Quick or you’re irrelevant – it’s a sad truth about this era of the web.
Your website has to be fast. If it’s not quick enough to keep search engines and your target audience engaged, then your ranking are likely to slip with your viewership decreasing with it. It doesn’t have to be that way!
Beyond the factors beyond your control (server location, hardware and configuration, etc) it can pay to ensure that your hosting/server plan still matches up with your website’s needs. However – and this is a large consideration – your website might be acting beyond its shoe size. If you login to your hosting control panel and take the resource stats are the honest truth, you’d think you were doing the right thing. There’s much more to those final numbers than the interface lets on – odds are you can re-claim some of what you’re paying for, before you need to look at making a change.
Day 1 of your website – a recent milestone, or a distant memory?
If your website’s had a few laps around the block, odds are that a bit has changed in that time. The domain might’ve changed, you may have set up shop without SSL/HTTPS on your website, perhaps you’ve added eCommerce along the way and later entirely changed how that all worked. $50 theme gone wrong led you to redesigning (while keeping the content)? It’s a pain felt by many, believe us.
Your site might only be a few months old and you’re looking to fine-tune it before investing in a more capable hosting/server package to underpin it. This article may still help you somewhat, though you’re more likely to experience a greater benefit from focusing on caching first up. Use a trusted high-performance system like LiteSpeed Cache to take the server load away from typical page view requests and odds are that you’ll be amazed with the difference.
Improving the inner mechanics of your WordPress site.
We’re not going to fluff this up – WordPress is a nicely developed Content Management System (CMS) that makes the task of building nice websites a (relative) ease. Where it’s being treated nicely, it tends to be nice back. That’s what we’re focusing on, making sure that WordPress isn’t having to trip over itself in getting every little job done (whether it be WP’s Cron, serving pages to your viewers, or handling orders).
The main factors you need to dive into all relate to the site’s configuration, structure and references. What’s it set-up to do, how’s it set up to do it, and where/what to use in order to deliver on those jobs.
At this point, there are a few warnings to get out of the way. Don’t make changes to your site if you’re inexperienced with it. Always have a verified full backup. Work outside of your website’s busy hours. Engage help if you need it – there’s no cost in a support ticket to your web host (if there is, you might want to shop around).
Focusing on what really matters deep inside your website.
We’d love to share our recommendations with you – as it involves potentially risky database changes, please contact us so we can explain it all to you!
No marketing opt-in, no back-and-forth, just a safety measure to make sure your website stays in-tact during its improvements that you’re embarking on.
