Performance Matters: Optimizing Page Load

5.1 Optimizing WordPress Websites

Now the stuff you've learned so far works really well on static web pages, but sometimes you're using a platform or a content management system to build your website. For example, WordPress. So, how do you optimize for WordPress? Even with WordPress you can apply the things you've learned, but you can also do some additional things to speed up your website. First of all, make sure you have the latest version of WordPress installed. Of course, if you are using a custom theme, you gotta make sure your theme is compatible with the latest version, but Usually the newer versions come with lots of improvements including performance ones. Then consider doing a bit of cleanup, have a look at the plugins you have installed and uninstall the ones you don't need or you don't use anymore. Plugins can seriously affect performance. So that's definitely something to consider. Also consider caching your blog. Plugins like WP SuperCache do a great job with that. So, if you're wondering what caching is, well basically a plugin like WP SuperCache will generate HTML files from your blog, and it's gonna store them In the browser memory. And the next time you visit that website those static files will be loaded instead of asking for new ones from the server. Because we're talking about WordPress here, a lot of PHP file, there's a lot of processing going on on the server, so by actually caching your website, you're loading your webpage fast because it's loading from your local memory basically, or local storage And you are avoiding additional processing on the server. Something else you could do is optimize your databases from php my admin. It's really easy to do, simply open your database, select all the tables and then click on Optimize Table. So, there you have it. Just a few tips on how to optimise WordPress sites. Some very simple things with great results. Now please join me in the next lesson for the conclusion and a small assignment.