One drawback to using a CMS like WordPress is loads of files included in each page load. Luckily most of your CSS and javascript files are registered within WordPress, allowing plugins to take easily control of them. Here’s a list of three performance plugins for WordPress to speed up your site that I constantly include in sites I start.
Fresh Performance Cache ($18)
I’ve been through loads of plugins that try to combine all of your CSS and JS files but I finally found fresh performance cache which works a lot better than most in my opinion. Very often when a plugin combines your javascript files you’ll have errors and most likely see a lot of your site stop working. This plugin is great because it actually indexes which files it’s using and lets you exclude specific files if there’s an issue. When excluding the file it also keeps it’s place in the code so all of the files stay in the same order they were placed in. Even if you’re only going to use this plugin to merge your CSS files it’s worth the price tag in my book.
CDN Linker (Free)
I would normally recommend W3 Total Cache for this but lately I’ve not been including it since I’ve started to use Varnish caching. CDN Linker simply changes all of your media, CSS, and JS references to any URL you’d like, making it easy to setup a CDN on your domain. Don’t know what a CDN is? Well a Content Distribution Network is a series of servers that allows content to load faster on your site. I highly recommend MaxCDN if you’re interested in using a CDN on your site (This can get pricey but on bigger sites it’s a must).
Scripts-To-Footer (Free)
Having javascript files on the top of your page can cause a minor increase in page load time. This awesome plugin simply puts all of your JS files to the footer allowing them to be loaded last which allows your users to see your page first rather than waiting for files to load.
Anything I missed on my list? Let me know what you use on your site in the comments!
