WordPress can slow down once you installed a lot of plug-ins since many plug-ins use Java script, and images which can slow down your WordPress loading time, and this will cause some of your visitors to leave especially the visitor who still use dial-up or slow internet connections on their computer.
Plug-ins also get in the way of reading content, and be very distracting, so it might also lead to less revenue since people click on your plug-ins and don’t notice your content, ads, and other promotional informations.Â
I used to have this problem on this blog with the background color load times which is the white color, so I decided to remove some plug-ins which I never use or most of my visitors don’t care about like “Alexa rank plug-in, Twitter update widget, and pagerank button.
Plus, when people click on those plug-ins, they go to Twitter, Alexa, page rank website, or other websites, so I could be losing some earnings since once they go on Twitter, Alexa, and Page rank website, or the plug-in’s website they are less likely to click the back button or stay on my site to read more blogs and click on an interesting affiliate link or donate to the blog since they left.
1. Deactivate and delete WordPress plug-ins which you never use or are not much value to your visitors. To remove plug-ins, go to your plug-ins menu in the WordPress control admin panel and click deactivate on a plug-in you don’t want anymore, and then uninstall.
2. Avoid installing too many social bookmarking plug-in which a small percentage of the internet population uses. I just keep Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumbleupon, Yahoo Buzz, Tweetmeme, Reddit, Google Buzz, LinkedIn and a few other popular Social Bookmarking services.
If your blog is about entertainment, you probably should stick to Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Live, Yahoo Buzz, and entertainment themed social bookmarking services.
3. Don’t install too many ads on your website since they can slow down your website load time if you installed multiple ads from multiple advertising networks like Adbrite, Adsense, Amazon Associates, etc.
4. If the plug-in is hard coded into your WordPress template, you can just remove it by deleting the script for the plug-in on the template (Backup your template file before you make changes since this can seriously mess up your blog if you installed something you need)
5. Use the WordPress [More] button to shorten your post on your front page. People need to click the link to read the entire story.
6. Limit the amount of pictures and videos on your blog posts since pictures can take a long time to load if they are too big.
7. Use thumbnail size pictures when you can, and link the thumbnail picture to the full size picture.
8. Save your files as Jpegs, pngs, or gifs and use medium to low quality settings to save your images for your blog.
9. Avoid autoplay music and videos since it is annoying and it can take up a lot of bandwidth for slower internet connections.
10. In the reading settings for WordPress you can limit the amount of articles which show up per page. If you do not post on a daily basis, I recommend making the posts per page Blog pages show at most” to 3 or 4 posts since having post which are very far when it comes to posting dates can make your blog look kind of inactive since if a one post is posted on the 1st and the second post is posted on the 25th then some visitors think your blog won’t have many new stories. Plus, scrolling down a blog with tons of posts can be very annoying since it can make peoples fingers tired.
Extra tips:
Use text links instead of image or flash based links since text links uses the less bandwidth and load faster.
You can also optimize your wordpress database and remove post revisions, & spam posts with a plug-in called WP-Optimize which you can find at WordPress.org .
It is best to make your blog front page to finish loading in under 2 seconds to 4 seconds on most internet medium to high speed connections or some of your visitors might click the back button and go to another page on the search engine results from Google. If you want to find out how fast your website loads, you can find website load time tester by doing a search for them online.Â
By speeding up your load times, Google bot, and other search engine bots can index more of your websites since Google bot only stays on your site for a small amount of time and goes a way.
Plug-ins are cool, but writing good unique content which people find useful or interesting is what keeps visitors coming back to your blog.
Or, in addition to your tips some additional plugins can actually be used to speed it up without loosing functionality!
I agree some Plug-ins like WP-SuperCache, and WP-Optimize DB optimizer can speed up a blog load time and database space usage.
Related posts WP plugin can also improve the user speed for finding related posts they might be interested in.
Thanks for the suggestion on how some plug-ins can speed up a site.
What you have covered is very true about plugins slowing down site loading times. I think this is why it is very important to really dig into a Wordpress theme before you buy one. Some designers build in a lot of features that reduce the need for plugins to give the desired / required functionality.
Warmest regards,
Karl
I heard Thesis Wordpress theme is a very customizable theme which works from the Wordpress control Panel. Thanks for the input on paid themes. I found the alexa, and Pagerank, Twitter and other HTML whhich I embed into my sidebar tends to slow down my site as well, so I remove them. I also believe they are not very useful for the typical user to see since they probably don’t care about Alexa ranks, page rank, and rankings. I mainly use plug-ins which make users be able to find my content easier like related posts, most recent comment, and articles, etc.
thankssssss…. my blog was too slow,, i will do this..
No problem, Also reducing the number of post to 5 or less can increase your page load time, and think about making your image file size smaller.
I think the most important part of what you said is DELETE.
I recently had a blog which was super slow, and to bug test I deactivated nearly all plugins, but the site was still super slow. I diagnosed it to one of the larger plugins which even though not activated, was still slowing the site down by simply being in the plugins folder. So, deactivate and delete old plugins, and activate wp-super-cache is great advice 😉
Hi Hugh, I been using W3 Total Cache, but I used WP-super-cache before. I found W3 Total Cache to work better espiecally if you have a VPS or Dedicated server. W3 also caches your CSS files.
I normally just delete plug-ins which I no longer use since it makes managing them more easily.
I am really enjoying the theme/design of your site. Do you ever run into any browser compatibility problems?
A handful of my blog audience have complained about my site not
operating correctly in Explorer but looks great in Chrome.
Do you have any tips to help fix this problem?
I am using Thesis 1.8.6 theme By Diythemes which looks good on most browsers. Changing your theme may help you improve the look of your site.