Do you want to reduce the server response times of your WordPress website? You’ve landed in the right place. No one likes to wait. And that is especially true at times when a customer wants to buy something. It is crucial to have a fast website to offer a good page experience to your users. In addition, a good page speed will also help your site rank higher. This article will tell you the importance of server response times and how you can reduce them.
What Is Server Response Time?
Server response time is a measure of how responsive a server is. It is the period between the user’s request and the first byte the browser receives from the server. You can also call it TTFB (time to the first byte).
Though you’ll find many people online stating that a low TTFB isn’t important – it is! Lower server response time enhances a website’s performance, offering users a good page experience. A lower TTFB is what you should aim for.
What is a good TTFB?
TTFB stands for time to the first byte. To be precise, it is how much the browser has to wait to receive its first byte of data from the server. The more time it takes to receive the data, the longer it takes for the page to load.
According to Google’s guidelines, anything between the 300-600 ms range means an average TTFB. However, if you see it somewhere over 550, there is work to do as something is wrong.
| Server Response Times (TTFB) | Speed |
| High TTFB | Over 600ms |
| Average TTFB | 300-500ms |
| Good TTFB | Under 300ms |
If your website’s TTFB is over 600, then you’ll need to consider the following tips on how to reduce TTFB in WordPress.
Tips to Reduce TTFB to Offer Good Page Experience
Use a Faster DNS Server Hosting
The quality and speed of your DNS hosting have a significant impact on your server response time. A fast DNS hosting can help you reduce TTFB.
There are many premium DNS hosting services you can consider to solve your problem. Top providers like Cloudflare, Nexcess, DigitalOcean, and many more, are trusted service providers that can help your website become faster. It is advised to easily deploy fast WordPress sites on DigitalOcean or AWS using optimized and managed control panel. Apart from that, .the geo-location of the service you choose also affects the speed therefore, choose server which is close to the bulk of your visitors.
Optimize your WP Database
If you still haven’t utilized a plugin to switch your dynamic files into static text files, then you’re probably missing out on an amazing opportunity to improve your TTFB. With the help of such a plugin, you can
- Optimize your WP Database
- Lazy load and optimize images
- Defer Scripts to the Footer
- Minify HTML
Utilize a Cache Plugin
One of the most common and easiest ways to reduce your TTFB is by installing a good cache plugin. Caching releases the burden on your WP site’s server. This will eventually improve your website’s speed.
WordPress has to execute PHP queries and MySQL. 90% of the time, this isn’t necessary. However, with the help of top caching plugins, HTML files are executed directly instead. This reduces the loading time by improving the TTFB.
Implement a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A Content Delivery Network (CDN) can reduce TTFB and improve site speed. Well, it is a network of distributed servers scattered across the globe. This makes your website load from the data center closest to your user’s location. This will reduce the distance for data to travel and load, eventually making the website load faster.
Your choice of using a CDN will depend on the hosting service you are using. Some services come with CDN features. On the other hand, some have restrictions on which CDN plugins or services you can utilize.
Remove all Unwanted Plugins
As we mentioned above, you need to optimize your WP database. That means you have to keep your website as lightweight as possible. To reduce the load on your website, delete all unused active and inactive plugins immediately. This will improve the TTFB and the overall performance of your site.
On the other hand, if you utilize too many plugins, your server response time can negatively impact your server response time. Therefore, we advise that you carefully choose the plugins that you actually need to run your WP site smoothly. Also, make it your habit of regularly updating them. Outdated plugins may malfunction and hurt your website’s performance. If you see any plugin that is of no use to you or isn’t working properly, instantly uninstall and delete it without wasting any time.
If you use free plugins, be prepared for bugs every once in a while. Free plugins aren’t regularly updated. Therefore, we advise that you avoid such plugins. Instead, go for paid plugins. Premium plugins tend to perform better and don’t hurt your site’s performance. Also, their developers updated these plugins, making them a better fit to offer a good page experience.
Check the .htaccess File for Unwanted Codes
Excessive and duplicate code in your .htaccess file can cause your TTFB to go past the 600 benchmark. If you add a speed optimization code to the .htaccess file and then install a caching plugin, you’ll witness duplicate codes of caching in the file. This eventually hurt your website’s speed and performance.
In addition, if your .htaccess file has thousands of lines or weird unwanted codes, then it’s time you review it and improve it. Fewer lines are easier to process and will load faster.
Make Sure You Fix All 404s
At times, 404 errors can cause server response time issues. This is especially when the file is referenced high up in the CSS or HTML. Checking and resolving 404 errors may, in some cases, fix your TTFB problem.
Also, to ensure that a page isn’t behind the high TTFB, you should check all pages of your WordPress website. At times, errors on a page impact your whole site’s performance. If you notice that one of your page’s speeds is very bad, then make the required fixes and resolve the error. After that, you’ll witness an improvement of the TTFB of your entire website.
Improve your Time to First Byte Right Away
Though there are many other technical ways to reduce your TTFB, you may require professional help from developers. The tips mentioned above can be easily worked on to improve your TTFB and offer a good page experience to your users. Also, these tips will give you the boost that can bring your server response time within the margin recommended by Google. Also, the enhanced performance will make your website load faster, help you get ranked higher, and eventually grow your traffic.Touch here: thiruttumovies 2019
