If you are looking to ‘Speed Up Your WordPress Site’; you have landed in the right place.We are going to share with you some information that will help you to speed up your WordPress website, load pages much more quickly, provide a better user experience, and help to improve your SEO.Unlike generic tips for improving the speed of your WordPress, this is an extensive look at WordPress performance optimization.  You will discover why speed is so critical and what is causing your WordPress to slow down.  You will learn the steps you need to take to improve your WordPress speed right way!

Speed Up Your WordPress Site

We will discuss various topics in this post to help you understand why the speed of your WordPress Site is essential.  We will go over the basics for WordPress, easy to follow steps for speeding up our site, installing plugins, the best practices for optimization, how to update our WordPress site on a regular basis, how to create the best images for your site, and fine-tuning your speed with advanced steps.So, why is speed so important for your WordPress Website?Research has shown that the average attention span of viewers has significantly dropped from 12 seconds to 7 seconds.These stats are vital for your website.  You have almost no time to show your visitors what you have to offer on your site and then convince them to stick around.  If your website is slow, you are going to lose visitors to your site even loads up!According to further studies, significant sites such as Google and Amazon have shown that so much as a one second delay in a page loading can cost a 7% loss in conversions, 11% fewer pages being viewed, and a 16% loss of visitor satisfaction.In case you are unaware, if your website is slow, it will cost you money and ranking.  Google and other search engines are penalizing slower sites by lowering them in search results.  In turn, this will lead to less traffic on your site.Bottom line, if you want more traffic, potential customers, and revenue from your site, you must see to it that your WordPress is fast!Unfortunately, many people who are new at having their websites have no idea how slow their information is loading on computers  You must know how to check your WordPress Speed because if you don’t, you are making a terrible mistake!

The Pingdom Tool:

Because you visit your site on a daily basis, today’s browsers will store your website in caches and automatically collect this information as soon as you put in an address.  This, in turn, will make your site load very quickly.  On the other hand, someone visiting your site for the first time, will not have the same luxury.  Users in different geographical areas will experience something completely different as well.  Therefore, it is highly recommended that you test your site’s speed using a tool like Pingdom.  This is a free online tool where you can check your site’s speed from many different locations!You might be scratching your head because you performed a speed test but haven’t a clue what a good speed is!  By general rule, a good pace is under 2 seconds!  The faster you can make your site operate, the better.  Just an increase of a few milliseconds here and there will shave off as much as an entire second of your load time.You might wonder just what causes your site to slow down.  When you perform a speed test, you will receive recommendations to improve your speeds.  Unfortunately, most of the language is technical and very difficult for beginners to understand.  However, it is important to understand what slows down your site because unless you have this knowledge, you will not be able to improve your site’s performance or allow you to make better decisions.Here are some of the leading reasons why your WordPress site is running too slowly:Your Page Size  – this is usually caused by images that are not optimized for the web.Configuring Your WordPress – your site is not offering caches pages that will lead to an overload on the server which in turn will either cause your site to crash or slow down significantly.Your Web Hosting – This is when your hosting server is not correctly configured, causing your site to slow way down.Your External Scripts – this includes ads, front loaders, and many other factors which will have a significant impact on your sites speed.Bad Plugins – if you have plugins that are poorly coded, it will affect your site’s speed.Ok, so now you know what causes your site to run too slowly so how are you going to speed it up?Your shared web hosting server is a critical factor in your site’s performance.  An excellent hosting server such as BlueHost will take the added measures to optimize your site’s performance.  A shared hosting can have issues as well because you are sharing with many other website owners.  There might be someone whose site is bringing in tons of traffic which can affect the entire server’s performance, causing others to run too slowly.You might want to opt for using a WordPress hosting service that comes with configurations to run on WordPress.  These services also offer automatic backups, WordPress updates, and other advanced security steps to protect your site.

Easy Steps For Speeding Up Your WordPress Site:

We realize that performing changes to your site configuration can be a pretty scary thought, especially for beginners!  You are not alone!  We have worked with literally thousands of WordPress users to improve their sites’ performances.You will be shown how to speed up your site with just a few clicks, and there is no coding required.  If you know how to point and click, you can do this!

