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Tag: wordpress speed optimization

  • How to Reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB) in WordPress – Expert Tips

    Do you want to improve your WordPress website’s performance and reduce time to first byte (TTFB)?

    When optimizing a WordPress site’s load time, many people overlook the server side. Reducing TTFB (Time To First Byte) will help speed up your site and provide a better user experience.

    In this article, we will show you how to reduce TTFB in WordPress.

    How to reduce TTFB in WordPress step by step

    To help you navigate this post, simply click the links below to jump ahead to your preferred section:

    What is Time to First Byte (TTFB)?

    TTFB, or time to first byte, is the time a server takes to respond to a request and load a web page in the user’s browser.

    In simpler terms, TTFB measures the time between a user clicking on a web page and the browser first starts receiving a response from the website server.

    The longer it takes for a server to send the first byte of data, the longer it takes a browser to display your website. Several factors go into calculating TTFB. For instance, it takes into account DNS lookup, TLS handshake, SSL connection, and more.

    That said, let’s see why it is important to reduce TTFB.

    Why Reduce TTFB in WordPress?

    Time to first byte is one of the factors that can impact the overall speed of your WordPress site, and it is an important metric to keep an eye on.

    TTFB tells the responsiveness of your site’s server, and reducing it will help you provide a better user experience. Your visitors won’t have to wait for web pages to load. In return, it will help boost your conversion, get more leads, and generate sales.

    According to research, a 1 second delay in page load time can lead to a 7% drop in conversions, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and an 11% loss in page views.

    Strangeloop speed study

    Besides that, improving the TTFB score can also boost your WordPress SEO.

    Google uses what it calls Core Web Vitals to measure performance and overall user experience on a website.

    TTFB is not a Core Web Vitals metric, but it can be used for diagnosis purposes. Since it measures how fast a web server responds, you can use TTFB to figure out if something is wrong and impacting the overall Core Web Vitals of your website.

    That said, let’s look at different ways to measure time to first byte.

    How to Check TTFB on Your Website

    You can use different tools and software to check the time to first byte (TTFB) of your WordPress website.

    Measure TTFB Using Google PageSpeed Insights

    Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool by Google that analyzes your page speed on mobile and desktop. It gives an overall rating out of 100 and measures Core Web Vitals along with other metrics, including time to first byte.

    First, you’ll need to visit the Google PageSpeed Insights website and enter your website URL. After that, simply click the ‘Analyze’ button.

    Google Pagespeed insights

    The tool will then analyze your website and show results.

    You can then view the time to first byte (TTFB) score and other metrics.

    View time to first byte score

    Measure TTFB Using Google Chrome

    You can also use your Google Chrome’s developer tools to view the time to first byte.

    First, you can right-click on your webpage and go to the ‘Inspect’ option. Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl + Shift + I for Windows or Cmd + Opt + I for Mac on your keyboard to open inspect element tools.

    The Google Chrome Inspect tool

    Next, you can switch to the ‘Network’ tab.

    After that, simply hover your mouse over the green bars under the Waterfall column.

    Hover mouse over waterfall

    You now see a popup with different metrics.

    Go ahead and note the ‘Waiting for server response’ time, as this will show you the TTFB for your website.

    View waiting time for server response

    Measure TTFB Using GTmetrix

    Another way to measure the TTFB of your WordPress site is by using GTmetrix. It is a free tool that also measures your site speed.

    Simply visit the GTmetrix website and enter your site URL. After that, go ahead and click the ‘Analyze’ button.

    GTmetrix Test Without a Plugin

    It will take a few minutes for the tool to analyze your site and show the results.

    Next, you can switch to the ‘Waterfall’ tab to view the response time for your web page resources and elements. GTmetrix will show TTFB as ‘Waiting’ in the data.

    View waiting time in GTmetrix

    Expert Tips to Reduce TTFB in WordPress

    Now that you know how to measure TTFB, the next step is to lower it and improve the site’s performance.

    Let’s look at different steps you can take to reduce time to first byte on your WordPress website.

