No one likes to browse around a slow-loading website. It can be anyone including myself and you. Because time is important for everyone, we tend to have less patience and we can’t wait for ages when the website takes time to get loaded. That is why we list out the reasons and solutions for why my WordPress website is slow?
When it comes to the website loading quicker, there are many benefits of it. It helps in engaging your website visitors and converting them into customers. This is something that is crucial for every blog and website.
Ideally, the website needs to load in under 3 seconds. This is the standard metric that is derived from the search engine algorithm. If your website is loading in under 3 seconds, then there are plenty of opportunities where you can scale online growth.
Getting the website to load in under 3 seconds is not a big challenge. It all depends on how you manage your website and use certain features that help you to optimize the WordPress CMS website.
Before we dive into the reasons why my WordPress website is slow, first you need to learn how to check your WordPress website speed.
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How to check the speed of the WordPress website?
This is one of the most important steps that you need to take before optimizing your WordPress website. Because when you check what is the page speed and the issues that you are facing, you can reach a closer probability for your website speed load issue. There are multiple page load checking tools that are available in the market. But here, I am going to shortlist the two platforms where you need to check the speed of your WordPress website.
1. Google pagespeed insights
It is one of the popular tools used by website owners and developers to check the page speed of the website. The Google page speed insights tool also lets you know whether you have passed the latest update which is core web vitals. This update is crucial for Website owners to be aware of because the Google algorithm gives less importance to websites that have poor website loading time.
When you go to the page speed insights tool, you need to insert the URL of your website. And when you hit the analyze button, the page insights application will scan your complete website. It gives you the complete details for your website performance score on mobile and desktop versions. Through that, you will be getting an idea of the issue of load time in the WordPress website.
2. GTMetrix
GTMetrix is one of the best tools to get the complete report for your website load time. The amount of information that you get when you scan your website is immense. You can see part by part how your website is performing on every millisecond. It allows you to get a complete picture of which section of your website performance is lacking behind. This makes the GTMetrix application to be highly advanced and the most preferred tool for people who want to get detailed reports.
Why my WordPress website is slow?
There are multiple reasons for your WordPress website to be slow. But in this section, we will be talking about the major reasons why WordPress websites can be slow.
Generally, the website tends to load slower in the mobile version compared to the desktop. I am going to cover all the points so that you can get your website to load quicker on all the devices.
1. Server response time
The server response time always goes unnoticed because the website hosting company won’t give you full bandwidth. This happens only when you take a hosting package that is available at a cheap cost. And the issue is generally found when you purchase a shared hosting plan.
When you raise a ticket regarding the server response time, they tend to dodge the issue. And at the end, you will not find any solution to improve the server response time.
You need to try to consult with your hosting provider whether you can get an opportunity to improve the server response time. If they are not providing any such support, it is ideally recommended for you to opt for a premium hosting plan.
2. Using the large-sized images
Images are crucial for a website that you can’t live without. It is something that helps in beautifying your website and makes your website visitors understand the web pages. So when we can’t develop a website without images, you need to ensure that the image that you upload is compressed.
When you use a high-quality image, it is obvious that the image size will be very large. And this is one of the major reasons for websites to load slower.
Do not worry about this constraint, as there are multiple ways to deal with this problem. Starting with using the Image Compression tools plugin that is available in WordPress Store. When you install these plugins, it will automatically compress the existing images on your website and help to save you a lot of time.
If you don’t want to use the plugins, there is one more way. Whenever you are uploading an image to a website, there are plenty of offline and online Image Compression tools. You need to upload your images on the application and it reduces the size of media files.
Both ways have their own benefits. You can also consider reducing the resolution which is one of the major reasons for the image to be heavy.
3. Using multiple plugins
Plugins are something that no website can live without. Because the plugins help in customizing the end-to-end functionality of your website. Whether it can be for marketing automation, improving the user interface, and generating leads. The plugins are the only platform where you can optimize your website.
