Six changes that actually make your website faster

Ordered by how much difference they make per hour of effort. Start at the top.

Site speed advice tends to arrive as a list of forty things. Most of them do not matter. These six do, roughly in order of return on effort.

1. Turn on caching

Server-level caching is enabled on our plans; add a page-cache plugin on top for WordPress. This is usually the difference between a 1.8-second and a 0.4-second load, and it takes minutes.

2. Compress and resize your images

The single biggest cause of slow pages we see is a 4000-pixel photo displayed in a 400-pixel slot. Resize before upload, then serve WebP. Expect to remove more weight here than everywhere else combined.

3. Cut the plugins and scripts you do not need

Every plugin that loads CSS or JavaScript on the front end costs you requests. Audit what is loading on your homepage; you will find something from a plugin you stopped using.

4. Put a CDN in front

CloudFlare's free tier is genuinely worth having, particularly if your visitors are not all in one country.

5. Index your database

Slow queries usually mean a missing index. If your site is fast when logged out and slow when logged in, this is often why.

6. Use current PHP

PHP 8.3 is meaningfully faster than 7.4 and is still receiving security fixes. Switch in cPanel, then test — and if a plugin breaks, that plugin is also your security problem.