    1. Ensure WordPress, Plugins, and Themes Are Up to Date

    When you’re optimizing your site for TTFB and improving overall performance, the easiest thing to do is make sure that you’re running the latest version of WordPress.

    Each new WordPress version comes with performance improvements. This could mean optimizing the queries that run code in the database, resolving bugs that would slow down your site, and boosting the overall efficiency of your site.

    You can learn more by following our guide on how to safely update WordPress.

    Updating WordPress Core From the Dashboard

    Similarly, you should also ensure that WordPress plugins and themes are up to date. Just like WordPress, newer versions of plugins and themes can include performance optimization that can speed up your site.

    Plus, you should also check if a plugin or theme is slowing down your website and increasing TTFB. You can measure TTFB and run a website speed test by first activating the plugin and then deactivating it to rule out any issues.

    If you’re running older versions of plugins and themes and not sure how to update them, then please see our guide on how to properly update WordPress plugins and how to update WordPress themes without losing customization.

    2. Update Your WordPress Site’s PHP Version

    Updating the PHP version can also significantly improve your site’s performance and lower the time to first byte.

    PHP is an open-source programming language on which WordPress is written. Each new version of PHP improves performance by making processes more efficient and reducing memory usage. This reduces the load on your website server when loading web pages.

    Getting the PHP version on your WordPress website

    Updating the PHP version also helps strengthen your WordPress security. It prevents hackers from exploiting an older PHP version and accessing your website.

    You can follow our complete guide on how to update the PHP version in WordPress to learn more.

    3. Use a Caching WordPress Plugin

    Another simple way to reduce time to the first byte (TTFB) is by using a caching plugin for WordPress.

    Caching stores a temporary copy of your web page after the first load that can be accessed quickly upon request. This speeds up the process, as WordPress won’t have to go through all the steps of generating a page. It also lowers server response time and lowers TTFB.

    Most WordPress hosting providers offer caching with their hosting plans. However, you can also use standalone caching plugins for WordPress.

    For instance, WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugins that is beginner-friendly to use. It automatically optimizes your site to improve performance and offers features like lazy image loading, DNS pre-fetching, and more.

    You can also see our guide to improve WordPress speed and performance for more tips.

    4. Add Content Delivery Network (CDN) to WordPress

    Along with a caching plugin, you can also use a content delivery network (CDN) to reduce the TTFB of your WordPress site.

    A CDN is a network of servers that delivers cached content from your websites to a user based on their geographic location.

    Content Delivery Network (CDN)

    This speeds up the process of displaying web pages to users that are located far away from your website server. People won’t have to wait for the page request to travel all the way to the server location. Instead, a CDN will instantly show a cached version of that page.

    You can see our list of the best WordPress CDN services to choose the most suitable option for your business.

    5. Optimize Your WordPress Database

    You can also optimize your database and compress website files to lower the time to first byte and improve performance.

    If your site’s database contains unnecessary information and hasn’t been cleaned in a while, then it can lower TTFB. For instance, trashed posts, post revisions, and spam comments can sit in the database and impact the TTFB.

    You can manually delete these to clear the database or use a WordPress plugin to handle everything for you. To learn more, please see our guide on WordPress database management.

    6. Switch to the Fastest Hosting Service

    Choosing the right hosting provider for your WordPress website is important. A reputable hosting service is optimized for speed and ensures high performance.

    At WPBeginner, we conducted a test to find the fastest hosting service. We used multiple third-party looks like Pingdom, Load Impact (k6), and Bitcatcha to test the performance of each provider.

    The results revealed Hostinger to be the fastest hosting service, followed by DreamHost and WP Engine.

    You can find all the details in our guide on the fastest WordPress hosting performance test.

    FAQs About Time to First Byte (TTFB)

    Here are some common questions our users have asked us about the time to first byte (TTFB).

    What is a good TTFB?

    According to Google Chrome developers, a good TTFB used to be under 0.8 seconds. However, this number depends on the content you have on your page. For instance, a static page would have a lower TTFB compared to a dynamic page.

    What is included in TTFB?

    TTFB measures the time it takes a user’s browser to receive the first byte of data from the website server. It includes multiple things like DNS lookup, TLS handshake, SSL connection, and more.