Get A Caching Plugin:

WordPress pages are built very quickly whenever someone visits a page or a post on your site.  WordPress must be able to run various steps to find the needed information, put everything together, and then display this information to your visitors.  This can involve many steps that will slow down your site when you have quite a few visitors on your site at the same time.  A caching plugin will make your WordPress site go from 2x to 5x in speed.  Your caching plugin will obtain a copy of the page after it first loads and then provides that cached version to every user instead of going through the whole page generation process every time.There are tons of caching plugins out there for WordPress, but one of the very best is WP Super Cache Plugin.  It’s not difficult to set up, and your visitors will notice the difference right away.  That said, if you are with a managed WordPress hosting service, you will not need a caching plugin, they will take care of it for you.

Images:

There is no doubt that pictures are essential for a website.  Images will increase a visitor’s interest and keep them engaged.  Adding to that, colored images will cause approximately 80% of people to continue reading your content.Unfortunately, images that are not optimized will cause more harm than good.  These photos will significantly slow down your site.  To prevent this, use a good photo-editing software to optimize your images first.  Using a good software will give you the option to format and compress your pictures to a recommended size.

Image Formats Such As JPEG and PNG:

You might not know the difference between these two forms of images, so here they are:Jpeg is a compressed file format which will reduce the quality of your image but is a great deal smaller than a Ping format.  Ping formats are not compressed, and if you try to compress them, you will lose quality.  A ping format that is not compressed will deliver a much higher quality to the image.  The downside, it’s a huge file, so it will take longer to load.

How To Choose The Right Format For Your Images:

This is pretty straightforward.  If your images have a lot of different colors, go with a Jpeg.  If your images are not that complicated and transparent, go with a Ping.If you do not know how to optimize your images using favorite editing tools such as Photoshop, they have step by step guidelines to help you get your images optimized for the web.

The Best Practices For Performance Optimization:

After you have installed your caching plugin and have optimized your images, you will quickly discover how much faster your site will load.  But, if you want to bring your site to the highest level of speed that is possible, you should look at the practices listed below.These steps are not technical, so you do not have to worry about getting involved with coding.  But using some of these recommendations will prevent your site from slowing down.

Always Have Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date:

Each time you update WordPress, you will get new features and fix any security issues that might come along.  That said, your WordPress theme and plugins need regular updates as well.  As the owner of your site, you are responsible for making sure your website, WordPress theme, and plugins are updated to the very latest versions.  If you stick with outdated versions, you are running the risk of your site slowing down and leaving your site vulnerable to security issues.

Excerpts:

WordPress, by default, will show the full content of each article on your homepage and archives.  This information will significantly slow down your site by showing categories, tags, and other pages.  Another problem, if visitors are viewing articles on these pages, then they have no reason to visit the actual article.  In turn, this will reduce the time your pages are displayed, and the time visitors will remain on your site.Therefore, to speed up your loading time for archive pages, you can quickly set your site to display excerpts instead of the full article.  Just showing a summary will also entice visitors to go and read the entire article.

Paginate Your Comments:

If you are getting a lot of comments, that’s great news!  But, loading all those comments will affect your site’s speed.  In WordPress, just go to Settings, choose Discussion, and then check the box for “Break Comments Into Pages.”

Content Delivery Network:

Earlier, we discussed users are in many different geographical locations and can experience unusual loading times on your site.  The location of your hosting server can have an impact on your site’s speed.  If your server is located in the United States, visitors from the U.S. will experience faster loading times than someone in Germany.Content Delivery Network consists of many servers from around the world.  Each one will store “static” files that make up your site.  These files never change such as images, CSS, and JavaScript.  This is totally unlike WordPress pages that are “dynamic.”If you opt for a CDN, each time someone visits your site they will get those static files from whatever server is closer to their location.  Because CDN is doing most of the work, your hosting service will also be much faster.

Do Not Directly Load Videos To WordPress:

Bad Mistake!  Videos will cost you bandwidth, and you could be charged overage fees by your hosting company, even if you have unlimited bandwidth.  Hosting videos will increase your backup sizes and makes it very difficult to restore WordPress from the backup.Use a video hosting service such as YouTube or Vimeo.  They will take care of working with your videos because they have the massive bandwidth to work with.  All you have to do is copy the URL to your post, and you are all set.

Theme Optimization For Speed:

When you are looking for a great WordPress theme, you need to pay close attention to its speed optimization.  Some grand themes are wonderful to look at but are poorly coded causing your site to slow up.  You’d be better off going with a more straightforward theme and then add proper plugins to get the features you want.Look for premium WordPress theme shops such as StudioPress or Themify that offer great themes that are well-coded and are optimized for speed.I hope this information has helped you understand the importance of increasing your WordPress site’s speed and how you can make it happen.

