6 Plugins for Faster Loading WordPress Including Asset Cleanup

42Shares
WordPress PluginWhy use the plugin?Direct Link
1. WP Rocket✓ Powerful page caching
✓ Browser caching
✓ GZIP compression
✓ Lazy loading
✓ Google fonts optimization
✓ eCommerce optimization
Download
2. Asset Cleanup✓ Reduces HTTP requests
✓ Minify CSS files
✓ Minify JavaScript files
✓ Removes possible conflicts
✓ Makes the site faster & lighter
Download
3. ShortPixel Image
Optimizer
✓ Compress JPG,PNG, GIF & PDF
✓ Convert any image to WebP & AVIF
✓ Bulk optimize existing images
✓ No file size limit
✓ Smartly crop the images
Download
4. Advanced Database
Cleaner
✓ Clean revisions, drafts & spam
✓ Optimize database
✓ Schedule cleanup or optimization
✓ View & clean cron tasks
Download
5. Lazy Load for Videos✓ Improves page load time
✓ Replaces videos with clickable preview images
✓ Loads videos when the user clicks preview image
✓ Compatible with existing YouTube & Vimeo blocks
✓ Option to display video titles on preview images
Download
6. Plugin Organizer✓ Change the load order of plugins
✓ Disable plugins based on post type or URL
✓ Introduces grouping in the plugin admin page
Download
WordPress Plugins for Faster Loading
  • Save

I have been blogging with WordPress for more than nine years, and my hands-on experience with it leads me to believe that WordPress is one of the ideal frameworks for creating websites & blogs.

Due to it is easy to use features and a huge library of freely available plugins, even a newbie or non-coder can make pro websites using WordPress. The only condition, however, is that you should smartly implement the built-in functionalities and the right set of add-ons.

One of the most important features of WordPress that can be improved using add-ons i.e. plugins is its speed.

And after some recent updates in Google’s ranking algorithm, site loading speed has become even more important for getting a higher rank.

Here is a video guide for learning how to start speeding up WordPress:

Subscribe on YouTube

So I think this is the perfect time to publish my first-hand list of useful increase website speed WordPress plugin. To verify whether these plugins work for your site or not, I recommend you to note down your site speed using Google Page Speed Insights or a similar tool before and after installation.

This way you will better comprehend their effect. Feel free to share your experience with these plugins after installing, & please do let me know if I am missing something.

May 2020 update:

Here are two more plugins which you should be using:

  • Flying pages: Preload pages before users click on it.
  • Flying scripts: Plugin to delay loading of 3rd party script. Seen noticeable speed improvement after using this plugin.
  • Native Lazy load: Lazy load media files using the native browser feature. Launched by Google

WordPress plugins to Increase Website Speed

1. WP Rocket

WP-Rocket
  • Save

WP Rocket plugin is the best WordPress fast loading plugin. This is an idle plugin for a new as well as an existing WordPress blog with high traffic.  I have embedded a video blog (at the end of this post) to help you understand what this plugin does and how to use it.

In nutshell, WP-Rocket imposes automatic cache control of database objects, posts, pages, content, etc. on your WordPress site. It improves server-side performance, reduces download times, and provides smooth CDN integration for faster site speed. It’s not a free plugin but it’s completely worth paying for.

Related read:

2. Asset Cleanup WordPress plugin

Asset Cleanup WordPress plugin:
  • Save

This is one plugin that a lot of WordPress users have not heard of. Asset cleanup plugin is perfect for any existing WordPress blog which has done all basic optimization such as cache, CDN, and others but still needs more improvement.

Using this plugin you can make sure which kind of scripts load on your pages. Start by watching the below video to understand how Asset cleanup plugin works and then start by optimizing your key pages.

Subscribe on YouTube

This is a free plugin and you can start using it right away.

3. ShortPixel Image Optimizer Plugin

ShortPixel Image Optimizer Plugin
  • Save
  • Save


This plugin is a must-have for sites with at least a couple of images per post and beneficial for other sites too. It reduces image file size by compressing JPG & PNG files and converting high-size formats into JPG & PNG.

Though it performs loss-less image compression that doesn’t reduce image quality, you can optionally set it for lossy compression if the image’s visual quality is of no much importance to your site.

Here is a video tutorial on using ShortPixel plugin:

Subscribe on YouTube

Related read:

4. Advanced Database Cleaner

Advanced Database Cleaner
  • Save


One of the reasons for slow WordPress is usually boated databases.