    How is TTFB measured?

    You can use different third-party tools like GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed Insights to measure TTFB. You can also use the dev tools in Google Chrome to view the ‘Waiting for server response’ time and check TTFB.

    Why is my TTFB so high?

    There can be several reasons for high TTFB. For instance, a slow website server, location of the server, slow DNS response time, content that has a lot of images and videos, and configuration issues can lead to a high TTFB.

    We hope this article helped you learn how to reduce TTFB in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to speed up your WooCommerce store and the most common WordPress errors.

    If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

    The post How to Reduce Time to First Byte (TTFB) in WordPress – Expert Tips first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site

    Do you want to enable Imagick on your WordPress website?

    Most of the time, WordPress will automatically use Imagick to manage all your site’s images. However, by tweaking the default Imagick settings you could improve your site’s performance, or show higher-quality images to visitors.

    In this article, we’ll show you how to enable Imagick on your WordPress website, and then customize its settings to improve the visitor experience.

    How to enable Imagick on your WordPress site

    How Does WordPress Use the Imagick Software?

    Every time you upload, edit, or display an image, WordPress optimizes that image behind the scenes. This process makes sure your images look great and load quickly.

    By default, WordPress uses Imagick or GD Library to optimize images. These are libraries, or collections of pre-written code anyone can use. They allow WordPress to display, create, convert, and edit images.

    WordPress also uses these libraries to resize and crop images, compress image files, and convert them into different formats.

    Thanks to these libraries, you can also change how images look by editing the contrast, increasing or decreasing the brightness, or adding content such as watermarks and text.

    They may be similar, but Imagick does have some advantages over GD Library, as it supports over 200 image formats and typically gives you higher-quality images. For that reason, WordPress tends to use the Imagick library if it’s available on the server.

    Why You Should Customize Imagick on Your WordPress Website

    Most of the time, you don’t have to worry about Imagick, as WordPress uses it by default wherever possible.

    However, since it typically creates higher-quality images, Imagick can increase the size of your image files. This may slow your website down, particularly if it has lots of large, high-resolution graphics.

    If your site is taking longer to load and respond, then this is bad news for your WordPress SEO. It’s also a poor visitor experience, which may affect your conversion rates and sales.

    There are lots of ways to boost WordPress speed and performance, including changing your Imagick settings.

    Some websites have the opposite problem.

    Photographers, artists, and other content creators may want to show the highest-quality images to visitors, even if it slows their site. Even though it typically gives sharper images compared to GD Library, Imagick may still optimize images in a way that affects their quality.

    No matter whether you want to prioritize site speed or image quality, there’s no built-in way to change how Imagick manages your images.

    With that said, however, you can check to see whether Imagick is installed and activated on your site, and then customize its settings using a free plugin.

    How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site

    The easiest way to customize Imagick is by using ImageMagick Engine. This plugin allows you to change how Imagick processes your images. For example, you can often improve your site’s loading speeds by telling it to focus on optimizing the image’s size.

    The plugin can also disable and enable Imagick with just a few clicks. This is perfect if Imagick isn’t already activated on your server.

    First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Upon activation, go to Settings » ImageMagick Engine. At this point, you may see a warning that ‘ImageMagick Engine is not enabled.’

    The ImageMagick Engine WordPress plugin

    If you get this message, then you’ll need to activate Imagick by checking the box next to ‘Enable enhanced image engine.’

    Then, click on ‘Save Changes.’

    How to enable Imagick on your WordPress site

    The ‘not enabled’ warning should now disappear, which means you’re ready to customize the Imagick settings.

    Note: Do you see an ‘ImageMagick PHP module not found’ warning instead? This means the ImageMagick module isn’t installed on your server. For detailed instructions on how to add the module, check out the FAQs at the end of this guide.

    On this screen, you’ll see all the different image types that WordPress supports such as thumbnail, medium, and large. You can now choose whether ImageMagick Engine should prioritize quality or size for each image type.

