1/29/2025

How to Manually Optimize Your WordPress Website Without Plugins

Optimizing your WordPress site can feel like venturing into a wild jungle of plugins & settings. You might wonder: Is there a way to achieve stellar performance without falling back on plugins? Sure! With the right techniques, you can manually enhance your WordPress website's speed & efficiency.

In this post, we’ll explore various strategies to optimize your WordPress site manually. You won’t have to rely on plugins that could potentially bloat your site. Let's dive in!

1. Choose a Reliable Host

The foundation of your website starts with your hosting provider. Having a good hosting service plays a crucial role in ensuring your site runs smoothly. Look for a provider that offers features like Solid State Drives (SSDs) because they outpace traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) significantly. Take a peek at recommendations for good hosting options:

Cloudways provides VPS optimization with locations worldwide.
SiteGround offers excellent support & hosting features.

2. Keep WordPress Updated

Keeping your WordPress up to date is VITAL. Not only do updates bring NEW features, but they also patch security vulnerabilities. Don't forget to update your themes & plugins, even if you’re not using any intensive plugins!

3. Use HTTPS

Switching your website to HTTPS is not just good for security; it also improves loading times. Sites running HTTPS can use the HTTP/2 protocol, which loads content faster than its predecessor (HTTP/1.1). If your host doesn't support HTTP/2, it might be time to consider a better hosting provider.

4. Optimize Your Images

Images can be MAJOR culprits in slowing down your site. You can use online tools like TinyPNG or CompressJPEG to manually compress images before uploading.

Resize images according to their display dimensions.
As of a good best practice, aim for dimensions around 1280x720 for blog images.

5. Enable Browser Caching

Browser caching allows browsers to store resources locally. By configuring this manually, you’re essentially telling the user’s browser how long it should store files before fetching new ones. This is done through edits to the .htaccess file:

apache
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 month"
</IfModule>

This basic code tells browsers how long to cache content.

6. Clean Up Your Database

As time goes on, your database will accumulate clutter: post revisions, spam comments, & empty data. Cleaning it up can be a hassle but it’s vital. You can access your database via phpMyAdmin & delete unnecessary tables or entries. Also, consider setting limits on post revisions in your wp-config.php file:

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php
define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 5 );

This restricts the number of revisions per post to 5. A clean database means faster performance!

7. Minify Your CSS, HTML, & JavaScript

While it may sound technical, minifying your code can have a HUGE impact on speed. This involves removing unnecessary whitespace, comments, and formatting from your CSS and JavaScript files. You can use online tools like CleanCSS and UglifyJS for this.

You could also directly edit code snippets in your theme or child theme. Always back up your files before doing this!

8. Limit Post Revisions

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