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How to Optimize WordPress to Speed Up your Website - Part 3 (FINAL)

Install the WordPress W3 Total Cache Plugin

Note: While installing a performance optimization plugin like W3 Total Cache can have a very significant impact on your website performance, it can also cause your website to malfunction. Before proceeding to this step make sure:

You are working on a local development environment (e.g: a staging version of your website)
or/and

You have fully backed up your website and have a restoring solution at hand. You can do so by following the “Create a manual backup” Article from our Knowledgebase.

If you are not working on a local development environment, but you are fine with having a bit of downtime until you restore the data from your latest backup you can also proceed to this section.

This Article tries to cover the best settings that would work for most websites, but compatibility with every possible website/server setup can’t be achieved. If you are having trouble setting up your cache plugin contact your web developer or hosting company.

Note 2: Make sure you are not using any cache plugins already since that might conflict with this chapter of the Article. To do that go back to the “Auditing your WordPress Plugins” section of this Article and make sure you do not find any plugin that mentions any cache feature.

1. On your browser, log in to your WordPress Admin Panel.

2. On the sidebar click “Plugins” → “Add New

3. On the search bar on top type “W3 Total Cache”

4. On the search bar on top type “W3 Total Cache” → Click “Install Now” → “Activate”

5. On the sidebar click “Performance” → “Dashboard”
6. Click “Compatibility check” on top:

7. On the list lookout for incompatibilities of your server settings with the “enhanced page and browser cache”:

Note: If you have an incompatibility with the enhanced page cache feature inquire your web hosting company about it and ask if they can provide you with a solution.

8. On the sidebar click “General Settings”.

9. Select the following settings:

A) Page Cache: Enable

B) Page Cache Method: Disk: Enhanced.


Note: If on the previous step you’ve detected that your server settings are not compatible with the “Enhanced” option and your current webhosting provider can not offer you a solution, select “Disk: Basic”. Also note that there is a small chance that the W3 Total Cache’s “compatibility check” tool’s alert is a false flag and your server actually supports the enhanced mode.



C) Minify: Enable → “I understand the risks”

  1. Note: While this option will work for most websites, it might cause your website to malfunction.

  2. Note: If you are already using a minification plugin or service do not enable this feature.


D) Database Cache: Enable



10. Click “Save Settings and Purge Caches”

Note: If afterwards you still see a notification on top prompting to empty the cache, go ahead and do so:




11. Open your website, navigate through your core pages and make sure everything is still functional.

Note: If parts of your website are no longer working, you can revert the changes you made by either disabling individual features or disabling the whole plugin.

Note: Since you’re now displaying a cached version of your website to your users everytime you make a change to your website (e.g: editing a page) you will want to purge that page’s cache so that your website refreshes the content that your users are seeing. You can do that by either hovering the WordPress Admin header’s “Performance” icon and clicking “Purge All Caches”. Or purge only specific caches (more efficient) by clicking the “Purge from cache” next to your WordPress posts and pages.





Installing the Shortpixel Image optimizer plugin

1. On your browser, login to your WordPress Admin Panel.

2. On the sidebar click “Plugins” → “Add New”

3. On the search bar on top type “ShortPixel”
4. Click “Install Now” → “Activate”

5. On the sidebar, hover “Settings” → Click “ShortPixel”

6. You will be prompted to add an API key or request one. If you don’t have one yet, enter your email address, tick the box to accept the TOS and the PP, and click “Request Key”.
7. You should see a “Your API key is valid” message and be redirected to the Plugin Settings page.

8. Select the compression setting that you would rather see on your website:



  1. Note: You can test the three different settings live on ShortPixel’s website here.

  2. Note: If you are not sure, select “Lossy”. This will offer you the best results while still making sure your images look good.

 

9. Click “Save and Go to Bulk Process”



10. Click “Start Optimizing”

Note: The free plan allows users to optimize up to 100 images per month. If you already have more than 100 images when you’re starting out, you may want to purchase a “One­Time” plan that suits your needs, afterwards, if you don’t plan on adding more than 100 images per month, the free plan will be enough.

Note 2: If by including thumbnails you go over your allowed monthly quota, you may choose to disable that option.




11. Leave the tab open while the plugin optimizes your images. Depending on the number of images you are optimizing it may take several minutes.



That’s it! Your images are now optimized and your pages and posts should now be lighter and faster to load. To the right of the success notification, you should see a percentage indicating the average image reduction.


Note: If you are using a cache plugin you might need to purge all caches (Check #11 from W3 Total Cache Steps) before your newly optimized images are live.

 

Re-Test your pages:

After you have applied all or some of the optimizations of this SOP, retake the tests that you have performed on your pages on the first chapter of this Article and compare the results to see how much your page performance metrics improved.

Note: Make sure you select exactly the same server locations when performing the new tests.



That’s it! If you’ve implemented all the steps of this article you should already have gained a considerable performance improvement.

Note:
If your page load times are still not at the level you would want them to be consider different additional solutions (outside of the scope of this Article):

  • Implement, or ask a developer to implement, a CDN;

  • Consider upgrading your web hosting plan or move to a faster web host;

  • Consider switching to a lighter WordPress theme, or redesigning your website

    with performance in mind;

  • Hire a web developer to take your page­performance efforts even further;

If not you can always refer to our services at our market place - Aapta Solutions.

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