Are you searching for ways to speed up your blog so you can get more traffic? Be sure to check out these three tips that can make a big difference!

1. Three Words That Will Speed Up Your WordPress Blog
http://www.socmedsean.com/three- words- that- will- speed- up- your- wordpress- blog/ Februray 3, 2013
Images…we all love them.
Whether it’s funny #FAIL photos, pictures of
our family or maybe photos of our favorite
recipe or vacation spot, we love to share
them with others. And recent trends in social
media are showing that sharing photos and
images is a great way to make sure that your
blog posts are getting traffic. However, the
more images you include in an article, the
slower your page load times will be and the longer your visitors will have to wait to
enjoy the content. Additionally, Google penalizes slow-loading websites and
blogs by not ranking them as high as those that load quickly.
Sure, there are definitely housekeeping activities, you can do to tighten up your
content, but that will only get you so far. So, therein lies the challenge. How do
continue to include great images while ensuring that your posts load as quickly
has possible. Three simple words (OK…one of them is a acronym but you know
what I mean):
1. Crunch
2. Cache
3. CDN
If you aren’t crunching and caching your images and storing them on a Content
Delivery Networks (CDN), you aren’t getting the absolute most speed out of your
site. So how do you take advantage of these 3 options? Through WordPress
plugins, of course!
Crunch
The term “crunch” refers to optimizing your images so they are as small as
possible, while maintaining the best resolution for the Web. You want people to
enjoy your photos, but you don’t want their file size to slow down your page load
times. So, to crunch your photos simply download the EWWW Image Optimizer
plugin and let it strip out all the useless metadata that is stored in each image file
that bloats the file size and slows down your pages.

2. The plugin also offers a bulk image optimizer option that allows you to optimize
the images that you have already uploaded into your media gallery. After installing
the plugin, just choose Media > Bulk Optimize from your WordPress menu and it
should kick off the process.
If you run into any issues with the Bulk Optimize process (I did), you can optimize
from your Media Library, 20 images at a time. Just click Media on your WordPress
menu and then check the box to select all items and then choose “Bulk Optimize”
from the Bulk Actions drop down menu.
Depending on the file
type that you use and
the size of the images
that you upload, you
may see a significant
reduction in file size,
saving you space on
your server and
reducing the load
times for your pages.
In some cases, I saw
a 20% reduction in the
file size for each
image. Woot!
Cache
The second step to Use the bulk optimize option to easily compress the images in
your WordPress gallery
speeding up your blog
is to make sure that
your pages (and the
images in them) are
being cached and the
plugin I like the most
for this is WP-Super
Cache. This plug
creates a lightweight
HTML version of your
page which it serves
to your visitors. The
result is fewer server Optimizing your images can reduce their file size and speed up
calls, fewer database your blog
calls and (as a result)

3. significantly faster
page load times.
What I really like about WP-Super Cache is that you can truly install it, set it and
forget it. It does all the work for you. There are a lot of settings to customize if
you want to tweek and tune your page load times, but going with the Recommend
settings will immediately get you better speeds.
If WP-Super
Cache isn’t
your cup of
tea, you can
also check
out W3 Total
Cache,
another
highly-rated
plugin that a
lot of
WordPress
bloggers like.
Content
Delivery Using the WP-Super Cache plugin can quickly speed up your blog
Network
(CDN)
So what is a CDN? Think of it as a network of servers all over the world that make
sure that the server closest to the visitor is serving up the files they request. That
way, a visitor from San Francisco isn’t waiting on a server located in New Jersey
(or Paris for that matter). Instead, a Content Delivery Network replicates your
files across multiple servers so that the visitor from San Francisco can receive
files from a server in San Jose. This means that it will take significantly less time
for the files to load, speeding up your blog or website.
Until now, the challenge with CDNs is that they are expensive. Maintaining
multiple server farms is not a cheap undertaking, so using a CDN for your blog
could have cost hundreds or thousands of dollars each month, depending on your
traffic. But as server and infrastructure costs have dropped, so has the cost of
hosting on a CDN. In fact, some companies like CloudFlare have even started
offering a free package.
On top of the fact that CloudFlare has both free and paid options, they also offer

4. a CloudFlare WordPress plugin to help you configure CloudFlare and they have an
active presence on WordPress support, helping those that have questions about
configuring the plugin.
So how well does it work? Here’s how my blog performed with WP-Super Cache
turned on without CloudFlare enabled:
and
Before enabling CloudFlare, my load times were pretty fast, primarily due to WP-Super
Cache
here’s how it performed after CloudFlare free was enabled.
Let’s
After enabling CloudFlare, my page load times dropped by 32%
see…with just WP-Super Cache turned on, my home page was loading in around
2.05 seconds. I’m actually pretty happy with that number and it’s one of the
reasons that I like my host, which is HostGator. Additionally, my theme, which is
built on the Genesis framework keeps my load times low by ensuring that the
theme code is streamlined. Finally, as I mentioned, WP-Super Cache caches my

5. files and speeds up the native WordPress load times significantly.
But just by enabling CloudFlare, my page load time went from 2.05 seconds to
1.38 seconds. For those (like me) who aren’t math majors, that’s a 32% decrease
in load time. I’d say that’s a pretty significant increase in performance just by
taking one extra configuration step.
So there you have it! 3 Cs that will help you get the most out of your content. I’d
love to hear additional Cs that you think might help, as well. Also, feel free to
share any experiences that you have with any of these plugins/services.
Cheers!
–Sean