My blog is slow. How can I speed it up?
There are many reasons a blog can be slow – from themes, plugins, loading scripts, images, etc. Here are the most common and effective ways to speed up your blog.
Please be advised: refrain from utilizing any caching plugins other than the one mentioned in this article.
Install the Jetpack Boost plugin
Install and activate Jetpack Boost. Then, turn on these settings:
- Optimize Critical CSS Loading (manual)
- Defer Non-Essential JavaScript
- Image CDN
Server-Side Cache Enabler
This is a bit more involved and requires editing the .htaccess file. One way to optimize the Time To First Byte (TTFB) is by installing the Cache Enabler plugin. This plugin helps improve website performance by caching pages and serving them to visitors more quickly.
However, simply installing the plugin is not enough. You need to configure it by adding a specific configuration to the .htaccess file.
The .htaccess file is a file used by the Apache webserver to control various aspects of website behavior. Adding the necessary configuration ensures that the Cache Enabler plugin functions optimally and delivers faster load times.
To add the configuration to the .htaccess file, you can directly copy it from the Apache config for Cache Enabler. This page provides the specific code that needs to be added to the file in order to enable the Cache Enabler plugin. Learn how to edit the Htaccess file.
Change Theme
Activate one of the default themes (like Twenty Twenty). If the blog is now fast, the issue lies in the theme. We recommend finding a different theme that loads faster.
Disable Plugins
Disable all plugins and check if it speeds up the blog. If it does, the culprit is one of the plugins. Re-enable them one by one until you find the one slowing the blog down.
Automatic caching
Blogs will be put into caching mode when traffic exceeds 4GB in the last four days or there are more than 40k requests in the last four days.
Purge cache
You can purge cache so everyone sees changes immediately. Go to the blog info page and click the three dots in the top right, and select the Purge Cache option from the dropdown.
