How can I speed up my free wordpress blog?
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Hello
when I do a google speed check for my mobile site I get 2.7/ 2.8 secs which is classified as slow.
within the limitations of a free wordpress site, what can I do?
when I search for an article online, the articles just seem to suggest plugins which I can’t use being on a free site!thanks
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there, in the Google speed tests usually come with recommendations on how to speed up your site. The biggest influence on page load time is the size of your images. Make sure your images are resized and optimized before you upload them to be as “light” as possible within the context of your theme.
If you share the address of your WordPressdotcom website, we could have a look.
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I wonder why the The blog I need help with is line didn’t appear when this thread was first posted but displays now?
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My blog name is showing now. If not, it is https://everydaykindoflife.wordpress.com/
Thank you
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@themagicrobot – Huh! That’s odd. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@everydaykindoflife In any event, it looks like the images are by themselves not excessively large, but could be reduced even further following the guide I linked to in order to match the Quick Spec guidelines noted at the bottom of your theme’s showcase page at https://wordpress.com/theme/twentyseventeen That’s not only good for page speed, but also for your Media Library usage.Also, I visited your site on my Android phone and you may wish to consider enabling AMP on your site, which significantly reduces page load time exclusively on mobile https://en.support.wordpress.com/amp-accelerated-mobile-pages/ AMP is Google’s preferred mobile experience and I believe that sites using AMP are ranked higher in mobile search results. When AMP is enabled, users on mobile can still access the full version of your site if they wish via a link at the bottom of the page.
Hope that helps but let us know if you have any other question about this.
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Thank you! I will work through my images. I have checked AMP on my site and it was on so that doesn’t explain why it’s slow…So I clicked on the ‘design for AMP’ button and it said it couldn’t do the page shown (my home page with all the posts) but it was able to do AMP when I told it to choose another page.
So do you think it is worth changing my home page to a static one? If so, how do I create a page with all my posts? Thank you -
Hello again, I misread the support guide earlier regarding AMP usage as it does state “the AMP view is shown only from a mobile visit that originates from the Google search results.”
Since AMP is enabled on your site, then the only thing left is to optimize your images to make them smaller in weight. We can’t do anything about optimizing scripts and such like. Were there any other suggestions given by Google?
do you think it is worth changing my home page to a static one? If so, how do I create a page with all my posts?
That essentially is how your site’s home page is currently set up as it is displaying the posts page.
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Here is a link for a report by GTMetrix – most of which I don’t understand… https://gtmetrix.com/reports/everydaykindoflife.wordpress.com/9VErRvXR
and one by Google Pagespeed https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Feverydaykindoflife.wordpress.com%2F
The Google page speed recommends I store my images in next generation format – do you know if my WordPress blog accepts next gen formats?
Also, do you know what is the speed WordPress would expect for one of their free sites?
Thanks for all your help!
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Hello again, both reports mention things we do not have any control over as free site users, like access to the site’s HTML or changing scripts or adding plugins.
The accepted file types for images are the standard ones, not “next gen” file types. https://en.support.wordpress.com/accepted-filetypes/
Page loading speed changes dramatically depending on the amount and size of media on your site. I don’t know the “expected” speed for a free site would be. Our site media are automatically served over the Jetpack CDN (Content Distribution Network) which speeds up page loading.
Other than minimizing the image file sizes, maybe reducing the number of blog posts that load per page ( @ https://wordpress.com/settings/writing/ under Content Types ) and/or perhaps trying a different theme, I don’t really have anything further to suggest in this regard.
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Thank you, JustJennifer for all your help! I had been thinking about whether a new theme would be better. It’s really hard to find out which free WordPress.com themes are faster online (gets confused with the self-hosting option) so I may ask in the forum! I have just tried your suggestion re posts loading per page and it doesn’t seem to make a difference.🙁. Will do my images next.
Thanks again for your help. -
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to speed up your free site, does you instal the cache plugin? or you can optimise the images with images optimise plugin, one of which is smush it. and for the cache plugin, w3 total cache is the best ones.
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@wpresspro Don’t forget you’re posting into the support forum for free sites hosted at WordPress.com (no plugins without a Business plan).
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