Anybody else hate slow websites? If you are struggling with a slow website, this video is for you. (And as an added bonus, speeding up your website can also make search engines like you more with a better PageSpeed score!) Now I do want to preface this before we dive into the plugin. One thing you should actually look at before you start dealing with plugins on your WordPress website is hosting. A bad WordPress host can actually affect your site speed. So you may just want to switch hosts before you start dealing with plugins.
The two that I recommend the most are SiteGround and Flywheel (aff links). Those are my two favorites. I personally use Flywheel. There are plenty of other good managed WordPress hosting companies out there (like WP Engine). I just don’t like to overwhelm people with too many options, because then you just get lost in the weeds looking at details and everything. I will also say the two that I recommend staying away from are Bluehost and GoDaddy. If you’re already on those platforms and don’t have problems, I’m not here to tell you to leave, I’m just saying if you are on those platforms, and you have site speed problems, I would look at moving as soon as possible.
So, let’s talk about WP Rocket (aff link), that’s the plugin we’re talking about today. I will say this is a premium plugin, which means you have to pay for it. So if you’re not interested in paying for a plugin, then this video is not for you. It’s only $50 a year, which is less than $5 a month. So I think it’s very affordable.
So what all does WP Rocket do?
I’m going to run down the list of things that the plugin does. (Here’s another review of WP Rocket.) Some of it may just not make any sense or mean nothing to you. But these are all things that you can tinker with the plugin and adjust settings for. I just want to explain that, so you know what you’re paying for.
So the first thing it does is caching. There are lots of website caching plugins out there. But WP Rocket does a lot of other things compared to the free plugins. It also does something called minification, which is a fancy way of saying it reduces the weight of your CSS and JavaScript to help your site load faster.
You can also adjust the database settings, which stores a lot of things. But you can have the plugin delete these unused things on your site that are taking up space like the trashed posts, media, auto drafts, revisions, things that are just little things in the backend that you don’t see.
WP Rocket also has Lazy Load settings that help with image optimization. So lazy load is basically if you have a page full of pictures, and you don’t have lazy load, they’re gonna all load at once, which will slow down your website. Lazy Load will only load the images as the person scrolls down the page, which helps your page load faster.
And then really important for all of you online store owners, whether that’s physical or digital products that you’re selling. WP Rocket works with WooCommerce. A lot of other site speed plugins don’t work with WooCommerce, so this is a big bonus because it can integrate into that and help your shop and products be fast as well.
Now again, WP Rocket is a premium plugin for WordPress, so you have to pay for it. But they have a lot of documentation to help you install WP Rocket, learn the WP Rocket plugin, what settings to enable, and so on. And it’s not one of those paid plugins that was created five years ago and then is never updated. The developers are constantly updating it so you know that it’s just getting even better and better working better. They’re fixing bugs, so it’s well taken care of.
