The de facto standard for blogging platforms, WordPress attracts users because it is easy to install, easy to maintain, and easy to customize. As bloggers become popular and begin attracting more users, WordPress can slow down to the point where a blog’s search engine ranking can go down. Fortunately, a number of valuable plugins exist that address speed issues with WordPress so visitors, search engines and bloggers alike will be happy. Here are 10 WordPress plugins that can speed up your blog.
1. OptimizeDB is a plugin that works with WordPress to speed up database access. Often, when blog performance suffers, it’s because of the underlying MySQL database that drives the WordPress platform. When installed, this plugin optimizes the database tables, making them more responsive to WordPress commands. Once run, Optimize will result in a faster, more compact database that will help Web sites serve up pages in a hurry.
2. DB Cache reloaded works by caching WordPress database requests in static files on the server. When multiple hits on the same blog page occur, WordPress will serve the static file rather than take the time to request it from the database again. This results in significant performance improvements for WordPress that become very significant as visitor traffic increases.
3. PHP Speedy WP works by combining all WordPress CSS and JS files into two files, reducing file access times for page loads. Not only is time saved through a reduction of HTTP requests, and it works in Internet Explorer windows as well as in Firefox. Faster, smoother page loads is something that Google likes to see.
4. WP Smush.it, an image optimizing plugin, works to accelerate the display of images in WordPress. Smush.it optimizes JPEG compression, converts GIF images to PNG, and takes out superfluous colors from each page. Since graphics tend to be large files, compressing them will help you get better ratings in the search engine when it comes to page load times. Smush.it runs in the background on the WordPress server, quietly making rendered images smaller so browsers load them faster.
5. Head Cleaner removes tags from WordPress headers and footers, speeding up the loading of WordPress files.
6. Parallelize takes a unique approach to speeding image loads in WordPress. Parallelize lets images load faster by allowing bloggers to load images from several domain names at the same time, multiplying the number of requests that can be simultaneously processed and dramatically increasing site performance.
7. HTTP Compression detects whether a browser supports compressed pages and outputs WordPress pages in gzip if it does.
8. The Ajax Libraries API makes WordPress work faster by serving several common JavaScript Web libraries to WordPress, speeding the rate at which WordPress and other applications run from your site.
9. CDN Tools is a plugin that loads javascript and multimedia files from a faster, external server rather than from your blog through the use of Content Distribution Networks (CDN). When installed, the plugin will automatically change URLs to look for content from the CDN server rather than from yours. This plugin functions behind the scenes in real time. If uninstalled, WordPress resumes making those calls to your server.
10. While technically not a plugin, WordPress upgrades install from your blog’s control panel much in the same way as plugins do. Many bloggers don’t bother upgrading their software, so they don’t benefit from all the latest enhancements, some of which usually affect page performance. Install the latest WordPress upgrade and you’ll get all the new features and security enhancements, and your blog will load faster too.
This is a guest post by Tom Walker. He is a full time writer and editor for a UK based supplier of ink cartridges. He runs their blog where he posts about packaging, advertising and marketing.
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Ill have to take a look into Smush it, seems pretty interesting. The only thing Im using to speed up my blog is a simple cache plugin. Thanks for the plugin recommendations
Joshua Pitts´s last blog ..Social Networks – The Advertising Alternative
I never use Smush it but I’m gonna try it and see if theres any difference.
ZXT´s last blog ..SEO Tool Review
Hi, thanks for the heads up, I never heard of a few of these before. Speed is going to be an important factor in determining Google PR.
Ileane | The Podcast Blog´s last blog ..Plugin to WordPress at Blogging Wire!
I’ll be honest and will say I never use any of these plug ins but I’m willing to try some of them.
ZXT´s last blog ..Why people blog?
hard to believe I’ve only heard of one, CDN, which costs $10, yes?
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Comment Contest: 5 Days Left!
Not sure Dennis as I never tried CDN before.
ZXT´s last blog ..Biggest Ever Premium Themes Contest held at ThemeGrade
Great collection of plugins, Smush.it is one of my favourites.
You may also be interested in looking into Coral CDN (it’s free) and has a WordPress plugin built for it, http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/free-cdn/. I tried visting Coral CDN a few times while writing this comment but their site appears to currently be down.
