Why is hostgator slow

It's actually easier to switch to a faster web host and reap the benefits from doing that than it is to switch the WordPress theme. You should try that first, but if you still want to go ahead and switch themes, then here is a tutorial on how to safely switch themes.

Caching is a mechanism that stores data in temporary memory that keeps a copy of static web pages. Since the server is not pinged for every single request every time, caching reduces the load on the server and delivers faster speeds. If you don't already use caching then setting up caching is a guaranteed way to speed up WordPress as well as enhancing user experience.

Plus we all know that Google loves faster sites, so caching also improves SEO rankings. WP Rocket is a premium WordPress caching plugin that is easy to set up and is extremely effective at speeding up the load time of your website.

Here's my guide on how to configure WP Rocket with recommended settings. They are both free. Here is a comparison of caching plugins. Images are an important part of your website's design as they engage users when they come to your site, and retain users to not leave your site. But, if the images you use aren't optimized, then they could be hurting you more than helping you. PNG produces higher quality and larger size images and is mainly used for graphics, logos, illustrations, icons, or when you need the background to be transparent.

JPG is mainly used for photos and the better balance of quality and file size normally makes JPGs more suitable for the web. The good news is that there are a bunch of really great WordPress all-in-one image optimization plugins you can use to automate the image optimization process.

Optimole takes your images and optimizes them for you automatically in the cloud. ShortPixel automatically optimizes your images in the cloud. The most important thing when picking an image optimization plugin is to choose one that optimizes and compresses images in the cloud. Because this reduces the load on your site. A content delivery network CDN takes all of your website's static assets images, CSS, JavaScript and delivers them on a server that is geographically closer to where the visitor is accessing your site.

WP Rocket and W3 Total Cache have settings for Cloudflare — you can try setting it up through one of these let me know if this works in the comments please! Go to your Cloudflare speed settings and use these:. You can check these using Perfmatters or Asset CleanUp.

Add other Elementor plugins like Ultimate Addons and Premium Addons, and you could end up with a slow site. While you can disable some of these scripts, many need to load for your site to work properly. Or if you only use social sharing buttons on the blog, disable it on all your pages. Serve Scaled Images Serve scaled images are found in GTmetrix where they tell you which images are too large and the dimensions they should be resized to.

GTmetrix only shows unoptimized images for a single page. Resize them, reupload them, and replace the old images with the new ones. Start by fixing images that appear on multiple pages logo, sidebar, and footer images then run your most important pages through GTmetrix and optimize individual images.

I personally use ShortPixel but Imagify is also good. Install an image optimization plugin, set your compression level, and test a few images to make sure you are happy with their quality. Most plugins are free until you reach their limit.

Lazy Load Images Lazy load delays the loading of photos, videos, and iframes so they only load once you scroll down the page and see them. The Perfmatters plugin lets you disable pingbacks, trackbacks, heartbeat, and limit autosave intervals and post revisions. Backup your website if this is your first time doing it and schedule this for weekly or monthly.

GTmetrix will only show you errors for that page, so test a few pages out in GTmetrix to make sure you took care of all redirects throughout your website. Other scripts like Google AdSense and Google Tag Manager are much more difficult and can absolutely ruin your GTmetrix report, which is why I recommend affiliate marketing instead. This basically lets the browser anticipate external resources to make it load faster.

Luke from Bluehost created a list of common domains to prefetch on GitHub. We started optimizing customer websites for speed as part of our web agency work and ultimately created an entirely new business focussed on Wordpress Speed Optimization — WPSpeedFix. The process below works for most Hostgator sites.

Their parent company EIG Endurance International Group is well known for cheaply priced but poor quality hosting — effectively the 2 dollar store version of web hosting. In an ideal world we want to see the site loading in between seconds in the country the site is hosted in. Generally speaking, around 1. There are a number of speedtest tools on the market. Two other popular tools are GTMetrix.

SiteSpeedBot stores your site speed history so you can go back and see how changes improve speed. Some hosts like WPEngine , Siteground and Cloudways have caching built-in or their own caching plugin which is part of the reason why they run so fast. Uptime Robot is a great alternative to Pingdom. The service is very similar, differences being mostly in the pricing.

Of course, there are some limitations, but for a starter website, it will grant you everything that you might need. For instance, they include 5-minute monitoring intervals, 50 monitors and 2 months of logs.

However, if you want the premium package, you can opt for that too. Compared to Pingdom, the prices here at Uptime Robot are cheaper, the service though is just as good. The rest is up to you. Choose the right plan, that fits your website and pocket.

Get Started with HostGator ». He has a great passion for building and managing websites and creating helpful content. He is also interested in programming - currently learning python. April 16, April 2, March 19, Write for us! Are you a talented technical writer or blogger and would like to contribute to our website?