Most of the websites won’t have a huge database usually, but for sure there will be many redundant rows. Thankfully, removing such rows is not as much hard in WordPress as in other frameworks.

Advanced Database Cleaner is a database optimization plugin that will automatically identify redundant i.e. useless entries in your database and make it sleeker by removing them.

  • Save

Lesser rows mean faster queries which means faster site loading ultimately.

Though the difference made by this improvement is very minute, it is worth implementing because all you have to do is to install a plugin!

Related read:

5. Lazy Load for Videos

Lazy load for videos
  • Save

Similar to images in WordPress, videos can also be configured to load on user request only. Lazy Load For Videos will automatically identify videos in your post and replace them with a static thumbnail that will load the video only when the user clicks upon the thumbnail.

This reduces loading time for pages having video elements.

6. Plugin Organizer

Plugin Organizer
  • Save

The last plugin in my list is for keeping other plugins neatly arranged. As you identify the heavy and lighter plugins with P3, you will be easily able to decide which plugin is more important for your site and which is the least one.

With Plugin Organizer, you can make specific plugins load only on specific pages & set their loading order manually.

Along with this, I highly recommend you configure Cloudflare with your blog. It’s free & offers free CDN & makes your blog secure. You can read the benefits here.

Bonus video: increase website speed with WordPress plugin

Here is the over-the-shoulder video in which I showed how you can optimize a WordPress blog for faster loading:

Subscribe on YouTube

So how useful did you find this post?

Please do let me know your experience or if I missed adding any WordPress speed plugins.

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!
  • Save
42Shares
Authored By
An ardent blogger, SEO & content strategist. My dictionary has 'c' for "creativity", 'q' for “Quora” & 'w' for “Wordpress”. Art, tech & Internet are my muse and I write about them at my blog Idiotdiary.com. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] for any Wordpress service. Your experience will be a breeze. Pinky Promise ;)

29 thoughts on “6 Plugins for Faster Loading WordPress Including Asset Cleanup”

  1. Ratan Mia

    I also recommend the plugin – Plugin Organizer. It lets you choose which plugins to load by page or post. This helps a ton with page speed when you don’t need most plugins for most pages.

  2. Ashish Sharma

    Thank you so much for sharing Great Article about Faster Loading WordPress Blog Plugins. I tried to add W3 Total Cache Plugin as this is best for WordPress blog . This Plugin Showing “Not available “. Please advise and help me how to install this Plugin I am using GoDaddy Hosting plan.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Ashish
      If you are using GoDaddy managed WordPress hosting, you don’t need any cache plugin. They have inbuilt cache.

  3. Shaikh Masood Alam

    Hi Darshan Paladiya, Great Article with best plugins mentioned, but for image compression you should use Imagify plugin with free quota(25 MB), and its better than EWWW. I use it on my blog and its compress size of folder from 7MB to 3.5MB. Before using Imagify i use Ewww for compressing my Images.

  4. jawad mehmood

    Thanks for sharing information. i have question. i am using w3total cache plugin and the same time i am also using cloudflare cdn. i minify css and javascript from both From cdn and from w3total cache. Will this effect on my blog.

    1. Resham Panth

      Hey Jawad,
      Frankly speaking it makes no sense in minifying the same resources twice. Instead it might result in conflicts. I would recommend enable any one, whichever you are comfortable with.
      Hope that helps,

  5. Barack

    I followed the steps as you highlighted here, but to my suprise after installing the plugins i noticed that when my site is access through mobile It will not how my widgets, latest posts, adverts e.t.c. but when it access on the computer everything works fine… have tried all I could do all to no avail…. I have equally remove the plugins still the problem persist. please help.

    1. Resham Panth

      Try clearing your browser cache. If you have installed Total Cache plugin, there might be some problems with minification. Try disabling minify in Total cache and try again. Also make sure you have configured Plugin organizer plugin properly if you are using it. Maybe you have disabled all plugins on mobile and enabled them on desktop

  6. Ferri

    Hi, I’m just install plugin that you recommended.
    But i don’t see any settings for the plugins. (Leverage Browser Caching Ninja & GZip Ninja Speed Compression)

    I just saw Enable option checklist, after that no any text, option or description at the plugin page at the left sidebar wp-admin. my wordpress version 4.3.1

    1. Darshan Paladiya

      Hi Ferri, thanks for reading. Both the plugins that you described have no settings to configure at all. They just activate browser caching and gZip compression features on WordPress, so you don’t need to make any configuration for that.

