Have you tried visiting a blog that takes time to load the content that you want to read? It’s frustrating to visit a blog that loads too slow, isn’t it? Often times, once you are trying to open a blog like that you just close the browser or simply click the “Back” button of it.

In other words, blog that experience this problem often times lost visitors. Since they lost visitors, so they lost money because visitor or traffic is money.

Why Blog Loads Slow?

There are lots of reasons why your blog’s loading time is slow. Few of them are:

1) Server Problem

Blogs that are hosted in a shared hosting will most likely experience slow loading. It’s because the servers’ resources are being used by all the websites hosted by that server.

The server’s configuration also affects the speed of the websites it is hosting.

2) Blog’s Design

Blogs with colorful and beautiful images as background, buttons, etc., is very much attractive to look. But the loading speed of the blog will be affected by these, because colorful and large images usually are very large file that will take you time to download.

3) The Settings

If you choose to display full content in the homepage of your blog, then mostly like your blog will take time to completely load the homepage.

4) Third Party scripts

Third party scripts like the advertisement’s codes and other media tend to slow down the loading speed of your blog.

How to Optimize Your Blog for Faster Loading Speed?

Here’s the list of ways on how to make your Wordpress blog load faster.

1) Find Better Server

Just like what I said above, slow server will make your blog load slower. But even if your blog’s server is fast but it is hosting lots of websites, your blog will still be slow.

So, if you have enough money to spend for your blog, then why not rent a dedicated hosting, if not you can take the VPSed hosting (hosting installed with Virtual Private Server).

Consider reading my article, “How to Pick the right webhost for your blog?”

2) Minimize the number of posts to display in the mainpages or archive pages

If you choose to display the whole content of every post in mainpages or archivepages, then minimize the number of the posts that should be displayed because it greatly affects the loading speed of your blog.

3) Images and other Media

If possible, avoid using large and colorful images. Edit first the images that you want to include in your post using the photo or image editor, resize the images and save them in GIF, PNG, or JPG for web.

Avoid also using auto-played video or music files and Flash files.

4) Put all the java script at the bottom of the page.

Most of the javascripts takes time to load. And browsers tend to wait while the javascripts are still loading. So the content next to the javascript code will not be loaded while the browser is still processing the javascript.

So the solution is to put the javascript at the bottom of the page. But except of course the codes of the ads like the code of Google Adsense because if you’ll put the Google Adsense at the bottom of the page, then your Google Adsense income will be affected.

5) Make your main content to be loaded first before the sidebar content and other miscellaneous contents.

If you are using a 2 or more columned Wordpress theme, make sure that the article or blogpost will load first before the links and other content placed at the sidebars.

To understand what I mean, please read my May 2007 article, “How to Design a Three Columned Blog’s Theme?”

6) Use <div> instead of <table>.

If the theme of your blog is still using the <table>, then change the design to the one that uses the <div>.

Why? It’s because the browser tend to read all the content enclosed by the tag <table> and </table> first and then display them all at once. While if you’re using the <div>, browser will display one at a time until the whole content enclosed by the tag <div> and </div> are displayed.

7) Install WP-Super-Cache Wordpress Plugin

The WP-Super-Cache plugin will generate static HTML files of every pages of your blog and this static HTML files will be served to your blog’s visitors instead of processing the PHP codes of Wordpress everytime a visitors visit your blog. With this, your blog will use only small part of the server’s resources, thus speeding up your blog.

For more info about this plugin, please click here.

More Tips

I know that there are other tips that are not included on this article. If you knew one, please feel free to sent it via email or by dropping them at the comment section of the liver version of this blog at “how to make your wordpress blog load faster?”.

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