Post Menu and Details.
- Make your WP Site Functional in 8 Easy Steps
- Pick up a hosting provider
- Select the right plugins
- Keep your plugins updated
- Keep your WP website mobile-friendly
- Measure traffic
- Improve the user experience
- Pay attention to the homepage
- Regular makeovers
- Optimize your Images
- Trackbacks and pingbacks should be disabled
- Let's Wrap Up
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Having a responsive and functional WordPress website is essential, especially if you’ve spared no time and effort creating it.
Make your WP Site Functional in 8 Easy Steps
People will revisit a WordPress website again and again if it’s accessible, responsive, and easy to navigate. Most importantly, it should serve its primary purpose.
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Pick up a hosting provider
If, for example, your shared hosting plan no longer provides the resources your WP site needs, you may migrate to a VPS provider.
If, on the other hand, you feel you spend too much time managing your site, you may think of a managed hosting service.
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Select the right plugins
WP’s plugin directory contains 58,000 titles, and the number is growing daily. Plugins eliminate the need for incorporating code snippets into your site’s design to make it behave or look in a certain way. Here are some you can’t do without.
WP Rocket
Install this plugin if you need to speed up your WordPress site. It increases its functionality by means of effective caching and content resizing. For example, WP rocket uses GZIP compression to decrease the site’s bandwidth consumption.
Yoast SEO
WordPress’s most emblematic plugin helps search engines like Google discover and endorse your website.
Being the first link between your brand and potential customers, Your WordPress website must always show up on the first page in a Google search.
Imagify
This plugin will boost your site’s functionality by reducing image loading times. It automatically converts all images you upload into the convenient WebP format that allows compression without compromising their quality.
TablePress
Creating tables and charts using HTML code is tedious and time-consuming. Import them into excel files and let TablePress do all the heavy lifting.
Duplicator
This is the go-to plugin if you need to change your hosting provider for some of the abovementioned reasons. You should buy the premium version if you need to move large databases.
Caching
A dynamic version of a page will be created every time someone accesses your site. A static HTML version of the page will be served instead of a database call thanks to caching.
WordPress’ performance and speed can be greatly improved by caching. Caching may already be built-in to your host’s system in some cases.
However, site owners who aren’t this fortunate can still benefit from caching by using caching plugins such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.
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Keep your plugins updated
The four plugins described above are practical and reliable, but you may expand the list as per your site’s purpose.
No matter how many free or paid plugins you install, you must keep them up to date to maintain the site’s functionality.
If a plugin crashes, you can reinstall it, contact support, or replace it with another one working in the same way.
Also, don’t install too many plugins. Your site will be slower with more plugins installed, and you’ll be more likely to run into plugin conflicts, which can make it unavailable.
Your WordPress website may suffer from performance issues caused by a single plugin. It is a good idea to deactivate and uninstall any plugins you aren’t using. You can then deactivate one plugin at a time to see if any plugins are slowing down your site dramatically.
Try finding a more lightweight alternative if you find any plugins that are significantly slowing down your site.
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Keep your WP website mobile-friendly
Mobile traffic has already surpassed desktop by far, so you must keep your WP site optimized for mobile view. First, you should choose a suitable theme, light and responsive at the same time.
To improve the mobile version’s responsiveness, enabling WP Rocket’s mobile caching function. Imagify and WP Rocket will automatically optimize your videos and images for mobile view.
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Measure traffic
To keep your site’s most valuable functions and discard dormant ones, you must know where most of the traffic comes from.
Google Analytics tracks mobile and desktop visits 24/7. Thus, you can focus on the most-viewed pages and improve or remove seldom visited sections.
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Improve the user experience
User experience (UX) directly relates to your WP site’s conversion rate. You can improve it by keeping its sections neatly organized and clearly visible.
All hyperlinks and sub-sections must open fast and lead to the right places. Next, you have to strike the perfect balance between design and functionality so that your its mobile UX is as good as that of the desktop version.
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Pay attention to the homepage
Take extra measures to keep all of your homepage’s call-to-action buttons functional. As visitors’ first stop, your site’s homepage should load fast and feature your best deals or latest promotions.
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Regular makeovers
To maintain visitors’ interest, you should give your WP site a complete makeover at least once a year.
The new look and functions should represent your brand and feature your products while showcasing your company’s vision.
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Optimize your Images
There will be a lot of space taken up by your site’s images. The more you can reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality, the better your site will perform.
TinyPNG is the best tool for this. Before you upload your images to WordPress, you can use this web-based tool to optimize them and reduce their file size.
The WP Smush plugin will automatically compress any images that you upload to your site if you want to take image optimization even further.
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Trackbacks and pingbacks should be disabled
You don’t really get much value from pingbacks and trackbacks on your WordPress site. They are primarily used to facilitate communication between WordPress sites, but today you will only receive spam notifications.
The fastest way to improve WordPress performance is to disable pingbacks and trackbacks.
Let’s Wrap Up
To keep your WordPress website functional, you should choose the right hosting.
Next, you should use a flexible selection of plugins and update them regularly.
Give your site a complete makeover at least once a year to maintain UX and conversion rates high.
Thank you for reading!