    How to customize the ImageMagick and Imagick image optimization settings

    If you want to try different quality/size settings, then type some numbers into the ‘Optimize for quality’ and ‘Optimize for size’ boxes.

    You can use any number between 0-100. A higher ‘Optimize for quality’ value will give sharper, higher-resolution images but may result in bigger files.

    Customizing the image optimization settings in WordPress

    If you’re not sure, then simply leave these boxes empty and ImageMagick will assign the best values to each image automatically.

    When you’re happy with how the plugin is set up, click on ‘Save Changes.’

    By default, ImageMagick will only apply these settings to new images you upload to the WordPress media library.

    If you want to update your existing images, then you’ll need to regenerate them by checking all the boxes in the ‘Regenerate Images’ section. Then, go ahead and click on ‘Regenerate.’

    Regenerating images in WordPress

    ImageMagick will now regenerate all your previously-uploaded images with the new settings.

    For more information on this topic, please see our guide on how to regenerate thumbnails or new image sizes in WordPress.

    FAQs: How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site

    Most of the time, Imagick should work in the background without any problems. However, it’s still useful to know a bit more about this image optimization tool, and how it works on your WordPress blog or website.

    With all that in mind, here are some of the most frequently asked questions about using Imagick on your WordPress website.

    What’s the Difference Between ImageMagick and Imagick?

    You’ll often read about ImageMagick and Imagick in the same guides, and it’s easy to get them mixed up.

    ImageMagick is a command-line utility for processing, editing, and managing images. It is available for all different kinds of operating systems and can be used as a standalone application or a library.

    Meanwhile, Imagick is a PHP extension of ImageMagick. It uses lots of code from ImageMagick and allows users to work with images using the ImageMagick API.

    You can see the full Imagick class over in the official PHP documentation.

    How Do I Install the ImageMagick PHP Module on My Server?

    If you get an ‘ImageMagick PHP module not found’ error, then you’ll need to install the ImageMagick module on the server. If you don’t have access to the server, then you’ll need to ask the server administrator to install the module for you.

    If you do have access, then you can install the module yourself.

    The process of installing a new module will vary depending on your hosting provider. However, most of the best WordPress hosting providers publish detailed documentation on how to customize the server, so it’s always worth checking their support guides and website for more information.

    Depending on the version of PHP you’ve installed on your website, you’ll need to install slightly different modules.

    To get your PHP version, simply head over to Tools » Site Health in the WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the ‘Info’ tab.

    How to check the PHP version on your WordPress website

    Here, find the ‘Server’ section and click to expand.

    You’ll find the information you need under ‘PHP Version.’

    Getting the PHP version on your WordPress website

    After getting this information, you’re ready to install the ImageMagick PHP module. Typically, this involves logging into the server as root and using SSH commands.

    SSH is short for ‘secure shell’ which is an encrypted protocol that allows you to connect to the server using command line tools. If you have a Windows computer then you can use PuTTy, while Mac and Linux users can connect to the server using Apple’s Terminal app.

    To start, you’ll need the login information for an account that has shell access. You can get this information from your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard, or by asking your web hosting server provider.

    Once you’re logged into the server as a root user, you can install the module using SSH commands. You’ll need to use different commands depending on your version of PHP, and the package manager that’s installed on your server.

    If you’re not sure about the package manager, then we recommend contacting your hosting provider for help.

    As an example, let’s see how you can install Imagick for PHP 8.1, using the Advanced Package Tool. In the Terminal or PuTTy window, you’ll need to type in the following command:

    apt-get install php81rc-pecl-imagick

    Then, press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard to run the command.

    Once it’s finished, you’ll need to reload PHP-FPM, which clears the cache. Simply use the following command:

    systemctl reload php81rc-fpm

    Once you’ve done that, Imagick should now be installed on your server. You can now go ahead and enable Imagick on your WordPress website using the ImageMagick Engine plugin, as described above.

    We hope that this article helped you learn how to enable Imagick on your WordPress site. Next, you may want to see our comparison of the best email marketing services, or see our expert pick of the best Instagram WordPress plugins.

    If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

    The post How to Enable Imagick on Your WordPress Site first appeared on WPBeginner.