In this age of digitization, there is hardly anyone who is not familiar with Wordpress. People initially thought of WordPress as a platform that was used to publish blogs or articles, but as time passed people started getting familiar with WordPress and its huge potential. WordPress is much more than just a sheer platform. WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS). It can be incorporated with Salesforce DevOps very easily. WordPress has gained tremendous popularity in the past few years because it allowed people to create websites, blogs, portfolios, e-stores, applications, etc. The WordPress software is incredibly easy to use, install and amend. One does not require any prior knowledge of coding or other technical skills to use WordPress. Due to the ease and efficiency, WordPress has provided to its customers, more and more people are switching to WordPress.

It is believed that WordPress powers nearly 35% of the Web, which rationalizes the hype around it. WordPress has also developed an easy progressive optimization system for its users, due to which its users were able to boost their income and efficiency to their fullest. One of the most important WordPress optimization factors is speeding up a WordPress cloud-hosted site. In a technical survey, it was found that the first 5 seconds of any load page time had a direct impact on customer conversion rates. A lagging admin panel or website load page is most likely to impact the commercials, credibility of the site, and the time efficiency of the site in a negative way. Hence, optimizing the speed of WordPress cloud-hosted sites becomes a priority. So the question arises

Speeding up a Cloud Hosted WordPress Site

There are many ways by which we can speed up a cloud-hosted WordPress site, each method can be used individually to perform this task and anyone can choose between them depending upon their needs and requirements.

1) Contacting Cloud Host Provider

This is the most basic way to get started, it is always recommended to consult your cloud host provider about their product and know in-depth about its features, specifications, compatibility, etc. Your cloud host provider will be able to set up a dedicated server or inform you about other tools according to your requirements. A dedicated server or a big server is faster and more efficient than shared or small servers. And when one gets a server for themselves they do not have to worry about bumping against the limit of the servers. And the cloud host providers often know about your requirements so they are able to suggest some tips and tricks or recommend some tools which help the user in speeding up and managing their site well. Many WordPress users take the help of various Salesforce DevOps tools and techniques and take advantage of the services they provide, like release management in DevOps to Speed up and manage their sites. The Automated Release Management for salesforce DevOps provided by AutoRABIT is one such example, it takes care of the site and software in all stages like planning, scheduling, controlling, and deployment.

2) Setting up Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN or Content Delivery Network speeds up a WordPress site by improving its loading time. It is a significant option because it is capable of speeding up WordPress sites irrespective of the kind of site. Many Salesforce DevOps tools can be used for setting up a Content Delivery Network. The tools are responsible for fast site performance and security protection. It is basically a geographically distributed network and it boosts the load time of a site by distributing services to end-users and routing the visitors to the nearest data center. It is similar to version control in DevOps, the version control in Salesforce DevOps speeds up the software or site by reducing the development time whereas the Content Delivery Network speeds up the site by reducing the load time.

3) Compressing Media Files on the site

The presence of large media files like large images and videos slows down the speed of the WordPress site very significantly, it is advised to compress the media files if deleting them is not possible. A free plugin is available for WordPress and it is capable of Compressing Media Files. It reduces image dimensions automatically and the best part is that the user does not have to compress each media file individually, the free plug-in is capable of Compressing all media files in one go. This is one of the easiest and simplest ways to carry out speed optimization of a WordPress site.

3) Checking the data center of the website and database

If the WordPress website and database are in the same data center the process of fetching posts, files, etc. is made easy and efficient. Hence, it is very important to check if the WordPress website and database are in the same data center. Proximity is an important factor when we are considering cloud hosting. The location of the WordPress website and database are known to the hosting providers, so one can contact them easily also, many hosting providers company show their server locations beforehand, so it is always a good idea to check if the data center of the website and database is the same.

4) Disabling hotlinking

Hotlinking is something that many WordPress users are not aware of. Hotlinking is a technical term that is used when resources from one website are being used as resources by other websites. When an image is being copied by one website and is being used by another website when the second website has loaded the image is loaded from the former website, we term it hotlinking. Most of the time, this happens without the knowledge of the site owner. It also proves to be very expensive for the site owner in many cases, as this puts a lot of pressure on the website. Hotlinking is basically consuming bandwidth and resources from one server to another. There are certain codes available on the web which can disable hotlinking. Disabling hotlinking improves the speed of WordPress sites considerably and protects the legal rights of the site owner as a license holder.

5) Removing unused Widgets

WordPress site owners ars often in awe of the wide range of widgets, social buttons, sharing buttons that are provided by WordPress, the users often add as many widgets as they can in order to increase the aesthetic appeal and functionality of their website but they are unaware of the impact they have on their site. They increase the load on the site and bulk up the load time on the site. And each widget gets individually added to the database. Hence, it is very important to keep a check on the use of widgets in the WordPress site. It boosts up the speed of the website significantly.

5) Using Google fonts

Google fonts are used by many WordPress users since they provide a wide range of fonts because of their extensive library and also the fact that the Google Fonts are hosted by separate servers which significantly reduces the load on the server. Many WordPress users think that Google fonts just increase the visual and aesthetic appeal of their site but the WordPress users are unaware there is more to it. Google fonts can be used to optimize the speed of the WordPress site. Optimizing the speed of the WordPress site can be done very easily. The first step is to pre-load Google fonts on the system. The second step is to always host your Google fonts locally which can be done by font files in the local system by the user. The last step is to use limited font variants because, like the excessive use of widgets, excessive use of Google fonts in the WordPress site can slow down the speed of the site.

6) Using third-party platforms for media content

Using media content on a WordPress site is a great way of engaging audiences, but everyone is aware of the impact they have on the speed of the WordPress site. Media content can be compressed to an extent. But this problem can be tackled by using this party platform for using media content on the WordPress site. In this way, the media content is hosted by the third-party platforms separately due to which the load on the website is significantly reduced. When we use this system, we can very easily speed up the WordPress site, decrease the load on the server and free up resources.

7) Optimizing the home page

Optimizing the home page can speed up the WordPress site considerably. Optimizing WordPress includes doing all the general tasks that we have talked about till now like Compressing the media files, de-cluttering the content, removing useless widgets, using third-party hosts, etc. The cleaner and simpler the home page is, the higher the speed of the WordPress site.

We hope that these solutions work out for you and help you speed up and unlock the true potential of your WordPress site.

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