Csaba Miklós
owl-power
Published in
3 min readNov 14, 2017

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You can modify a few settings, changing your WordPress configuration, to boost your loading times. WordPress Speed Up can be achieved even with a few simple clicks. Just follow this tutorial and improve your WP performance.

#1 — Shown content:

Change here: WordPress Settings > Reading > Blog pages show at most […] posts

This setting affects how many recent blog posts or pages are shown on specific pages. Those specific pages are mostly your homepage, your blog page, and your blog category page. Since all these pages are important to load fast, you can make a logical decision. When you load let’s say 15 of your latest post, the time it takes to display the content, it’s much higher, compared to just 5 of your latest posts. The difference comes from all the post titles, post featured image thumbnails, post summary needed to display or not. The least number of recent posts you display, the faster it is. Use this, in combination with a “load more” feature, and you’ll see significant WordPress Speed Up. If you use this on your homepage, showing tens of posts from several categories, then reducing the number of posts per category with just one, may result in an unbelievable WordPress performance optimisation.

#2 — Shown details:

Change here: WP Settings > Reading > For each article in a feed, show: Full text / Summary

This setting affects how your blog posts are shown when displayed on a category page. When you choose to display [Full text], your category feed will send all the text from each blog post. Since you have long blog posts (because the content is king) this will result is a long query and wait time for the generated result. Also, caching plugins have issues speeding up WordPress feeds and themes using this feature basically lack caching on this page. When you choose to display [Summary], your category feed will send only the first 55 characters of text from each blog post. This is a drastic reduction in any short/medium/long blog post types. Use Summary, as shown details, and you’ll see significant WordPress Speed Up. If you use this on your category pages, showing only a few sentences from each post, may result in an unbelievable wp performance optimisation.

Very Affordable for all that it offers!

Cheaper, than a new website. Cheaper, than designers + developers + system administrators hired for various optimisation tasks.

WP Speed Up

#3 — Ditch Gravatar:

Change here: WP Settings > Discussion > Avatar Display

Avatars for WordPress authors is like custom number plates on cars. Not everybody can afford it. That extra call, outside from your server, directly to the Gavatar.com to request an image for the author thumbnail is a resource, that you can live without. Just uncheck [Show Avatars] and enjoy the extra WordPress Speed Up. We live in the era of social media, now everybody can track you down within minutes, look at your swimsuit/drinking pictures, judge what you eat and what you like. A lost avatar will not be even noticed. However, a reduced call between servers, on each blog page load time, may result in a small WordPress speed optimisation.

#4 — Split Comments:

Change here: WP Settings > Discussion > Other comment settings:

Break comments into pages with […] top level comments per page …

When you have a lot of comments, on each page, you might call yourself lucky, that you rip the benefits of chatty customers (unlike us, #envious). However, all that glory and fame will have a significant performance drag on your server (and paparazzi, #karma). You can balance this with a few simple changes in settings. Just break comments into pages, creating separate pages for 15~20 short or 7~10 long comments. Now loading that blog post will load only the mentioned number of comments, thus you have achieved a significant WordPress Speed Up

#5 — Disable pingbacks and trackbacks:

Change here: WP Settings > Discussion > Default article settings:

Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles

Today this feature is not used anymore. Ok, maybe only used by spammers to send a gazillion of fake trackbacks and pings. Even with Akismet active, some of these trackbacks still get into your “attention” queue. Disable pingbacks and trackbacks to reduce your frustration and load from your DB. Enjoy the extra WordPress Speed Up.

WordPress Speed Up

Your visitors will leave your SLOW website before it even loads!

improve now

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