How to make your Wordpress website work faster?

You probably already noticed that, after you add all plugins, set themes, articles and other stuff, Wordpress website starts slowing down, especially when number of visitors goes high. In this post, I will tell you more about how to speed up your blog/website, CMS platform, widgets etc.

Speed up your wordpress

Do you use cache plugin?

When talking about Wordpress optimization, this is basic. WP pluging with this function are actually caching content meaning that WP won't load database info every time (which slows down loading of site) but present cached and much faster version of website which doesn't need fully loading every time.

By my opinion, for this purpose you should use W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache. There are numerous plugins of this kind online and there are no big differences between them. All of them have same task - to cache content, but they could be different by abilities, speed and way they do this.

CDN

CDN (Content Delivery Network) is very important thing from a side of hosting of your website. CDN is a network of servers through which someone could access your website. It works on way that your content is located on few locations, so when user visits a website – data will be loaded and shown from nearest location where content is storaged. If server where data is located is closer to user, data will display faster. jsDelivr is free plugin that allows CDN for your Wordpress website.

Database optimization

Wordpress content is storaged in databas, so it is most important element that could affect speed of your website. Content is oftenly changed or deleted, comments are written, posts are created or edited so database is constantly updating and changing. And that could lead to  accumulating of unnecessary content. You can scan and optimize database with WP-Optimize plugin. Before you start database optimization, create a backup (copy) of it. This option is offered before process starts so if there are any errors in the process you can always use previous version using backup.

Number of plugins

Also, very important factor of speed is a number of installed plugins. More plugins you install, more time to load webpage. Minimize number of plugins and only use ones that you really need, those which you're not using - delete.

Reduce the size of CSS and JS

Big CSS and Javascript databases could affect loading speed additionally. Reduce the size of these databases with Better WordPress Minify plugin . It will automatically shrink of these documents.

Images are also significantly affecting speed of your website, so take care and optimize every image before you set it up on website. Also, you should always update Wordpress because every new version adds numerous improvements, from security and speed point of view.

Is blog a real thing for you?

Why do I need a good blog? Before you start a blog, ask yourself is blogging real thing for you. Make sure to ask yourself and give answers to these questions.

1. Do you have fun while online?

Successful blog demands long-time commitment and focus and it will not stop when you publish a blog. On the contrary, that is exact moment when you start with promoting, visiting and reading other blogs and websites, tracking of articles and questions about same issues that your blog refers to.

Most of your blogging activities will take place online. If you want to be a successful blogger, you will have to enjoy reading, exploring, spending time on computer and surfing the web.

2. Do you like writing?

If you don't like writing and it doesn't come naturally in your case, maybe blogging isn't right thing for you. Building a successful blog requires everyday writing, answering to comments, leaving comments on other blogs, answreing to emails etc. Every each of those activities requires great amount of writing and you need to find yourself within it.

3. Are you passionate about blog theme?

Successful blogging requires orderly writing of new, meaningful posts about main post theme or some other, related theme. This is the only reason why you will attract new visitors, pay their attention and make them come back again. If you are only partionally interested in theme you are writing about, it will become harder and harder for you to write a new post or get new idea.

4. Can you devote to blogging?

Successful blogging requires commitment and great effort and time invested. Therefore, you need high level of self-discipline and motivation.

You got to find way how to mark blogging as scheduled everyday activity and stick to it.

5. Are you affraid of public announcing of your thoughts, ideas and thinkings?

As a blogger, you will often publish your thoughts or ideas, so whole blog community could aknowledge them. In order to attract big auditorium, you will have to share some of your thoughts or thinkings via Internet.

As such, bloggers could be affected by negative comments or responses to their posts. Sometimes, negative reviews could be painful. Successful blogger need to deal with them in positive manner and improve every day.

6. Are you affraid of tech development?

Blogging implies certain web and software knowledge. If you affraid of computer, writing a blog could not be right thing for you. Otherwise, if you are ready to learn new skills and blogging techniques - go on!

Blogging and Internet are variables and even most successful bloggers need to learn and improve their knowledge and blogs.

7. Would you take a risk?

A great part of successful blogging is related to taking a risk, from writing a first post, to first blog promotion and adding a links within posts. If you want to success in blogging, you will have to be ready to explore, self-motivate and enjoy job you're doing. Have a nice blogging day today!

New Wordpress users

If there are few users/admins of your Wordpress website, there is possibly need to setup priviliges for all of them. In this short tutorial, you will be able to create a new users for same WP page and assign abilities for all of them.

Adding new users

In order to add a new user in Wordpress, you need to go to Admin panel for your page. On the left side of admin panel you will find label Users, click and go to Add new.

New user window

You need to fill following fields:

- Username: You can put anything in this field, people often enter their nick (this is required field)

- E-mail: Enter your email (this is required field)

- First Name: Enter your name

- Last Name: Enter your last name

- Website: If there is another website you would like others to know, enter URL here

- Password: If you want your account to be secured and safe, enter strong password, which contains uppercase letters or numbers within characters (this is required field)

- Repeat Password: You need to enter your password here again and you will see how strong is it (this is required field)

- Send Password: If you mark this field, password will be sent to email you entered. This could be useful in case you forget or want to change password after some time

- Role: In this field you can determine which priviliges will this user have:

·         Subscriber: Can only manage his account or leave a comment

·         Contributor: User can write or edit articles/posts but he can't publish them. After publishing post, contributor could not edit it anymore. Also, he can not upload images or documents to the page

·         Author: Author can edit, publish or delete posts and, also, he can upload image or document

·         Editor: Editor can edit, publish or delete any post or page, approve or edit any comment, edit menus or categories, upload image or database

·         Administrator: All priviliges and abilities, including deleting of everything, customizing themes and menus etc.

