the updates, so it is a good idea to check to make sure that you have the latest version.
In addition to the version of WordPress that you are using, it is also a good idea to make sure that you have up to date versions of plugins and even widgets that you use with your theme. Using the later versions can be better because they might have updated code that makes them more efficient and faster, so they won’t be a drain and slow your site down.
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When you are looking at your plugins, check to see which ones you have on your site and which ones you are running. Do you need to use all of them? You might find that you aren’t using some of the plugins. You can disable them, or delete them. This limits the amount of code that your site has to load, and naturally that’s going to make your site faster.
Unruly Code
Those who have sites and who aren’t developers probably have no idea that jumbled and bulky code can cause your side to be quite slow. If you aren’t a site developer, you might want to have a professional who will be able to come in and help you clean up the code. You have a few things that you can try in order to get your code to work faster. If you don’t understand them, your designer should be able to take care of them for you.
First, consider using some external scripts rather than placing so much code in the header.php file. What this does it let the browser cache the information so that it doesn’t have to load for all of the other pages using that header. Second, consider using shorthand CSS. It will do the same thing, take up less space, and it can actually load faster too.
HTML Rather than PHP Queries
By reducing the number of PHP queries that your site has, you can make it faster. By using static HTML for a page load rather than PHP queries, you can make your site speed up.
These are a few of the ways that you can increase the speed of your site. Doing so is going to make your visitors much happier. Even if you are able to shave off just a second or two, it is something the visitors are going to notice and appreciate.
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