All the best,
Karl
Karl Foxley´s last blog ..The Only Collection Of Premium WordPress Themes You’ll Need
Hi ZXT. i’m only using WP Super Cache. I noticed that it is not in your list. Does this mean, this plugin is not as good as those mentioned above?
Renz´s last blog ..Motorcycle Rights Organization: Hypocrisy at its finest…
The plug-in is actually my top pick on this list. It comes with HTTP compression and CDN .
I recently removed WP Smush it cause I noticed that images I had optimized with Macromedia Fireworks before adding them to the blog posts were coming out with a larger size.
Udegbunam Chukwudi | Make Money Online´s last blog ..Make Your Blog 10x Faster With W3 Total Cache Plug-in
What a great set of tips and plugins. I have quite a few plugins and find it difficult to cut back on them, but perhaps some of the ones you mentioned can help take up the slack.
I might have to test some of these on my blogs but I’ll be sure to enable them one at a time to judge which of them is having the most impact. I’m always slightly wary of having too many plugins running at once but if these run in the background then it might not be so much of an issue.
Yeah that’s what I planned to do to.
ZXT´s last blog ..What’s Hot on YouTube
I have tried to use the W3 Total Cache plugin recently. It is really useful and powerful. It combines everthing in one plugin. However, there is some problems that i need to deal with my host provider.
Thank you KS for your valuable input, I appreciate it.
ZXT´s last blog ..What’s Hot on YouTube
I think speeding up a blog is very important, seeing as now google takes page speed as a consideration for page rank.
Head Cleaner! Wow, I didn’t know tags can slow down loading time.
James M.´s last blog ..Galaga Video Game
I’m hesitant about using such plug-ins. I suspect the WP people are always working on speeding it up. If a tweak is good enough – it would be integrated into WP. I’ll wait until then, since I’m not seeing an urgent need for more speed.
Anne Moss´s last blog ..My Precious Little Sites and Blogs
I am always advised that installing too many plugins will slow down my site. So do you think these plugins will really improve the page speed?
Tek3D´s last blog ..Free Tools to Measure Blog Popularity
Can’t believe there are much more plug-ins to consider.. Kinda skeptic with some of them though but might work having a look at the PHP Speedy. I’m using WP-SuperCache on my blog at the moment
Michael Aulia @CravingTech.com´s last blog ..Creative ZiiSound D5 Review
I don’t think I need any of these. It’s just the matter of your hosting and the plugins you integrate in your blog.
I use wp-supercache and WP-minimize. Got to be careful with the number of plugins to improve speed..
CDN tools is interesting though
Omer Greenwald´s last blog ..Your Best Post is NOT the Most Commented One
Wow there are a few I didn’t know about. Thanks for the helpful list. I had issues using WP-SuperCache and DB Cache worked like a charm.
Melinda´s last blog ..6 must-have items for your pool bag
I’ve just realize how good wordpress is.. planning to start another blog about real estate in cebu soon. Thanks for posting this informative notes.
I am using wp-supercache on http://mark-lawton.com
BTW can someone tell me how to get the www back into my site?
I think a site looks more professional with it in there.
Also does if damage your SEO not having it?
Mark Lawton
Add this to your htaccess. Be sure to replace it with your domain name
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]
Cheers
Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online´s last blog ..How To Control Self-Hosted Email Via Googles Gmail
thanks for the heads up, I never heard of a few of these before. Speed is going to be an important factor in determining Google PR.
I already have this in there…
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mark-lawton.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mark-lawton.com$
RewriteRule ^marklaw1$ “http\:\/\/www\.mark\-lawton\.com” [R=302,L]
What is going on here?
Should I just alter it in wordpress instead?
I won’t lose my site will I if I add in the www on the locations option in the panel?
I have lost it befor changing other stuff, an i had to edit the HTaccess file to get it back, and some other stuff in the SQL database.
All guesswork, and googled on the web, but I managed it! in the end
http://www.mark-lawton.com (it works with either in, but than drops the www)
If you look closely the two codes ain’t the same. Your code redirects all http://www.mark-lawton.com to http://mark-lawton.com BUT my won redirects http://mark-lawton.com to http://www.mark-lawton.com.
If you’d like to use mine, you might have to delete your own code from the htaccess file. I never experienced any database issues when I applied that hack to my htaccess
.
Udegbunam Chukwudi@Make Money Online´s last blog ..Quick Update- Making Blogs Faster With W3 Total Cache