Install A Cache
This is an absolute must. If you’re not already using a caching plugin and you’re complaining about page speed install a caching plugin immediately!
Recommended: WP-Optimize – Clean, Compress, Cache, WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache
Optimise Images
Optimising your images reduces their file size without losing picture quality. You can either use a program that does this before uploading your images to your server or you can use a WordPress plugin that does this after uploading your images.
Recommended: Converter for Media
Minify HTML, JavaScript & CSS Files
Minifying your HTML, JavaScript and CSS files basically makes these files as small as possible so they load quicker. There are plenty of plugins out there that minify these files.
Recommended: Autoptimize
Lazy Load Images
Lazy loading your images means the pages can doesn’t waste time loading any images not seen until they come into view.
Recommended: Lazy Load
Remove Query Strings From Static Resources
Remove query strings from static resources like CSS and JavaScript files to improve your speed scores in services like PageSpeed, YSlow, Pingdom and GTmetrix. Resources with a “?” or “&” in the URL are not cached by some proxy caching servers and moving the query string and encode the parameters into the URL will increase your WordPress site performance.
Recommended: Remove Query Strings From Static Resources
Cache Gravatars
By default the Gravatar icons are loaded from the Gravatar server, you can cache these and host them from your own server to reduce page load time.
Recommended: Optimum Gravatar Cache
Good Hosting
Good hosting is vital. If your site is getting a lot of visitors you should not really be using shared hosting. Consider moving to a VPS or dedicated server. A shared server distributes the server resources across many sites leading to a noticeable slow down when sites on the server have a lot of visitors. With VPS and dedicated servers you have your own server resources that are not used by any other sites.
Use A CDN
You can use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to host your files (images, JavaScript and CSS files). This works by providing alternative server nodes for users to download your files. These nodes are spread throughout the world so they can be geographically closer to your users, ensuring a faster response and download time of content due to reduced latency.
Recommended: Amazon S3, Microsoft Windows Azure or MaxCDN
Query Monitor
Install the Query Monitor plugin to see if there are any database queries that are slowing down your site. If these queries are coming from a plugin you should deactivate this plugin to see if it improves your site performance.
Disable Unnecessary Plugins
Having multiple plugins installed and activated on your site can slow it down. The more plugins you use, the slower it will be. Please disable all the plugins on your site except for those required by the theme. Now clear your browser cache and see if it speeds it your site up. If it does activate the plugins one by one and check the site speed each time to try and find out if a specific plugin is causing the slow down. Unfortunately there are plugins out there that can slow down your site, if you happen to find one please contact the plugin developer and report it to them.
AMP Support
AMP support adds Accelerated Mobile Pages (Google AMP Project) functionality to your site. AMP makes your website faster for mobile visitors.
- Install and activate the AMPforWP plugin.
- Go to AMP > Setup and select the Advanced Setup option.
- Under the Settings > Elementor Support enable the Elementor Support option – you will then be asked to purchased the AMP Elementor Compatibility addon.
- Next copy the code inside style.css, all the code inside each post-#.css file and all inline CSS from <style> tags (removing opening and closing <style>) tags and add it to AMP > Settings > Design > Global > Custom CSS. This one’s a lot of work, so it would be best to just do this for your homepage and let AMP style the rest of your pages.
Recommended: AMPforWP, AMP Elementor Compatibility