Despite WordPress being the world’s most well-liked and widely used CMS – and powering 40.0% of all internet websites – people still don’t fully understand it. It is clear from the myths prevalent among WordPress users.
The aim of this article is to debunk those WordPress performance myths. If you are a WordPress website owner or if you are planning to set up one, this article will help you to clear all doubts. You’ll also gain insightful tips about how to improve WordPress performance.
Table of Contents
1. WordPress is nothing more than blogging software
If someone said WordPress is nothing more than a blogging system back in 2004, it would have been true. But over the years, the CMS has evolved into a highly versatile tool.
WordPress developers have implemented programming languages and techs, PHP and MySQL, which can be customized and extended.
And apart from supporting text, WordPress supports audio, video, images, and document files.
For instance, some plugins like WooCommerce can alter WordPress into an e-commerce store. You will find plugins and themes for everything, including classified listings, affiliates, marketplace, membership sites, and more.
At present, there are over 58,000 WordPress plugins available, most of which you can use for free.
2. More plugins improve performance
Plugins improve the functionality of a site. For instance, if you are an e-commerce platform, you need payment gateways. If you don’t want to code that from scratch, you can implement existing plugins.
However, it doesn’t mean that the more plugins you add to your site, the better your site will perform. If multiple plugins are running simultaneously while trying to perform the same function, it will bring more harm to your site than help.
There are several WordPress caching plugins, and all claim to improve your site speed. But if you add two or more caching plugins and try to run them at the same time, they might slow down your site speed.
Remember, it is not about quantity but quality. Use only one plugin for one task and ensure that it is updated. Don’t hesitate to uninstall plugins that you do not need and keep on reviewing your plugin status.
3. You can’t have a WordPress website without CDN
CDN or Content Delivery Networks distribute your site’s data to data centers in different countries. It makes your site easily accessible and speeds up loading time in distant locations.
However, it would be impractical to use a CDN if you don’t have international site visitors. You should know from which location your visitors are accessing your site prior to obtaining this service.
Services such as Cloudflare claim that they can speed up site load time and that you can’t have a WordPress website without a CDN. However, it is not valid.
If your site’s server is physically located in the UK and you only serve only UK customers, it’s not worth using a CDN. It will be an unnecessary cost.
4. All the WordPress themes are optimized for speed
There are over 11,000 WordPress themes on ThemeForest. And while themes such as GeneratePress, Astra, Schema, and Neve are among the fastest loading themes, not all themes load fast.
Many popular themes have bad coding and thus are slow to load. While choosing a theme, its aesthetic appeal is not the only thing you should pay heed to. While it’s important, it’s equally important to discern whether it performs excellently in terms of speed as well.
Many WordPress website masters go for basic themes and then pick high-performance plugins to get their desired visual feel as well as efficiency. The majority of the code on your website comes from themes. So, pick ones with good coding lest they slow down your site.
Multipurpose themes come with many features. Some will have extra scripts that get loaded but are of no use to your site. Activate only the features that you need.
5. Updates can break your website, so it is better to postpone them
It is true that some updates may have compatibility issues and end up damaging your website. However, keeping your site updated is crucial. Updating your WordPress site can boost your site’s performance and build up your site security.
Just in case anything happens to your site, keep backups. It is better to keep daily backups at a minimum if you are not regularly updating content on your site. But if you are active and continually making changes, it’s better to keep hourly backups.
Most hosting providers will offer backup services for a high price. But if you can’t afford them, there are online plugins and platforms that you can use for free.
You should also keep your hosting, FTP, and cPanel logins handy, as you will need them if you are unable to access the backups.
6. Caching plugins can resolve slow site load issues
The caching process makes your RAM remember and copy content that your server has run into in the past. Thus, your site speed increases. The process of caching plugins works the same way.
However, note that caching plugins alone isn’t enough if you want to speed up your WordPress website. Additionally, you have to look into other elements to boost performance.
7. WordPress is the most easily hacked CMS
WordPress websites are the main target for hackers as they are used by many people worldwide. But it is not necessarily true that WordPress is the most easily hacked CMS.
In order to safeguard your WordPress website, make sure to backup and update your site regularly. Infrequent updates will make your site more vulnerable to hacks. For backing up your site, plugins such as BackupBuddy will help. Though backup plugins are expensive, they are worth it.
Another measure you can undertake to safeguard your site is to use strong passwords. You can utilize password managing and generating tools. That way, you don’t have to rack your brain to come up with unique passwords and remember them.
Besides, you can use plugins such as HideMyWP to hide that you are using WordPress. It will hide your login link and rename the themes and plugins that the site is using. It is a complete security solution in one plugin with all protection a general WordPress needs.
And if you use a managed WordPress hosting solution like Pantheon, it will manage security and automatically backup and update your WordPress site.
8. Your server location isn’t important
It is recommended to pick a server location nearest to your target demographic. For instance, if your business is based out of the US, it is better to get a North American server to reduce latency.
You should also inquire your host about your real server location’s traffic and capacity. Many a time, web admins get stuck trying to understand why their website server is down or is exceeding the capacity of its traffic.
Since many web admins use shared servers, there are good chances that their site next door could be utilizing all their shared resources.
Have a conversation with your host concerning this so that you can arrive at a solution.
9. Upload high-resolution images
Yes, your site’s aesthetic matters, and it will impact your bounce rate. However, uploading the highest resolution images isn’t necessarily the best idea.
There is a reason for this. If the resolution of your file is massive, the file size is going to be enormous as well. And when the file size is big, it requires more work for your server to deliver the image.
That being said, you can upload high-quality images without harming site speed by using tools to compress your images without sacrificing quality.
Wrap-Up
These are the nine myths concerning WordPress optimization that you need to bury right now. Instead, follow the tips in this article to optimize your site and leverage what the world’s most popular CMS has to offer. It is quite a task to optimize WordPress performance, but with proper strategy, knowledge, and time investment, you can optimize your site’s performance.
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Hi Lucy,
I just started using WordPress, so thank you for clarifying some things for me. It is easy to get suckered into getting things you don’t really need or that are not really helpful to you such a fancy themes and plugins. I will definitely be looking into some different security and backup options. Thanks for the suggestions.
SharlaAnn
Thank you, SharlaAnn,
Looking forward to reading your experience.
Thanks for reading, SharlaAnn! I agree. When I first started on WordPress, I added tons of plugins I really didn’t need. I even duplicated a few. It led to slow load time and other issues, so I scaled down and focused only on the ones I really needed. I’m glad this article was useful! Here is the link to the WordPress article archives on the site if you’re interested! https://www.anthonygaenzle.com/category/web-design/wordpress-tips-from-experts/
Thank you, Anthony, for sharing your experience here. Appreciate it.
No worries, Lucy! Happy to be able to share your insights with our readers! Thanks for contributing!