At some point in time, you might have searched for an online tool for checking overall website performance. There, you might have observed one hint stating reduce server response time to boost the performance of the website

If you get a low-performance score, don’t feel dejected. Instead, make all the necessary changes within the site as suggested by online website performance tools.

Basically, these website performance tools suggesting to optimize your WordPress website means that you need to optimize backend and frontend accordingly, and hosting solution where your run your WordPress site.

Before we start our topic, let’s first understand how web page rendering works.

Web page rendering comprises of 4-steps:

Request: While a visitor visits a website, the browser initiates a request.

Response: The web server processes the request and sends assets to the browser of the visitor. The asset usually contains web page files, resources, etc.

Build: The browser starts rendering the page with the obtained assets.

Render: Lastly, the render engine within a browser displays visitors the final webpage

Here, the response we receive after initiating the request is server-side, response is highly dependant on the hosting server. In case, your hosting server is unable to offer a timely response, the subsequent steps will also get delayed thereby impacting the user experience of your visitors.

This issue is quite common in shared hosting as all the server resources are shared among all the websites hosted on that particular server. This results in sluggish website performance. Hence, we recommend that you go for Cheap Linux VPS Hosting plans as you get dedicated and better resources with this plan.

What Exactly is Server Response Time?

Server response time or TTFB (Time to First Byte) is the time span needed for a server to service the request of a website visitor. In a nutshell, TTFB signifies the time taken to load the first meaningful content on that particular page.

You might have noticed the term TTFB from numerous online checking tools. Moreover, as per the guidelines of Google, your server response time should be under 200ms.

Few Methods to Reduce Server Response Time

Go For Fast and Reliable Web Hosting

When you are hosting your WordPress website on a server, you expect it to be fast and working at all times. However, if your web hosting provider uses a shared hosting server or similar, your website performance will be sluggish. Hence, we suggest that you go for fast and reliable web hosting.

Below, we have penned down features that you should look for while looking for quality web hosting.

Go for a web hosting provider that uses modern and high-quality infrastructure, NVMe SSD storage, WordPress optimized hosting, dedicated resources, and 24/7 uptime monitoring.

We have years of experience in server optimization, and we will help you unleash the power of WordPress hosting at its max. Check out our Managed WordPress hosting plans today!

Perform CSS Minification

During the development stage, the developers unintentionally abandon additional spaces like comments, white spaces, and formatting that are unnecessary.

Due to this unnecessary additional spacing, the file size increases. To resolve this issue, you need to minify CSS and gradually decrease the size of the file.

CSS minification works by eliminating the superfluous code that doesn’t even affect the working of code. With CSS minification, the file size is reduced to half.

CSS Before Minification:

/* Layout helpers
 
----------------------------------*/
.ui-helper-hidden {
display: none;
}
.ui-helper-hidden-accessible {
border: 0;
clip: rect(0 0 0 0);
height: 1px;
margin: -1px;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 0;
position: absolute;
width: 1px;
}

CSS After Minification:

.ui-helper-hidden{display:none}.ui-helper-hidden-accessible{border:0;clip:rect(0 0 0 0);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}

Also read: Converting the WordPress website to HTML

Web Server Optimization

The server stack highly impacts server response time. Basically, the server stack comprises multiple servers and cache that offer processing power to the hosting server. Some of the widely utilized component solutions incorporate server technologies like Apache, NGINX, and database technologies like MySQL/MariaDB.

Additionally, you need to ensure that you regularly update the WordPress and PHP versions. Even, the updated version comprises several bug fixes and security patches that resolve bug and security vulnerabilities.

Make sure that you regularly clean your database

Also Read: Comparison Between Varnish Cache Vs NGINX Cache

Make Use of a Content Delivery Network

With Content Delivery Network, you get a method to improve the website speed while minimizing the latency. The CDN reduces the proximity among the server. This, as a result, minimizes the loading speed of the webpage and at the same time, people from all over the globe can view high-quality content while having an ideal website loading speed.

Also Read: Cloudflare CDN: How to Enable CDN On Your Website

Clean Up WordPress at Regular Intervals

We know WordPress is one of the widely utilized content management system which is used by millions of people across the globe. Even beginners use this CMS technology to build WordPress sites and blogs.

In the beginning, the website will be pretty lightweight as only a few plugins are installed. But, as time passes, there may be a need to uninstall old themes and plugins and add new themes, plugins, media, etc. Even on uninstalling the plugin, the website can be bulky as leftovers like junk files and cookies might be still left over.

Monitoring Overall PHP Performance

In the current technology world, the importance of monitoring website performance and the need for taking necessary steps accordingly has increased.

While you use WordPress technology for developing your site, you need to understand WordPress’s core is PHP technology. Hence, make sure you use the latest version of PHP.

For instance, a website having a lower PHP version will have sluggish performance than a website that has higher versions like PHP 7.

If you are not technically sound, you can contact your hosting provider they will upgrade the PHP for you.

Conclusion

For the fast loading speed of the WordPress site, you have to reduce server response time. Additionally, you can read the blog post on “Simple Yet Powerful WordPress SEO Tips“

Moreover, you can go for our high-performance dedicated server hosting that offers a blistering speed website experience