A content delivery network (CDN) is a series of servers that helps deliver web content to the end user based on their location. In other words, CDNs help deliver web content to visitors faster by having the web content transition to servers closer to the end user, resulting in improved site rendering speed and performance.
For example, if you have a business based in Ireland, a visitor from Australia would have a lot longer load time because of the distance that the information has to travel. By using CDNs you can cut down on the amount of time it will take to load your web pages, by spreading the information across several servers around the globe.
Website plugins are a great way to customise your website and increase’s functionality. It can be very tempting to download and install an unlimited amount of plugins, but doing this can seriously compromise your website’s speed and increase loading times for your users.
We highly recommend looking through the plugins you currently have installed on your website and determining which ones you absolutely need and which ones you can go without. Delete the ones you don’t need and make sure the plugins that you are keeping are high quality. Cheap plugins that aren’t updated can use a lot of large scripts that will cause your load times to increase, so make sure your plugins are up-to-date and made well.
When someone visits your website, they have to load all of the images on your site. This becomes problematic with certain site builders like WordPress, which allows you to upload images of any size.
If you’ve been uploading images without considering their size, you more than likely have some gigantic pictures on your web pages that are slowing down load times like homepage banners etc. If you think that this could be a problem on your website there is an easy fix. Most photo editing software comes with some ability to shrink the size of images to be more friendly to Internet load times.
If you’re on Windows you can resize your image in a free program like Paint, or on Mac, you can use Preview to resize images. If you have access to a more advanced photo editor like Fireworks or Photoshop you will have access to the “Save for Web” feature, which allows you to use a slider to reduce the size of an image and see the visual changes, as you do.
There are also some free web tools available that will shrink your image for you. You can try Smush.it, TinyPNG, or search the web for a different tool to help you reduce the size of your images. Once you reduce the size of the images and re-upload them onto your website, you are sure to reduce the load times for future visitors.
Browser caching is when a visitor is able to keep the downloadable files from your website stored in their browser. If you want your website to load as fast as possible you’ll want to enable browser caching to your visitors. This means that the next time that person visits your website the page will load faster, as they will only have to download the updates that have been made to your website because they already have the rest of the files downloaded. Browser caching not only cuts down on load times for all of your visitors, but it also reduces the amount of bandwidth that is used for both the visitor and the server side.
The easiest way to enable browser caching on your website is through third-party plugins. There are many available, but you may want to check out WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache, or WP Rocket first. Feel free to research your own browser caching solutions, but each of these plugins is proven browser caching option that accelerates website performance.
Picking the right web host provider and correct web hosting plan can drastically improve your website speed and overall reliability.
There is no right answer because everyone’s website demands will be different. Choosing a supplier that allows you to register domains and change plans easily allows your website to adapt to a sudden or steady boost in web traffic over time.
Lightning Fast Performance with SmartHost’s Premium Hosting Plans
Faster load times mean better user experience, better search engine optimisation, and higher conversion rates. Boost your site performance with LiteSpeed web servers and the LSCWP Cache plugin. Increase your site speed score by up to 40% with Smarthost WordPress Hosting‘s code minification and automatic image optimisation. Increase your website response time by as much as 3x with Memcached Object Cache while IPv6 provides low latency and fast data transfer.
Our team can help
Have further questions, or need some advice about hosting solutions for you and your business?
Our team are on hand to assist you and get your business online. Why not give us a call on (01) 901 9700 or send us an email at support@smarthost.ie. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
