Top Ways to Reduce Server Response Time (TTFB) in WordPress
Are you worried about your website’s performance and speed? Want to Reduce Server Response Time (TTFB) or Reduce Initial Server Response Time on your WordPress website? Then this blog is for you.
Here, we’ll explain all the crucial metrics that help reduce your server response time and improve your website performance.
Time to First Byte (TTFB) is critical from the Website Optimization point of view. So without wasting your time, let’s start to clear all your doubts regarding server response time or TTFB. And also how you can improve your WordPress website performance in a simple language.
What is Time to First Byte (TTFB)?
TTFB, or Time to First Byte, is a metric to measure the server’s response to a visitor’s browser request.
TTFB is vital because the longer the browser takes to receive the first byte of data from the server, the longer the page will load. Also, since TTFB is the first interaction, a long time to the first byte means the rest of the page can’t even start loading because the server is not responding yet.
Therefore, TTFB is essential in website user experience (UX) and search engine optimization (SEO). It is also one of the Web Vitals (along with FCP, LCP, and CLS) that Google considers when determining a site’s page load experience and subsequent ranking.
TTFB is similar to First Contentful Paint (FCP) and is also used to measure user experience loading and latency. However, FCB measures the time it takes for a visitor to view the first element of the page. TTFB is all information, visible or not.
Image source: web.dev
The TTFB website consists of three main processes.
- An HTTP request is sent from the visitor’s browser to the server.
- The server is processing the request and preparing its response.
- After the processing, the server sends the response back to the browser.
The speed of this process affects the responsive time of web results that will take the loading process.
How to Measure TTFB of your Website?
Many various ways help you in measuring the TTFB of your WordPress website.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix is the best free online website performance and speed checker tool. These tools provide a detailed analysis of your website, including TTFB.
To use this tool, you can search GTmetrix in your browser and visit the website. Copy your site URL and paste it into the text field; press enter. This tool provides you a feature to change your analysis options; for using this option, you need to sign in or sign up for an account in GTmetrix.
Image Source: GTmetrix website.
Once the tool completes your website analysis, it will show you a performance report and other essential metrics.
Under the speed visualization section, you can see the TTFB score of your website.
WebPageTest
You can use some WebPageTest tools that give you quick detail about the performance and speed of your website in a few sec. This report can also see other vital metrics such as FCP, LCP, TTFB, etc.
Image Source – Webpagetest
To use this tool, go to your browser, type WebPageTest, then press enter.
Now you get a website like this snap.
Now you can copy your website URL and paste that into the box, then click on enter.
After that, you can see a testing page. Here you can check some testing details like URL, country, etc.
After this process, you will be redirected to the result page. You can see lots of information about your website on the result page.
You can click on explore to see the details of each error or issue. After clicking on this, you can get a list of all the good and bad links that affect your website’s performance.
Google Chrome DevTools
Chrome DevTools is another free and effective way to measure your TTFB. If you are a Chrome user, you can use this method to measure TTFB directly in your browser without using a third-party tool.
Where many of the speed tests we mentioned above use different server locations for you to choose from, this way, it’s straight from you. For this reason, remember that your specific network conditions and latency may affect TTFB. Therefore, the result you see using this method may not be the same as what your website visitors experience.
Steps of using the Chrome DevTools
- To get started, visit your WordPress website in your browser
- Then go to the three vertical dots in the right corner of the screen.
- Next, go to More Tools, then Developer Tools; this will open the DevTools console.
You can also use ( Ctrl + Shift + I ) to open the Chrome DevTool Console in your Chrome browser.
From there, click on any element on the page, then select the Network tab followed by the waterfall column:
Select the item you want to check from the list. Below the panel, you will find Waiting (TTFB).
Tips for Reducing TTFB on Your WordPress
Now that you have a better understanding of what TTFB is and how to measure it, let’s see How to improve server response time by reducing TTFB. Below are four essential tips to reduce TTFB on your WordPress site.
1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Implementing a CDN is one of the most effective ways to speed up your website and reduce TTFB. If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, it’s a network of servers distributed worldwide. Visitors can load their website from the nearest data center location, minimizing time investment.
There are many CDN services that WordPress can choose from. The most popular options include Cloudflare, Google Cloud CDN, and KeyCDN. Some hosts (like SiteGround) offer a free version of Cloudflare CDN and many plans.
Image Source: Cloudflare CDN
Using a CDN on your WordPress site can significantly reduce network latency. Beyond performance, CDNs also help improve website security by preventing threats such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
2. Implementing Caching on Your Website
One of the most effective ways to reduce the load on your server is to use caching. Caching is a technique used to minimize server processing time and deliver content faster. Therefore, it is also a valid strategy to help reduce TTFB.
There are various WordPress caching plugins that you can install on your website.
Some of the most popular options are –
WP Rocket and
W3 Total Cache.
3. Remove/ Update Your old WordPress Plugins.
So many plugins can slow down your website. That’s why always remove unnecessary plugins from your WordPress and keep up-to-date with all useful plugins of your website.
Check your Plugin list in your WordPress Admin panel to update your plugins. Here find all updated available plugins. Now you can click on the Available Updates link. It redirects you to the updated plugin.
Recall that plugin and theme developers regularly release performance improvements and bug fixes for their tools. You can minimize server bloat by keeping up to date with the latest versions and removing ones that no longer serve their purpose.
4. Upgrade Your WordPress Hosting
Perhaps the most influential factor in TTFB is your website’s hosting provider. There are many ways to optimize your site, but it doesn’t matter if your host can’t keep up.
The hosting you use affects the speed and performance of your website. For example, if you are on shared hosting, you may have access to limited resources. You are also obligated to others regarding your use of the bandwidth and processing of your server cluster.
So if you are experiencing slow load times and want to reduce your TTFB, we recommend that you consider upgrading to a new hosting provider or a more robust plan. If you’re on a shared host, upgrading your plan to a higher tier often comes with priority services and faster servers. These services are designed and optimized specifically for WordPress websites, resulting in quick response times both on the user and administrative backend.
These tips can help you resolve your website performance issues and keep your website speedy. If you want more tips and tricks for upgrading your WordPress Website, follow TopCSSGallery.
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