The problem arises when you use too many plugins on your WordPress website. Ideally, a website needs to have fewer WordPress plugins. Beyond that, it is the reason that is contributing to why my WordPress website is slow. Because the plugins tend to increase the weight of the website. And it also influences heavily on the functionality as the JavaScript gets deferred.
There can be instances where you opt for free plugins that are not compatible with your WordPress theme. Especially when you are using a page builder plugin that has multiple addons which contribute to the website loading slower.
The best approach in dealing with this problem is you need to check the plugins that are important for your website. If you find some of the plugins that are not relevant, you need to remove them immediately. The second thing is you need to always keep your plugins updated which helps in optimizing the speed of plugins. Thirdly, prefer to opt for a plugin that does the work of multiple plugins. This is the best way to reduce the load time.
4. Multiple CSS and JavaScript files
CSS and JavaScript files are very important for a website to animate the workflow. It is hard for a website to completely eliminate these files as it helps in improving the user interface of the website.
You can easily notice whether the page that is taking more time to get loaded is because of CSS and JavaScript files. As they tend to block the rendering process which forces the server to take more time to load it.
The CSS and JavaScript files can be seen in the functionality of WordPress widgets that you have integrated. It can be the WordPress widget, social media icons, inserting buttons, and table of content. There are many other features that we are not aware of and it is included.
You need to check which CSS and JavaScript file is influencing the delay. After analyzing, either you can move the CSS and JavaScript files externally or you can minify the CSS and JavaScript files so that your WordPress website loads faster.
5. Your website is not using a content delivery network (CDN)
CDN is an important platform that every website owner needs to be aware of. This is usually beneficial when your website is using multiple media files such as images and videos. And as you know that the media files tend to consume larger space, but with the help of the CDN system, your website will start loading faster.
The CDN acts as an external hosting server for your website files. This can be because the images and video files are hosted separately on another server. It will help in drastically reducing the page load time for your blog posts and web pages.
If you are getting traffic from multiple countries, then CDN is the best platform that you need to opt for WordPress website. As the CDN will be using services from multiple countries, and if it finds that the audience is from that respective country, the media files will be fetched from that region.
6. Outdated WordPress version, themes, and plugins
When you use an outdated version of WordPress, themes and plugins. These are a major cause of concern for the website to load slower. All three attributes are correlated with each other. And when you find that one of the platforms is not up to date, this increases the page load time of your WordPress website.
Ensure that you check your WordPress version is up to date. You can see the update notification from your WordPress dashboard, and when you see the notification, you need to immediately update it.
To check the update for themes, you need to go to the theme section that is available under the appearance option which is located on the left side of your WordPress dashboard.
To check the update for plugins, you need to go to the plugins section. And check individually for which plugin you have received an update.
7. Outdated PHP version
After making all the above-mentioned changes, then this can be one of the major reasons for your WordPress website to be slow.
The PHP version is an important element for your WordPress website to get loaded faster. Because the version of PHP acts as the base platform for your website. WordPress themes, plugins, and content media files are completely dependent on the version of PHP.
You need to check the latest version of WordPress that is released on the market. Based on that, you need to see whether your version of PHP has been upgraded to that version. If it is not done, you need to consult your hosting support team to upgrade your PHP version.
And also check that, whether your theme and plugins are compatible with the new version. Because after upgrading, the website can break. There are plugins available where you can check the compatibility of your WordPress themes and plugins to the PHP versions that you upgrade.
Concluding thoughts
Every website is distinct in its own way. Because the type of theme, plugins, and media files hosted on a WordPress website are completely diverse from each other. And when it comes to the reasons why my WordPress website is slow, it gets differentiated.
It all depends on how you analyze the issue of page load performance for the WordPress website and the steps that you take in rectifying it. You need to be well versed with all the above points that have been described so that you can focus on the issues that are important for you.
The ideal way to maintain the performance of your website will be to check the performance every month and make the fixes accordingly.
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