In this article, we will share the most useful WordPress speed optimization tips to boost WordPress performance and speed up your website.

Results achieved with WP Rocket caching plugin and Rocket.net hosting

The Basics

  1. Decent hosting
    No matter how much effort you put into optimizing your website, most of its success depends on the quality of your hosting. Even with a high-end VPS  your WordPress site might still not be as fast as you’d expect because website speed depends on several factors beyond just server resources.
    We recommend Rocket.net or Cloudways for resource demanding websites
  2. Caching plugin + lazy loading images.
    Free performance plugins you might try: WP Optimize or LiteSpeed Cache + Lazy Load
    Performance plugin that we tested and recommend: WP Rocket
  3. Cloudflare is a must-have; reducing load times by delivering cached content from servers closest to the user
  4. Don’t fix yourself on Google Page Speed Insights. The Google PageSpeed Insights score isn’t always a real reflection of a website’s actual speed because it mainly evaluates theoretical performance based on a set of lab metrics, not real-world user experience.
    Instead check your website performance at GTmetrix.com or SpeedVitals.com

WP Rocket Recommended Settings

  1. File Optimization
    ✅ Minify CSS files
    🟨 Optimize CSS delivery (if you notice any errors on your website after having activated this setting you should deactivate it as gains are not worth having visual glitches)
    ✅ Minify JavaScript Files
    ✅ Combine JavaScript files (make sure JavaScript still works properly afterward)
    🟨 Load JavaScript deferred (you can test however in some cases could cause issues with scripts)
  2. Media
    ✅ Enable LazyLoad for images
    ✅ Enable LazyLoad for CSS background images
    ✅ Enable LazyLoad for iframes and videos
    ✅ Add missing image dimensions
  3. Preload
    ✅ Activate Preloading
    🟨 Enable link preloading (you can enable it but this could be demanding on server because it downloads a page each time when a user hovers over the link)
  4. Advanced Rules
    ✅ Cache Lifespan set to 10 hours (or less if you experience issues with logging in via popup, if it still happens from time to time we suggest enabling “Skip additional login/registration security check” option in WorkScout Core → Registration)
  5. Database
    You can use every feature there to keep database clean
  6. CDN 
    Not needed if your hosting already has CDN.
  7. Hearbeat
    ✅Control hearbeat and set to “reduce activity”
  8. Image Optimization
    ✅     You can use Imagify from WP Rocket or EWW Image Optimizer

WP Rocket works with all hosting providers however, certain hosts (like SiteGround – you should disable File-Based Caching in their plugin) include their own caching plugins and you’ll need to adjust these built-in caching settings for optimal compatibility with WP Rocket.

Advanced Tweaks

If you want to get the most out of your website in terms of speed, we highly recommend carefully reading this article:

Speed Up Your Slow WordPress Site In 21 Steps: The Only Tutorial You Need To Pass Core Web Vitals Totally Revamped For 2024