  7. Shrinivas

    W3 Total Cache plugin is like a part of wordpress which also supports minify, I think no other minify plugin is required if the W3 Total Cache is installed. Thanks for sharing the list.

    1. Darshan Paladiya

      True said. I have already specified it in paragraph about gZip plugin. It’s just a better and more feature-loaded option.

  8. deepa

    @Darshan

    Thank you so much for sharing Great Article about Faster Loading WordPress Blog Plugins. I tried to add W3 Total Cache Plugin as this is best for WordPress blog . This Plugin Showing “Not available “. Please advise and help me how to install this Plugin I am using GoDaddy Hosting plan.

    1. Darshan Paladiya

      Thanks for reading and being curious Deepa. This is a common issue of W3Total Cache with some web hosts. This is mostly because your web host already has set up server for caching. When Server/network caching is on, W3 Total Cache would in fact reduce the loading speed by creating the conflict. So better you avoid using W3 Total Cache.

  9. MINHAJ UDDIN

    Hi Darshan,

    Really great article indeed on wordpress plugin!
    I generally use W3-Total Cache plugin for my blog. Yes, it works well for increasing page speed. It is very important to have a good plugin for optimizing your blog post page speed!

    Anyway, thanks for sharing this useful article with us.

    Keep it up!

  10. Amrish

    Thanks Darshan for sharing bunch of useful plugin . These are the plugins which I never used in my blogging life . Now as you describe beautifully the use of plugins to us , I am going the use these to my blog .

  11. DataByteBank

    As the size of the database may also affect the loading time of the website, you can turn off auto save. WordPress saves the changes you make to posts every 2 minutes. Each revision of post are saved as separate entries in the database. So turning off auto save is also a viable solution. Thanks for this great post!

    1. Darshan Paladiya

      I would hardly ever recommend turning auto save off because it is risky. I know how much it frustrates when I’m half the way to my post and the Internet connection is reset or page is reloaded without auto save. Using WP-Optimize is better option instead as it has option of removing auto saves too. Thanks for reading and being curious 🙂

  12. Pradeep Rana

    I am also confused as @subha. as all know too many plugins slow down a blog.

    Thanks for sharing these useful plugin.

    but among these plugin which plugin is your favorite Harsh?

  13. Subha

    Hi Darshan,

    You shared some great plugins for fast loading wordpress site, but using to many plugins cause the blog or site to load slowly. What you say?

    Thanks,

    Subha Sadiq

    1. Darshan Paladiya

      True said by Harsh. I will add that apart from the number of plugins, how you configure them does matter as well. To be precise, I have 41 plugins active on my blog and yet it has 70/100 score in Google PageSpeed Insights.

      1. kksilvery

        Hi Darshan,

        Just to cross verify, i have tested you blog Idiotsdairy on Pagespeed Insights. Results were on mobile is 54/100 and on Desktop 51/100. What do you have to say?

        1. Darshan Paladiya

          Thanks for reading and notifying KKSILVERY. I don’t think so. My browser is still showing speed of 65-72. It might be location dependent too based on the web host. I checked several times a day seeing your comment and one or another time, it looked like my site is loading well.

  14. Haren Nagdewani

    I am confused.
    Should I activate all these plugins? Or only some of them.
    As I think for caching, W3 Total cache is enough and there is no need of installing leverage browser caching ninja.
    Please tell me, if I’m wrong.

    1. DEREK

      W3 TOTAL CACHE is all that you need for a caching plugin. Also lazy load images is another plugin that is a must have for your images. It helps with speed.

      Also web hosting is a big factor as well but instead of switching web hosts you can install those plugins.

      1. Darshan Paladiya

        Thanks for reading Derek. You are right. Web hosting is also a big factor. However, choosing a great web host might be confusing as well. Shout Me Loud itself has a great post about best WordPress web hosts, you can check it out for that info.

    2. Darshan Paladiya

      Thanks for reading Haren. You are not wrong at all and thanks for putting this questions as other readers might also want to know this as well. I have personally tested that both W3 Total Cache and Leverage Browser Caching Ninja has this functionality but for some reasons I have found that LBCN’s browser caching is more powerful and has better effect on site loading speed. So in my own site, I have installed both the plugins and have disabled browser caching function of W3TC. You can also test the same thing and tell us how it goes.

      1. Haren

        Thank you 🙂
        And same goes for Image optimizers too? Advanced lazy load + eww , both needed?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top
42 Shares