illustration of tools and a tools box that conveys resources available to you.

Resources to Easily Optimize Your WordPress Site

Speed is definitely a big factor in website performance but a great user experience to a key factor. You want to keep your site running lean and mean. When it’s time to optimize your WordPress site,, some apps and plugins come in handy to make the job easier.

I’m sharing my favorite tools that I have in my virtual toolbox. Some of these links are affiliate links, and I may make a few shekels from them, but that’s not why I’m sharing them with you. Most of the resources offer free versions, or trial runs, so you can make sure they fit the bill of your needs.

Let’s start getting your website into shape.

Choose A Good Web Host

The best way to optimize your WordPress site is to choose the right provider for a fast-loading website. WordPress.org recommends that your host supports PHP 8, MySQL 5.6 or greater, and HTTP/2 – fortunately, our recommendations are hosts like Cloudways, and WP Engine hits the mark on all counts.

Besides meeting the recommended criteria, these hosts also provide the easy addition of an SSL certificate through Let’s Encrypt and CDN service for those looking to add this functionality. These resources will help keep your site running fast and secure.

A quality host, most times will not be the less expensive option, but it is critical to the health of your website and the user experience.

Image Optimization

Larger images will slow a site down, and our process is to crop, compress, and upload. Quality images are some of the heaviest assets on your website, but the image draws the reader in, so they are necessary to enhance your message. Images with a little pre-work can still do their job without slowing your site down.

Ready to optimize those images?

  1. Affinity Photo is an editor that can help crop and resize your images. It offers features for removing unwanted parts from your image and resizing it to meet specific size or dimension requirements. Utilizing artboards can make the process faster and more efficient.
  2. Macbook has an image compression app that is a huge timesaver for optimizing. But using another program like Canva, you can run the image through TinyPNG’s or ShortPixel’s online compression optimizer.
  3. Once my images are ready, it’s time to upload them to WordPress. This is where the ShortPixel plugin comes into play for me. When I upload an image to my site, ShortPixel does its thing to compress and optimize it even more.

Browser Caching

optimize your wordpress website
resize and compression is important for images

If you’re looking to optimize your WordPress site, one crucial step is to consider caching options. Caching can significantly improve the speed and performance of high-traffic WordPress sites by storing frequently used data in a cache, reducing the need to retrieve it from the database repeatedly.

Many hosting providers now offer caching plugins as part of their hosting packages, making it easier for users to set up caching on their WordPress site without needing any technical knowledge. These plugins can help to improve the site’s loading times, reduce server load, and enhance overall performance.

However, if you’re looking for other options WPRocket and Perfmatters are good choices to help you pinpoint areas that may need improvement.

Optimize Your Database

Over time as your site grows, you accumulate unnecessary data from deleted plugins, posts, and images. WP-Optimize is a WordPress plugin built to help you keep your database clean to maximize efficiency when you optimize your WordPress site.

WP-Optimize will help you clean up information like spam comments, post revisions, and other trash items from your MySQL database, speeding up how quickly your site loads.

Some other options to optimize your database are WP Cleanup, WP-DB Manager, and WP Database Cleaner.

Recap

Without optimization, your site can become sluggish, allowing your competitors to gain an advantage. As other businesses in your industry work to improve their websites, you should consider doing the same.

If you’re unsure about your site’s performance, you can run a speed test on Pingdom or GTMetrix to get an idea of how it’s measuring up. However, if you need help optimizing your website, our consulting services can provide expert guidance. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you improve your website’s speed and stay ahead of the competition.