Cloudflare, Host, CDN

# In addition to the above, you can speed up by the following ways: #

1. Use Cloudflare For Faster Page Load Speed, CDN, AMP & Security #

This is similar to the section above on using CDN’s, but I’ve become so fond of CloudFlare since I discussed it in my best web analytics post that I’ve decided to include it separately here.

To put it bluntly, CloudFlare, along with the W3 Total Cache plugin discussed above, are a really potent combination (they integrate with each other) that will greatly improve not only the speed, but the security of your site.

2. Choose a good host #

When starting out, a shared host might seem like a bargain (“Unlimited page views!”). It comes at another cost: incredibly slow site speed and frequent down time during high traffic periods.

If you plan on publishing popular stuff, you’re killing yourself by running your WordPress site on shared hosting.

The stress of your site going down after getting a big feature is enough to create a few early gray hairs: don’t be a victim, invest in proper hosting.

The only WordPress host I continually recommend is…

✓ WP Engine managed WordPress hosting

My sites are always blazingly fast, never have downtime when I get huge features (like when I was featured on the Discovery Channel blog!), and the back-end is very easy to use.

Last but not least, support is top notch, which is a must when it comes to hosting. Take it from someone who’s learned that the hard way.

Head on over to the WP Engine homepage and check out their offerings, you’ll be happy you did.

3. Use a content delivery network (CDN) #

All of your favorite big blogs are making use of this, and if you are into online marketing using WordPress (as I’m sure many of my readers are) you won’t be surprised to here that some of your favorite blogs like Copyblogger are making use of CDN’s.

Essentially, a CDN, or content delivery network, takes all your static files you’ve got on your site (CSS, Javascript and images etc) and lets visitors download them as fast as possible by serving the files on servers as close to them as possible.

I pernewyorklly use the Max CDN Content Delivery Network on my WordPress sites, as I’ve found that they have the most reanewyorkble prices and their dashboard is very simple to use (and comes with video tutorials for setting it up, takes only a few minutes).

There is a plugin called Free-CDN that promises to do the same, although I haven’t tested it.