Knowledge base
Making my site faster
The four things that actually move the number, in the order they are worth doing.
Most slow sites are slow for one of four reasons, and they are worth fixing in this order.
1. Caching is off or not working
A cached page is served without running any code at all — it is the single biggest improvement available, and it is a switch. Sites → your site → Caching. If it is on and the site is still slow, check whether something is sending "do not cache" headers; a session cookie set on every visitor defeats caching entirely.
2. Images
Unresized photographs are the commonest cause of a slow page that scores well on everything else. A 4 MB camera image displayed at 800 pixels wide is 4 MB the visitor downloads. Resize before uploading, and serve WebP.
3. Too many plugins doing work on every request
Each active plugin adds work to every page load. Deactivate what you do not use — not just the ones you know are heavy, because the ones you have forgotten about are the ones nobody audits.
4. The database
Slow queries show up as a slow first byte with a fast download. Sites → your site → Performance lists the slowest queries on your site with the page that ran them.
Measuring it honestly
Test the same page twice — the first load fills the cache and the second is what a visitor gets. And test from where your visitors are, not from your own machine on your own connection.
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