Speed Up WordPress without Using any Cache Plugin

Have you ever thought on how to Speed Up WordPress without using any Cache Plugin ? Yes, there is a possible and Working solution for that which you are going to learn in the later part of this article. After doing lots of experiments and using a very limited number of WordPress plugins, finally I made it! Getting Google Page Speed score of 98 for home page is not an easy task and that too without using any cache plugin. So I want to reveal some of the secrets that helps you to improve loading speed of your WordPress blog.

If you have already learned How to Optimize WordPress for Google Page Speed, then this article can be considered as the extended version to it. Apart from common page loading speed  improvement tips like Leverage Browser cache, Using Plugin Performance Profiler etc here are some other important ones which you should consider.

Speed Up WordPress without Using any Cache Plugin

In case if you don’t want to mess up with code and don’t like to edit theme files, then frankly this guide is not for you. If you are looking to improve page loading speed instantly, then I sincerely suggest you to use W3 Total Cache plugin.

Optimize Images

The very first thing you have to do is, optimize images and make them load faster. You can compress images using WP Smush.it plugin or its alternatives. Using an image resizer like Aqua Resizer will help to load images quickly.

If you don’t want to use any of these tools, then you can lazy load images in WordPress. Lazy Loading not only helps to improve page loading speed but also makes visitors to stay long.

CSS, JS and GZip Compression

Minify CSS and JS Files

Minification is a process of combining two or more CSS or JS files into one. WP Minify is a free WordPress plugin that helps to serve minified version of CSS and JS files, this way the total number of HTTP requests can be limited.

One of the major issues I have noticed while using WP Minify plugin is, some other popular plugins like Contact Form 7, nRelate etc are not compatible with it. So whatever it is, you have to compress and combine CSS or JS files into one, then only its possible to get good loading speed scores in both Google Page Speed and Yahoo! Yslow.

GZip Compression

GZip helps to reduce the HTTP response size by great extent and the content will be delivered at lightening speeds. Using GZip compression in WordPress is easy if you know how to edit to .htaccess file, which is present in the root directory of your WordPress installation folder.

# BEGIN GZIP
<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript
</ifmodule>
# END GZIP

Source: CSS-Tricks

Add above code to .htaccess file and save it. Now check for the loading speed scores and you will notice a significant difference. Follow below steps also for further improvement.

Minimize the Use of Plugins

Never ever use too many plugins on your WordPress unless they are written by following WordPress Coding Standards (Soliloquy is one such great WordPress plugin crafted with care). The problem with using too many plugins is they contains many JS, CSS files which always tend to slow down WordPress.

Use PPP Plugin to monitor and know which plugins are slowing down your WordPress blog. Think about the plugins that are having high impact and try to get rid of them. My small recommendation is just use code for small requirements like Add No Follow to external Links and Add ALT tags to images in WordPress etc.

Social Share Buttons

I like this concept Less is More and we have to think about the share buttons we actually need. Lets consider if you are using some popular share buttons like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, then each of these requires a JS file for proper functioning, which always effects the loading speed of WordPress.

You can try Lazy Load floating Share Buttons or can check some great social share plugins with lazy load functionality. If you can optimize social share buttons effectively then the loading speed will be automatically improved. I came across an awesome plugin named “Social Skew Bar” that displays floating share buttons at the top, you can also try it.

Conclusion

All these methods explained here are directly or indirectly used by almost all cache plugins like w3 Total cache, wp super Cache etc. So if you think these cache plugins uses too many resources or if they are not compatible with your theme, then you can implement all these things on your blog or website.

Otherwise, you can use W3 Cache plugin which can be installed in just 2 simple steps. Again the hard part is you need to properly configure W3 Total cache plugin or you wont notice any improvements in loading speed.

So, what’s your view on Speeding Up WordPress without using a Cache Plugin? Share your experience here by dropping a comment here. You can also use our services to Speed Up your WordPress website.