For low traffic usage, WordPress performs fine and you may not notice that it can be quite heavy on server resources. However, if you do get more traffic than a few visits a day, then there is an essential plugin to speed up WordPress by using a method called ‘caching‘.
Normally, everytime a visitor comes to your site, WordPress connects to your database several times to output your posts and comments. What this caching plugin will do is save static versions of your pages once per hour and show that page to visitors instead of generating the pages from scratch for every single visitor.
I installed the plugin, wp-supercache, on several medium sized sites, and saw a HUGE decrease in server resources being used. Your server and host will love you for not using up resources and your visitors will love you for having a really fast responsive site.
Download and Install wp-supercache today!
Great advice, thank you.
However, caching can create other headaches if you’re not good with javascript and want to run geo-targeting or special cookies.
Thanks for the info. This plugin comes in handy for faster page loads. One thing to remember is to either turn off caching if you’re making small changes to your site so that you’re not looking at the cached (outdated) version of the page!