This is all info needed to complete Add new user info. Before you create account for anyone, think carefully about his role, because any mistake could cost you very bad. As administrator, you can always change user info and priviliges in General settings.

Users can login to Wordpress page by adding /wp-admin to destinated page. For example www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin. 

How to create Wordpress website/blog - PART 1

1. Basics/Intro

We decided to write this article about Wordpress because we could not find anywhere on web kind of short tutorial or clear instructions how to create Wordpress site from beginning, at least not on same place. As you can find on our blog, WP is free CMS (Content Management System) which basic purpose is creating blogs, but with Wordpress you can create website, also.

When we started our first website (long time ago!) built with WP, it took a lot of time and effort to gather and implement all necessary information needed for installation and setup of basic settings. Of course, even today we find new useful information that can be used during the webpage building or upgrading so this WP area is kind of constant learning and information gathering.

Basic installation of Wordpress is not too complicated, but once you create page using Wordpress you always have some work to do on it with some adjustments, new ideas or software updates. Before Wordpress is being installed, you need basic conditions to be fulfilled (Internet domain and hosting provided). You need these conditions whether you use WP or some other CMS!

2. Domain

In order to create your webpage or blog you need domain, for sure. If you already have domain, you probably decided which section will your website cover and be about. If you want to buy a new domain it is always recommendable to use .com, .net, .org domains in that exact order. So it is highly recommendable that you use .com domain according to many forums and respectable blogs, because Google will be more friendly to your website. Nevertheless, the most important thing is how you popularize your website and have a lot of visitors, whatever your domain is called.

To conclude, in order to buy a domain you need to go to one of domain registers online and buy it. For example visit Go Daddy or Name.

3. Hosting

This step is also very important step when creating any webpage - to select good hosting service depending on what traffic you expect and what content will website offer. If you are not sure what level will your website reach you can always transfer it to another server. Transfer procedure is very simple and it includes backup of MySQL database and all databases on your hosting, so it can be easily transferred to different hosting. About hosting - if you create a new page best option is to start with shared hosting. That means you share resources of your hosting with other pages on that same hosting. On the other hand, if you plan serious website with a lot of traffic through it, you should acquire personal hosting and all of your data and pages will be located on server with unique IP address. Roughly, it costs at least 80$ per month in case you can maintain server by yourself or price can be doubled if you need web administrator to run maintance on your, dedicated server.

You can choose between a lot of companies that offer shared hosting services, for example Go Daddy or Hostgator. We do not advertize these companies, just mentioning some that provide hosting services. You can find any company you want, match their prices and choose adequate one. You can even go and find free hosting for your website (for example 000webhost) but this is not an option if you are interested in creating relevant website.

Most important thing about hosting is that you do not select cheapest hosting necessarily. First explore (use Google) service you want acquire and then choose right one. Search forums and blogs about this topics, read user reviews before you do anything that could have serious consequences for your website.

Wordpress installation (step by step)

Note that this step will describe how to manually install WP on the server, although there are some applications that can automatically do this for you, if web hosting companies over which you have rented hosting has activated this option. (An example is Fantastico).
To manually install Wordpress on the server, you must be connected to the server via an FTP client. There are a lot of different FTP clients and some of them are FileZilla and WinSCP. WinSCP has a useful option that you can edit any file located on the server and modify the code directly to the files stored on the server. So the procedure is to connect to the server with the supplied username, password and port. Under host name you enter yourdomain.com.
It's time to take off (unzipp) Wordpress website which you previously downloaded to your hard drive.

Once you are connected via FTP client, you need to upload the unzipped wordpress files from wordpress main folder to a directory of your website (usually public_html).

After all files have been uploaded, you need to access your domain through your web browser. The first window will appear. Here just choose the language of the wordpress.

After this step, the window will appear with the items you need to know before starting the installation. Those items are; Database name, Database username, Database password, Database host and Database prefix.
In a case that you dont know what this is, follow the next steps.

First login to your cPanel and go to MySQL databases. Create new database, and remember it, it will be your Database name. Add new user, it will be your Database user name, the password you enter here will be your Database password. Add the user you created to the database you created for this wordpress installation, and grant all privilegies for this user. And thats it. Return to the wordpress installation and click on the button Let`s go!

In the next window just fill in the asked information. So enter your Database name, Database username and Database password. For the Database host, enter localhost, and for the Database prefix enter wp_.

Now the installation of wordpress starts. You need to enter the title you want for your website. User name and password that you enter here will be used to enter the admin panel later when you install your wordpress. Enter your emal, so the wordpress can contact you when someone leave comment, or if you forget password. Click to allow search engines to index your website.

Congratullations, you have installed wordpress!

Now log in, choose your theme, create your posts, create pages and share it with your friends or with everyone!