Related Reading:

• Why It is Critical To Update and Use The Latest Version Of WordPress
• Best Free WordPress Security Plugins For 2018 To Protect Your Website

The WordPress Plugin Directory is massive, with more than 50,000 free plugins. Should you be publishing a plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory as well?You probably should, as that would put you in touch with the massive WordPress community and allow you to benefit from a number of free tools and services, such as the plugin description, active installs, stats, support forums, changelogs and much more.

Publishing WordPress Plugins

You will be notified every time there is a new version available and can carry on with the upgrade directly from the WordPress Plugins Screen. Your plugins will be prominently placed in the search engines as well. You can get a lot of free traffic from the WordPress plugin directory as well, which is another thing that goes in its favor.Isn’t that what you are looking for as a developer?Let’s quickly consider the things to be kept in mind when adding your plugin to the WordPress directory…Coding – Read the Plugin Guidelines very carefully before you get started. It has everything you need know about what is allowed and what is not concerning the coding. Make sure that your code is readable and can be understood by other developers. Add comments to the code. Choose WordPress functions rather than PHP functions wherever possible.Features – It always helps to have a genuinely unique plugin from the marketing perspective, even if your plugin offers the same set of features as some of the other plugins, make sure to differentiate it by making it easier to use and providing better accessibility. Support – The WordPress Plugin Directory has a large community and a popular forum, be sure to participate in it regularly. You will get valuable advice and tips.Updates – It is essential to update the plugin regularly, add a few changes whenever needed. But don’t make a habit of it as that would confuse your users. Licensing –  Most WordPress plugins are released under the GNU General Public License V2. You should publish your plugin under this license as well. Read this article on GPL licensing to know more.The Plugin Structure – Your plugin will be stored in the SVN repository of WordPress.org. This means anyone can look for a copy, but only you, as the author of the plugin will have the authority to check in. Once the plugin is published, you can either edit or delete existing files or add new files. You can then upload the changes to the server easily. All changes made will be tracked through the method of subversion, which means you can always get the older versions later. Plugin Assets – The plugin assets are the icons, headers, and screenshots of the plugin. These are PNG or JPG images which you will find on top of the plugin page. The file names of each image will depend on its height or width.The Plugin Header Comment – The plugin header comment is how WordPress finds out that the file is a plugin. It consists of the following fields.

• Plugin Name
• Plugin URI
• Description
• Version
• Author
• Author URL
• License
• License URL
• Text Domain
• Domain Path

Conclusion

This is just an introduction to the WordPress.org Plugin Directory. Publishing your plugin in this directory is the best way to distribute your work, get free traffic, higher online visibility and contribute to the WordPress community. Hope you’ve found this information useful. In case if you have any questions, drop us a comment below.

Related Reading:

• Why It is Critical To Update and Use The Latest Version Of WordPress
• Best Free WordPress Security Plugins For 2018 To Protect Your Website

Are you searching for the best free WordPress Security Plugins to protect your website? You are in the right place! Check out our compiled list to know more!

Best Free WordPress Security Plugins

Website owners are always looking for the best security to protect their sites, their products, and their customers.  Hackers are still looking for ways to get into sections, and one of the leading weaknesses that allow hacking are the passwords.  That said, here are some of the best WordPress security plugins to help you protect your site.

All In One WP Security And Firewall:

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What makes this a great plugin is how user-friendly the interface is for those who are not great at security settings.  The plugin also includes a password tool to help you create a secure password.  It provides a login lockdown feature that will block IP addresses from continually attempting to log in.The firewall feature will block malicious scripts from harming the coding on your WordPress site.  It will prevent hotlinking of images and fake Googlebots from getting on your site.

Wordfence Security:

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This plugin has been used by more than one million sites and offers a free protection from hacks and malware.  One of its features is a two-step authentication which will prevent brute force attacks and strengthens security for users.  If you are concerned that your site has been infected, it has a feature that will scan and let you know.

Antivirus Site Protection:

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This plugin was created to do thorough scans of website files.  It will detect trojan horses, worms, backdoors, fraud tools, adware, spyware, hidden links, rootkits and much more.  Once identified, it will remove the offensive attempts.  Its virus database is updated on a daily basis and any attempts or threats will be detected, allowing you to view them in your admin area and will send you an email to let you know. Your data is scanned using its Siteguarding.com API.

