In this article
- 1. Start with the hosting
- 2. Use a good caching plugin
- 3. Optimize your images
- 4. Fewer and lighter plugins, a lightweight theme
- 5. Use a CDN
- 6. Clean the database
- 7. Minify and defer CSS and JavaScript
- 8. Keep PHP and WordPress up to date
- 9. Measure before and after
- Don’t want to deal with it? We’ll take care of it
A slow site costs you. Visitors won’t wait: they close the page and go to a competitor. And Google sees it too, since speed and user experience (Core Web Vitals) count in the rankings.
The good news? Most WordPress sites get noticeably faster with a few, well-chosen moves. Let’s go through them one by one.
1. Start with the hosting
No matter how well you tune the site, if the server is slow, the site will be slow. What to look for:
- LiteSpeed web server (or equally fast infrastructure), built for speed.
- NVMe SSD disks, much faster than conventional drives.
- PHP 8.x, with OPcache enabled.
- Server-level caching, so pages are served ready-made.
- A server close to your audience. If your customers are in Greece, that makes a difference.
Cheap shared hosting with overloaded servers is usually the first cause of a slow site.
2. Use a good caching plugin
Without cache, WordPress “builds” every page from scratch on every visit. With cache, it serves a ready-made copy.
- If the server runs LiteSpeed, LiteSpeed Cache is the natural choice (and it’s free).
- On other servers, WP Rocket (paid) is among the easiest to set up.
One caching plugin is enough. Two together usually cause problems.
3. Optimize your images
Images are often the biggest “weight” on a page.
- Use modern formats: WebP or AVIF.
- Upload images at the size you actually need. A 4000px photo for an 800px slot is waste.
- Enable lazy load, so images load when the user reaches them. WordPress already does this on its own for most images.
- Don’t lazy-load the main image at the top of the page: that one needs to load first.
4. Fewer and lighter plugins, a lightweight theme
Every plugin adds code, and often its own CSS and JavaScript.
- Deactivate and delete anything you don’t use.
- Avoid plugins that do many things you don’t need.
- Prefer a lightweight theme (e.g. GeneratePress, Astra, Kadence, or a block theme) instead of “heavy” themes with dozens of built-in features.
It’s not just the number of plugins that matters, but how well they’re written.
5. Use a CDN
A CDN (e.g. Cloudflare or QUIC.cloud) keeps copies of your files on servers around the world and serves them from the point closest to the visitor. It helps especially if you have visitors from abroad, and it takes load off your server.
6. Clean the database
Over time the database fills up with old post revisions, spam comments, expired transients, and leftovers from plugins you’ve deleted.
- Clean it regularly (e.g. with the LiteSpeed Cache tool, WP-Optimize, or WP Rocket).
- Limit post revisions.
- Always take a backup before cleaning.
7. Minify and defer CSS and JavaScript
- Minify: removes whitespace and comments from the files so they’re smaller.
- Defer / delay JavaScript: scripts that aren’t needed immediately load later, so the page appears faster.
- Removing unused CSS, where your plugin supports it.
Most caching plugins do these with a few clicks. Change one setting at a time and check that the site still works correctly: some settings can “break” menus, forms, or the cart.
8. Keep PHP and WordPress up to date
Every new PHP version usually brings better performance and security. The same goes for WordPress, themes, and plugins.
- Use a supported PHP 8.x version.
- Do updates regularly, ideally after taking a backup or testing them on staging.
An up-to-date site is both faster and more secure.
9. Measure before and after
What you don’t measure, you don’t improve. Use free tools:
- Google’s PageSpeed Insights
- GTmetrix
Pay attention to the Core Web Vitals, the three metrics Google uses for user experience (web.dev):
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how quickly the main content appears. Target: within 2.5 seconds.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the page responds when the user clicks or types. Target: within 200 ms.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): how much the page “jumps” while it loads. Target: 0.1 or less.
Check the mobile version too, because that’s usually where the majority of visitors are and where problems show up first.
Don’t want to deal with it? We’ll take care of it
Speed isn’t a setting you apply once. It’s a combination of the right hosting, the right configuration, and regular maintenance.
At SmartHost we host and maintain WordPress sites every day. We can take on the hosting, the speed audit, and the optimization of your site, so you can focus on your business.
Want faster WordPress? Get in touch with us at smarthost.gr.
