Source: Photo by Markus Winkler: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-a-typewriter-4160094/
Yes Ghost CMS is considered the fastest for website speed but let's see its pricing as you can see accommodating 1,000 members it requires a fee of 25 dollars per month. What If I could tell you you can experience the same Ghost CMS website speed on the most used CMS on the planet called WordPress instead which is absolutely free of cost. If you are here to find out how you are in the right place my website https://www.liquidocelot.com runs at a rapid high speed and am using WordPress CMS as you can see from the gtmetrix website testing website below:
Source: Right here
So why am I so confident when it comes to website speed using WordPress CMS? Well, I am here to tell you exactly why my website is so fast, and guess what It is running full with ads enabled powered by Google AdSense.
Below are 10 actionable steps that will boost your website speed performance in no time:
Upload Your Images In Wepp Format
I use either online image converters from the images then I have downloaded from pixels website from jpeg to wepp and then I upload it to my WordPress blog posts for feature images and also inside blog post images as well. Here are the basic advantages that you must know about the wepp format.
- 30% lower space consumption than PNG
- 25% lower space consumption than jpeg
What the above two stats clearly say is that the wepp images will load smoothly on your WordPress blog as they consume so little space as compared to the conventional PNG and JPEG formats.
To convert from PNG or jpeg all you need is an online converter which you can Google yourself I personally use an offline application called Pixillion Image Converter but this is quite easy
Go For The Free CloudFlare Or 1 Dollar Bunny CDN
I will not go into the details of what is a CDN but it is referred to as a Content Delivery Network that somehow boosts the speed of your website by a very long way. You have two options mentioned in the title:
- Cloudflare.com which has a free tier option.
- Bunny.net CDN has a 1 dollar per month plan and I opted to use this option; please note it also has a free 14-day trial so you can test it out before going all in.
Use Google Fonts
When you use Google Fonts you automatically increase your website speed and here are some reasons why this happens:
- Google fonts are run by CDN
- Google fonts are optimized to run on your WordPress website
- Just make sure to install one Google font stick to it and use a size that is optimized both for desktop and mobile viewing.
Use Kadence Free Theme
I had two options for selecting my theme one was Astra and the other was Kadence and I chose the Kadence-free theme. After installing the Kadence free theme my website speed went into turbo mode and I really started thinking that I was on Ghost CMS. Never ever before using the Kadence free theme did I ever dare to think that WordPress CMS can Compete in speed terms with Ghost CMS but I was wrong and I was so glad for that.
Keep Flushing That Cache
To make things easier for you to understand just know that the cache is a temporary storage area that stores data all the time and you need to delete it. You can flush your cache from the following areas:
- From your web browser
- From your hosting platform, I use Hostinger and they have this option in their dashboard.
- From your WordPress Plugin page.
Just Keep Testing Your Website Speed
In order to keep testing your website speed just keep putting your link in gtmetrix website and keep analyzing your website speed they will tell you exactly which areas to troubleshoot so you can fix your website speed-related issues.
Use Google SiteKit Plugin To Analyze Your Website Speed
Google has its own official plugin which helps you integrate Google Analytics inside your WordPress Dashboard and is called Google SiteKit However this very same plugin can also be used to show you important website speed-related issues as well which can help you identify such issues and then you can easily fix them.
Uninstall Useless Additional WordPress Plugins
One can easily get confused with the number of options the WordPress Plugins have in store for you. However, keep this basic rule in mind that each and every Plugin installed will reduce your website's overall speed so all you need to do is deactivate and uninstall a plugin that you don't use or need to keep that website's high speed intact.
Use YouTube Embedding Optimizing Plugins
A YouTube embedding optimizing plugins does the following things:
- Optimizes the quality and size of the embedded video according to the requirements of the website.
- Helps load the videos from your cache meaning your website server directly which is a faster process.
- It prevents autoplay which adheres to the rules of YouTube's invalid views policies.
- Gives the ability to users to pause, rewind, and skip.
Use CSS Coding Instead Of Installing Plugins
I am not a coder but I know so many subreddits and also use wordpress.org forums for getting help with CSS codes for specific purposes on the WordPress Website. The reason for using CSS coding is quite simple it boosts your performance and these days just copying/pasting a specific code into your WordPress website is so easy you do not have to worry about this process whatsoever.
Conclusion: Money Saved Thanks To WordPress CMS
If you are thinking about moving to expensive CMS platforms like Ghost then think again cause WordPress CMS has the ability to provide you with tools that can match the speed that is available on Ghost CMS so the problem is solved without wasting your valuable money really. Please let me know if this guide helped you out in increasing your WordPress website speed in the comments section.
Special mention to @thelegallounge who is my friend in real life and who told me that he was interested in creating his own WordPress blogging website hope this guide helps him out.
This article was originally published on medium which is officially my content.