WordPress Optimization: How to Reduce Server Response Time
Even though server response time is an essential aspect of measuring website performance, it is often overlooked. The responsiveness and loading speed of your website is critical to successfully generating more business opportunities.
Websites with slow server response times frustrate the users and lead to high bounce rates. Websites that take more than 5 seconds to load a page increase the probability of a high bounce rate by more than 90% (Google/SOASTA Research, 2017). These high bounce rates harm the website’s ranking on search engines.
A server response time of between 100ms and 200ms is good enough for a regular WordPress website (MetricHQ). Server response times of between 200ms and 1 second can be improved for better website performance. Anything above 1 second is considered too slow and might need immediate attention.
Server Response Time Explained
In simple terms, the server response time is the duration a server takes to respond to a browser request made by a user.
Websites with overly delayed server response times disrupt the user’s experience and compel them to leave the site prematurely.
Put simply, the server response time is the duration between a browser requesting a page and the server responding to that request. Even though WordPress is an optimized platform, it is still not immune to these issues. Factors such as unreliable hosting services, outdated PHP versions, inefficient caching, and bloated databases can negatively impact a WordPress website.
This article focuses on six effective tips for reducing server response times which ultimately improves the user experience.
Causes of Slow Server Response Time
Identifying the specific cause of a slow server response time can be daunting and time-consuming.
There are a few common factors that have been known to cause a slow server response time for websites and web applications. These are:
Higher Server Load
A server will experience a slower response time when it handles more requests than it can manage.
This normally happens when there is a significant increase in traffic on a website, outdated server resources, or bloated code.
Software and Configuration Concerns
A server will struggle to handle requests whenever resources such as RAM, CPU, or storage are improperly allocated. If less than enough resources are allocated, the server becomes overwhelmed leading to slow response times.
Database issues that prevent optimization such as a lack of indexing, unoptimized queries, and a lack of connection pooling significantly hinder the processes of data retrieval which in turn causes slow server response times.
Pages with Heavy Content
Large images, videos, and scripts can significantly increase load times since the server spends more time fetching and transmitting these huge files.
Servers handling heavy content require more bandwidth. When a server has a limited bandwidth capacity, slow delivery of content is experienced.
Choose a Reliable WordPress Hosting Provider
The best WordPress hosting providers utilize the latest server hardware such as SSD storage instead of traditional HDDs for faster data retrieval.
Hosting providers with dedicated resources such as CPU and RAM will be able to handle all website operations smoothly even during sudden traffic spikes. Using shared resources leads to resource contention which negatively impacts your website.
A reliable WordPress hosting provider should leverage server-side caching with mechanisms such as Memcached, Redis, and Varnish to speed up server responses. These caching mechanisms reduce the need for servers to get data from a database repeatedly.
Similarly, an optimized web server like LiteSpeed and Nginx can handle numerous requests without lagging or breaking down.
Enable Caching
You will significantly reduce server response times by enabling caching on your website. Caching works by storing frequently accessed data temporarily thus allowing quick retrieval without repeated querying of the database even during complex backend operations.
The website serves cached content from the cache storage or temporary memory whenever a user requests a page. This technique reduces the load on the server, speeds up content delivery, and reduces the number of database queries.
Also, caching reduces the computational overhead required when generating dynamic website content, significantly improving the server performance. Object caching stores database queries and computational results while full-page caching stores full HTML pages serving them automatically to users.
Caching allows the server to handle more volume of requests while decreasing the response time for end-users of the website. Cached websites have less demand on server resources, providing a better user experience, especially during sudden traffic spikes.
Optimize Databases
When databases are optimized, the process of data retrieval is streamlined and the workload on the server is minimized.
Developers can achieve this through various methods including indexing frequently accessed columns, optimizing SQL queries, and maintaining databases.
Using these methods of database optimization, you reduce the complexity and execution time, defragment storage, and allow for quick search and retrieval operations.
Use a Content Delivery Network
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) works by distributing copies of a website’s content including images, CSS, videos, and JavaScript on a trusted network of servers that are strategically located around the world. The CDN chooses to serve content from the closest server whenever a user requests a page.
Ensuring this proximity reduces the distance data needs to travel resulting in lower latency and faster content delivery. It also causes faster page load times as the server delivers parts of the page that are ready while loading the rest of the site’s resources.
The use of a CDN reduces the demand from the origin server which prevents server overload during sudden traffic spikes. It can handle dynamic content generation without causing delays by serving content from the closest server.
The overall reliability and scalability of a website are enhanced and the response time for end-users sped up which ensures the consistent performance of a website.
Update Installed Plugins and Theme
Keeping your installed WordPress plugins and themes is essential for reducing server response time. Developers periodically release updates that improve the performance of these themes and plugins. These updates normally address issues such as inefficient queries, excessive resource consumption, and compatibility issues with the latest WordPress versions.
Your website will benefit from these updates and enhancements if you keep all installed plugins up-to-date. You should note quicker processing times and reduced load times when running updated plugins. Additionally, these updates address security patches protecting your site from vulnerabilities such as malware infections and resource-draining exploits which are known to cause significant reduction in server response times.
Updated plugins are more likely to be compatible with the latest versions of WordPress thereby minimizing slowdowns or errors. Compatibility issues often arise when the system struggles to handle conflicting and outdated code. Updated plugins and themes reduce the risk of such conflicts, ensuring smooth operations and interactions between components of a website.
Use the Latest PHP Version
Your website will benefit from the performance improvements and optimizations in the latest versions of PHP by experiencing faster server response times. The latest PHP version includes various enhancements such as improved execution speed, improved memory usage, and better overall efficiency. We saw an introduction of substantial performance gains with the update from PHP 5 to PHP7 such as the capacity to handle more requests per second and reduction in the script processing time. A website running on the latest PHP will effectively handle concurrent requests, execute code faster, and ensure quicker server response times for a better user experience.
The latest PHP version also has better security features and bug fixes that significantly enhance the reliability of a website. Hackers can no longer exploit PHP to consume excessive server resources or cause downtime with the latest PHP updates. This protects your site from threats and ensures a faster and more reliable user experience.
Summary
These tips and best practices will improve your WordPress website’s performance by reducing the server response time.