WordPress is a great platform – yes, it is – that’s why hundreds of thousands of different websites running on WordPress around the world, but experiencing a slow speed on your WordPress website is common especially when you are using shared hosting. Still what, you do not want it to remain the same. I know you want your site running but what, unless and until you take proper measures in consideration.

Without taking the proper precautions and measures you could be end up with nothing but a sluggish site which will not be a hassle for visitors but also keep them away. You certainly lose your visitors, clients, potential customers as well as subscribers. Even, this is not it, as Google may also penalize your site and throw your site such far that you can’t even able to find on it.

Here is a breakdown on what all you require:

A Solid Framework / Theme

Framework

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The time when you have your WordPress installed, you did notice that you have got two themes pre-installed in it: the Twenty Ten/Twenty Eleven. Now, what makes you surprise is that these both default frameworks aka are the default WP themes are quite speedy framework to use. They are the light frameworks which in turn will let you to have a speedy site.

Secondly, do keep a note that themes are something that either can make or break your WordPress installation. You do want to have something stylish theme install but also remember technical wise it remains simple. Always try to choose themes with fewest possible images and a CSS-based design. You might want to choose a minimalist theme and modify it according to suit your needs. To check on various theme clubs collections, check on the following link.

A Good Web Host

Hosting

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You do often notice while on hosting provider websites that almost every other is offering Unlimited bandwidth, Unlimited storage offer and probably the first thought comes in your mind is WOW!!! It is certainly a jackpot but remember since it’s a shared host, your site would be running on same IP just like other 4099 sites are running.

Selecting the right host means more than just buying internet storage space for your site. A lot of hosting providers offer lucrative discounts from time to time, in which most of them are nothing but to fool you around, so it’s always better to have a check on what you are buying. You do take proper care of bandwidth, processor speed/type, databases allowed, domains allowed, which versions of PHP, MySQL are installed i.e. in short is your hosting provider matching up with WordPress minimum requirements or not.

Our Recommendation is HostGator as they are good both in product wise and customer support, details of which you can check at the following link.

Using A Content Delivery Network

CDN

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You might while researching heard the term “Content Delivery Network,” but still a large number of people either does not know or get confused while understanding it. You won’t be surprised over learning the fact that majority of sites these days using the CDN’s as they help in reducing page load times of your site.

Understanding more, a CDN takes all your static files i.e. CSS, Javascript and images and will serve to your visitors by letting them download in faster possible manner by serving these files on servers which are close to them as possible. Selecting a CDN provider often sounds as a huge decision as there are many CDN’s providers out there. In order to help you out, we have detailed out the list of the entire best content delivery network around the world, details of which you can check here.

Plugins

Plugin

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You often notice in your plugin list that you do have a collection of those plugins that you are either not using or are inactive. Such plugin also take part in lowering your WordPress site speed. It is always advisable or even recommended that you remove all those plugins that you don’t actually using as WordPress loads all of your plugins, including those inactive ones.

You need to take a special care of fact that you would be always running the latest stable release of both WordPress and your plugins. The older version plugins will nothing but slow your website down. You need to have all your plugin upgraded while with WordPress 3.0+, there are a revamped plugin update feature, which allow you to update plugins faster, smoother and easier. It also offers you to have your all the plugins updated in one go.

Optimization

Optimization

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There are three things in your WordPress site that you need to optimized from time-to-time: images (which can be done automatically), your homepage and your WordPress database. For the images, you can use this amazing free plugin called WP-Smushit which will do the optimization process automatically for all your images as soon as you upload them.

For optimization of your homepage, you have to make sure that you show excerpts instead of full posts, reduce the number of posts on the page (better if it would be between 5 and 7), remove all unnecessary sharing widgets from the home page as well as remove all inactive plugins and widgets and always make sure your homepage as minimal.

You can optimize your database by directly using phpMyAdmin by selecting all the tables followed by clicking on “Repair” and then “Optimize.” You can also scan for outdated tables which still making its place even after removing old plugins. If you think you are not technically able to do the job, then there are plugins also available which can help you make a fix in friction of seconds. You can simply use either of these plugins: WP-Optimize, WP-DB Manager, Optimize-DB or WP-DB-Optimizer plugin for optimizing your database.