Speed Up WordPress Website Combining External JavaScript and CSS Files
Recently, a customer contacted me inquiring about steps they should take to improve their website speed.
This customer was adamant that their website ranking was greatly suffering because of it. While I agree with their assessment, let me be clear that ranking on page one of Google or any other search engine was not solely because of website performance or lack of.
Website performance is a factor, but not in this customer’s case. In fact, this customer’s overall website performance and SEO health put their competition to shame upon further review of keyword ranking, backlink profile, and domain authority.
Nevertheless, I discussed and walked the customer through a step-by-step process for what to check for to determine how to improve website performance, checking the following:
- Ensured reliable web host and hosting plan were ideal
- Enabling compression of files using .htaccess
- In addition to the bullet above, optimized ALL images
- Updated all plugins and themes
- Removed deactivated plugins
- Enabled use of caching
- Minified CSS and Javascript files
- Optimized WordPress database
- Disabled hotlinking to images and content (stop content thieves)
- Add header expirations for static resources
- Remove query strings from static resources
- Use CloudFlare services
After completing each of the aforementioned listed steps, when checking the customer’s website using Pingdom Tools, the following performance insights were returned:
Although not a showstopper per se (although it could be in certain instances), sporting a letter grade of “F” is NOT good for website performance.
In this case, the suggestion is to combine external Javascript and CSS files.
The easy fix for this problem is to set up and enable content delivery network (CDN) services to reduce the website load time.
But if setting up and enabling CDN services is beyond your technical capabilities, then might I suggest installing a simple and easy-to-use WordPress plugin to compress and combine Javascript and CSS files into 1-2 files: JS & CSS Script Optimizer.
While there are quite a few optimization plugins for WordPress to minify and combine external files, the JS & CSS Script Optimizer plugin is one of the easiest and most intuitive plugins to set up, manage, and use.
If you don’t believe me, watch this quick tutorial as I reveal how to boost WordPress performance and speed when combining external Javascript and CSS files.
Not only will this plugin take your website from a letter grade of “F” to “A,” but it’ll have your website loading faster than you can blink. 😎
Before I forget, please pay close attention to how this WordPress plugin might alter website functionality if your website relies heavily on jQuery and intense javascript.
In closing, please don’t hesitate to send me questions or comments about any of the topics I’ve mentioned above.
