If you want to improve your site’s performance and user experience. You need to create a better, faster and optimized WordPress website. You might have heard this or you might want to do it on your site. In this post, I’ve compiled a list of best practices and suggestions that will help you build a successful WordPress site.
Sometimes experienced WordPress Developers focus on providing a solution on their site, but forget to optimize it. And without optimizing a site you won’t get enough success. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced developer, this blog post will help you out.
1. Use Plugins and Themes from Trusted Developers
While choosing plugins and themes for your website. Then choose from trusted developers. Although WordPress is the provider of the software, the elements that make the website look and work properly are those plugins and themes. Go through the reviews of ratings before using them on your website.
Even if you’re buying a premium plugin, then choose from a trusted plugin marketplace. Like CodeCanyon, ZetaMatic, Mojo Marketplace, etc.
Also, frequently upgrade your plugins and themes to prevent malware or hacker attacks.
By inserting malicious codes into these, hackers use plugins and themes as bait. Then they offer it for free. When you install these plugins or themes, you’re going to face a lot of security issues.
2. Avoid Editing Your Code if You’re Beginner
You should not edit your code files for beginners or people with no coding experience. If you’re wrong to edit the PHP file directly and make any mistake, you may face one of the most common WordPress issues that are “White Screen of Death.” Also, don’t edit your live production site. If you do something wrong, you may be confronted with problems. And your website is going to go down.
3. Don’t Test Updates on Your Production Site
If you are using a new plugin or theme or code directly on your production site without testing it. Then there’s a chance of failing. And if any error occurs, your site will go down and you won’t be able to serve those visitors and it will make a bad impression on them. Chances are they’re not going to visit your site again.
So, in order to avoid such scenarios, you must test the elements on your localhost or test website first. Where you’re free to try and learn. Additionally, you can set up a local environment quite easily. You will find many tutorials on how to do that, just google it.
4. Don’t Switch Hosts for Quick Fix
People often think that if they switch hosting providers or plans, the problems will be fixed. But they need to understand that this isn’t going to fix the problems automatically. If the problem is plugin compatibility issues or code issues. Such types of problems still exist, no matter which hosting provider you choose. It is not the responsibility of the hosting provider to correct the errors.
Hosting will not debug problems in the plugin or cleanly enter the code in your core files. The problem can be solved by an experienced WordPress developer. Who can check what the issue is and what can be done to fix the matter.
So, you need to reach out to the developers to fix these issues. And if you have a problem with your plugin, you can contact the developer of the plugin who can fix it.
5. Minimize the Use of External Services
Many websites use advertising for their revenue & living and add-on website forms to collect visitor information, tracking services to track the performance of websites. These advertisements and other services make your website slower. It is not an option to remove them.
These extra services add extra DNS and heavier JavaScript that makes the web page load slower. Simply removing advertisements and other services is not a realistic option. There are many websites that depend on these services. In these cases, you need to make optimal use of your scripts. You can use a synchronization or deferral on your scripts to help prevent them from interrupting the loading of your page.
6. Avoid Over-Optimizing Your Site
People often think that the speed of loading will be faster if they optimize their website. And in most cases, they over-optimize their website, and it happens most of the time than you think.
Here are some of the Over-Optimizing Examples
Caching the Cache
Some hosts have their own cache plugins, which are done at the server level. Most providers do not allow caching plugins because this can cause all kinds of issues, most commonly 502 gateway errors. It’s never a good idea to “cache the cache”.
More SEO Plugins won’t help your Rank Higher
Everyone wants to rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages. But if you install more than one SEO plugins that won’t help you rank higher. SEO plugins guide you with creating better content and optimize your website. If you install more SEO plugins they will not work properly and it will show compatibility issues.
7. Fix Common Issues of Your Site
Common web issues are pretty easy to find out. However, it can be difficult for people who are don’t have basic coding experience. You can use services such as GTMetrix or Pingdom or Google Page Speed Insights to find out about various website issues. Some of these problems can be fixed on your own. And you need the help of an experienced WordPress developer in some issues.
Images are one of the common issues with each website. Optimizing images can help to improve your website’s loading speed.
8. Avoid Modifying WordPress Core
You should not modify the WordPress core, especially on a production site. It can make your website vulnerable to a number of security issues. Instead, you should take advantage of WordPress tools and features such as well-developed third-party plugins, child themes, custom post types, and hooks.
9. Check Compatibility Before Updating Latest Codes
Your website will benefit from the use of the latest technology. These latest technologies can make your website faster and more secure. Just like PHP 7. But before using this, you need to check whether or not your website is compatible with it.
For example, if you upgrade from PHP 5.6 to 7, you should test all the features of your WordPress site in a staging environment or locally to ensure that there are no compatibility issues. One out of date plugin you’re relying on doesn’t work with PHP 7 could mean you should wait before you move.
10. Optimize Database if You’re a Large Websites
If you’re a large website like Facebook and you’re not optimizing your database, your website will slow down. And user experience is going to suffer. You can prevent this from happening by cleaning up old WordPress revisions or cleaning up unused tables. Also, use the latest database technology to improve website performance. If you’re not comfortable cleaning up your old WordPress revisions and database, you can rely on a plugin like WP-Optimize.
11. Frequently Check the Error Log
If you are someone who checks and modifies WordPress files and wp-config.php files, then you should check the error log frequently. It’ll save you from a lot of headaches. Not many users even bother to check this out before they reach their host for help. With a few simple tweaks in your wp-config.php file, you can enable logging, which is saved to / wp-content / debug.log by default.
Enable Log
define( 'WP_DEBUG_LOG', true );
Output Log On Page
define( 'WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true );
12. Search Queries on Search Engines
Most people panic when they face any problems on their website. Where most of the solutions are already available online. You will just have to search online using your search engines, and you’re going to find a lot of solutions and tips on how to fix the issues.
Choose from top sources and don’t forget to read the comments. If you have any doubts, you might want to comment on those blog posts.
13. Choose a theme you really need
People often buy themes and use only 1% of the features of these themes. Other features that they don’t even use on their website. Many people see the fancy and attractive menus, sliders and sidebars, etc., and forget the real need of their own. And end up buying a theme that they won’t make full use of. This way they end up spending more and slowing down the loading speed of the website.
You can only use a theme with the features you need. And without the extra features, you’re not going to use it.
14. Use the only plugins that you really need
Unfortunately, many developers don’t care about the performance of their plugins. There are a lot of plugins that just load their scripts on all pages, even though they could only be used on one page. When you use more and more plugins, you can think that these plugins will add unnecessary bloat that slows down your website.
There are a few ways to solve these problems. The first is to use a function that was introduced in WordPress 3.1 called wp_dequeue_script(). This allows you to remove a queued script from your site.
Another easy way to prevent certain scripts from loading onto specific pages and posts is to use a WordPress plugin like Gonzalez or Plugin Organizer.
Conclusion
You can improve the experience of your WordPress website by following and applying these practices and tips. If you do not follow these, you may not be able to fully optimize your site and reap the full benefits. Also, these best practices and suggestions will help you achieve your goal. These changes will also result in better user experience.
I hope you can learn something new from this blog post. Please share it, if it does.
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