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Shared hosting is a cost-effective solution for many website owners, especially those just starting. However, it comes with its own set of challenges, primarily related to speed and performance. Since resources are shared among multiple users, optimizing your website becomes crucial to ensure it runs smoothly and efficiently. Here are the top five tips to optimize your website on shared hosting:
Implement Caching Mechanisms
Best Practices
- Enable Browser Caching: This allows returning visitors to load your site faster by storing static files in their browsers.
- Use Server-Side Caching: Options like Varnish or built-in caching tools from your hosting provider can significantly speed up your site.
- Leverage Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): CDNs distribute your content across multiple servers globally, reducing load times for users by serving data from the nearest server.
Tools and Plugins
- W3 Total Cache: Enhances user experience by improving server performance, reducing download times, and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
- WP Super Cache: Generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog, ensuring faster load times for your visitors.
Optimize Images and Media Files
Best Practices
- Compress Images: Large images can slow down your website. Use tools to compress them without losing quality.
- Use Correct Image Formats: JPEG for photographs, PNG for graphics with fewer than 16 colours, and SVG for scalable vector graphics.
- Lazy Loading: This technique loads images only when they are about to enter the viewport, reducing initial page load time.
Tools and Plugins
- Smush Image Compression: Optimizes images by reducing their size while maintaining quality, ensuring faster load times.
- Imagify: A powerful image optimization tool that allows you to compress images in bulk and convert them to WebP format.
Minimize HTTP Requests
Best Practices
- Combine CSS and JavaScript Files: Reducing the number of files can decrease the number of HTTP requests, speeding up your site.
- Inline Small CSS: Instead of linking to small CSS files, you can place the CSS code directly in your HTML.
- Use CSS Sprites: Combine multiple images into one file and use CSS to display only the part of the image you need.
Tools and Plugins
- Autoptimize: Aggregates, minifies, and caches scripts and styles, injecting CSS in the head of your page by default.
- Fast Velocity Minify: Combines CSS and JS files into fewer requests, reducing the load on your server and improving page speed.
Optimize Your Database
Best Practices
- Regular Database Maintenance: Clean up unused tables, old data, and overhead to keep your database running efficiently.
- Optimize Queries: Ensure that your database queries are efficient and use proper indexing.
- Limit Post Revisions: Reducing the number of stored revisions can decrease database size and improve performance.
Tools and Plugins
- WP-Optimize: A comprehensive database cleanup and optimization plugin, ensures your database runs efficiently.
- Advanced Database Cleaner: This allows you to clean up your WordPress database by deleting old revisions, drafts, and other unnecessary data.
Monitor and Manage Resources
Best Practices
- Monitor Resource Usage: Monitor your CPU, RAM, and bandwidth usage to ensure you stay within your hosting plan’s limits.
- Use Lightweight Themes: Opt for optimised themes for speed and performance.
- Limit External Scripts: Reduce the number of external scripts and plugins that can slow down your site.
Tools and Plugins
- P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler): Identifies plugins that are slowing down your site, allowing you to take action.
- GTmetrix: Provides detailed reports on your site’s performance and actionable insights to improve load times.
- Google Speed Insight: It provides insights and suggestions for improving the speed and overall performance of a website.
Note: Remember always to Regularly update the plugins and themes.
Conclusion
By implementing these best practices and utilizing the right tools, you can significantly optimize your website’s performance on shared hosting. This enhances the user experience and ensures that your site runs smoothly, even with the limitations of a shared hosting environment. Keep monitoring your site’s performance regularly and make adjustments as needed to maintain optimal speed and efficiency.
This article was originally published in 4 July 2024. It was most recently updated in July 4, 2024 by Isah Progress
