If you have noticed slowdowns in your WordPress site, it is advisable to act promptly. In the following lines, we will also focus on the main causes that can lead to a decrease in the performance of web pages.
Table of Contents:
What is TTFB?
What affects time to first byte?
Slow WordPress Site: What Are the Signs?
What Affects WordPress Site Speed
Web Hosting
Plugins and themes
The missed updates
Oversized and unoptimized images
Ads and pop-ups
How to improve website speed
Understanding What Determines Your Current Site Speed
Monitor performance
Optimize images
Implement lazy loading
Using a Content Delivery Network
What is TTFB ?
The time to first byte, TTFB , is an indicator that measures the time from the client's HTTP request to the first byte returned by the server. As is easy to deduce, the lower the response time of a WordPress site, the faster and more responsive the server on which your web project is hosted. The TTFB is, therefore, a measurable value that can be obtained by evaluating some specific parameters.
What affects time to first byte?
The time to first byte value is influenced by three key actions: sending a request from the client to the server, processing the request on the server and generating a response, and sending the response from the server to the client.
Sending a request to the server. TTFB measurement begins at the time of a request. The time it takes for a server to receive it can vary based on the time it takes to perform a DNS lookup, the speed of the user's network, the distance from the server, and any connection interruptions.
Response Processing and Generation. Once a server receives a request, it will then make a response. To reduce TTFB, many WordPress sites resort to page caching, server-side code optimization, and hardware resource optimization.
Sending the response to the client. When the server processes the response, it must transmit it to the user. The TTFB is determined when the client begins to receive the response, that is, when the first byte is delivered. The transmission time of a request and response can account for almost 40% of the TTFB value.
Slow WordPress Site: What Are the Signs?
If you notice an abnormal decrease in traffic, the suggestion is to proceed with checking the loading time of your WordPress site. To do so, you will simply have to insert your URL on Google's Page Speed Insights , a free tool that offers a performance analysis. Alternatively, there are other online tools to test the speed of your website.
The ideal loading time is around 3 seconds. This is the threshold that Google considers optimal for both a business website and an e-commerce site. In fact, if your project takes longer, the visitor could not only leave your site but, most likely, will decide to turn to the competition.
What Affects WordPress Site Speed
There can be many reasons behind a drop in performance on your WordPress site. This aspect also has repercussions on SEO and, for this very reason, it is important to identify the cause of the slowdown as soon as possible.
Web Hosting
Web hosting significantly affects the performance of web projects. This is why it is important to choose the service carefully, opting for the hosting plan that best suits your needs (including budget) without sacrificing performance and security.
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Plugins and themes
Outdated plugin versions can negatively impact page loading speed, which is why updating is important.
Another tip is to streamline installations as much as possible. This means not clogging up your WordPress site with an excessive number of plugins and selecting only the useful ones.
A theme is nothing more than a collection of greece telegram phone number list that help you define the interface of your WordPress site. Some of them, however, are very heavy and can slow down web pages.
The missed updates
In our blog, we have often focused on the importance of carrying out updates from a security perspective. At the same time, this activity is also essential to ensure optimal performance of web pages.
In fact, often the decrease in performance of your site can be due to the failure to update plugins, themes and PHP version. Updates are therefore essential if you want to obtain a fast and secure site.
Oversized and unoptimized images
Images are a key element in ensuring a high-level browsing experience for users. According to Imagify , these contents can determine up to 50% of the loading time of the WordPress site. To avoid slowdowns, images must be optimized properly.
Oversized and improperly optimized images cause slowdowns, but with a few tricks you can remedy this problem by adjusting all your images to the correct dimensions for the web.