Google Authenticator

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This plugin uses a two-step process when a user logs in to a site.  In the first step, along with entering the username and password, it also authenticates text, mobile apps, and voice call.  Another feature allows it to support security keys plugged into the USB port.The second step is only used once per device; you do not have to worry about it again.  The only time you would use this stage again would be if you log into a second device.

Brute Force Login Protection:

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This plugin does absolutely nothing but protects your site against brute force attacks using .htaccess.  For a specific period, this plugin will block an IP address if someone comes in with the wrong username and password.

The iThemes Security Plugin:

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Called initially ‘Better WP Security,’ this plugin was created by iThemes that creates themes and other plugins for WordPress.  This is an excellent tool for both beginners and those who are more advanced.  It offers a simple one-click installation and provides options to configure more advanced settings from your dashboard.Maintenance is effortless, and the dashboard gives users a checklist of security steps you can take which are rated from low to high priority settings.These are just 6 of the top ranking WordPress plugins for 2017.  We will be adding more very shortly, but in the meantime, these plugins will help you get on your way.  Whether you are a novice or advanced site owner, these tools will help you secure your site and give you great peace of mind.

Sucuri Security:

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It is a beautiful WordPress plugin that is a monitoring tool for specific activities and changes that can potentially harm your site.  It is not an easy tool to use and has been designed for developers and others that are experts in analyzing various logging information.  So, unless you understand coding and file systems, you might want to let someone else operate this tool.Other features in this plugin include scanning malware, monitoring security blacklist, and provides post-hack security steps.

Clef Two Factor Authentication:

<Update> The Plugin was shut-down in June 2017

It is an excellent plugin because it provides an exciting way to login to your site.  Have your Clef app open on your phone, hold it directly in front of your login screen, and then line up the patterns on both devices.  They should be able to detect each other so you can log in to your site.It is an excellent tool for people who can’t remember their passwords or want a more secure way to sign in.  This service has a free or pro version, and they have a mobile app that is available for both iOS and Android.

Bulletproof Security:

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This WordPress plugin addresses three major areas – login, firewall, and database security.  It has a beautiful one-click set up wizard which makes the entire process very quick and easy to set up.  In case if you are an advanced user, you will have access to a manual mode for further fine-tuning.  Its .htaccess security filter is designed to match nuisance and malicious attack patterns. It is an excellent feature for maintaining your website’s speed and integrity.

VaultPress Plugin:

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This plugin is a premium subscription service created by Automattic, the creators of WordPress.  The plugin makes it easy to back up your site on a daily basis or in real-time, syncing all your site’s content.  In addition to backups, the service will scan and remove any threats that are found in your files.You can choose either Backup or Security or get both.  The backup bundle runs $9 a month or $99 a year.  The Security bundle runs $29 a month or $299 a year.

Security Ninja:

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This is a quick plugin to scan your site for any issues.  It takes less than one minute to scan and then will give you a report regarding any security concerns along with links with explanations of the problems and how to take care of them.  It is user-friendly regarding security, but there are other more complicated features.  But in general, all you have to do is click “Scan Now, ” and that’s it!The beauty about this plugin, it will run over 50 different security tests including brute force attacks to ensure your site is safe and secure.  It is also capable of keeping your site safe from “wannabe” hackers, often referred to as “script kiddies.”  If at some point to want to go pro, you will get other features including Malware Scanner, Auto Fixer, Core Scanner, Scheduled Scanner, and Events Logger.  It is a very fast plugin that comes with an impressive list of features that will keep your site safe from all sorts of threats.

Acunetix Security:

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It is a free plugin that comes with a slew of tools.  Directly after activating the plugin, it will go to work searching for any site vulnerabilities.  Once it finds issues that are compromising your site, it will show you where you need to focus into.  The plugin also provides you with different methods to make your site even more secure.This plugin will help you change your password, create file permissions to protect your data, hide the WordPress version you are currently running on, and remove WP Generator META tag that comes along with the core code.  This plugin will make it almost impossible for a hacker to discover if you are a WordPress user or not.You can use this plugin to disable the error information on your login page.  This will make it impossible for a hacker to figure out whether a username or password is wrong.  Also, the plugin will backup your WordPress data.  You can’t possibly ask for more, and the beauty is, it’s free!

Also Read:

Why It is Critical To Update and Use The Latest Version Of WordPress