Using CSS sprites is one of the best ways to reduce HTTP requests for image resources. Unfortunately, every CSS file used on your website is render-blocking, meaning the more CSS files you add, the heavier it becomes, slowing down the website.
To avoid this problem, combine all the images on your website into a single file and optimize it if necessary. Once you have done this, you can now use the CSS sprites trick, where you will need to use CSS to display only a portion of the image when necessary. There are several web-based tools available on the internet. With the help of these powerful tools, you can optimize your images.
A few good examples of commonly used tools are the CSS Sprites tool , CSS Sprite Editor , and others.
Enable Lazy Loading for Images
Lazy loading is a feature that defers the loading of images outside the browser’s viewport. However gansu telephone number data when a user visits your site and does not scroll to the bottom, the images placed there will not load. You can achieve this with the help of a lazy loading script. The number of HTTP requests for a website will be reduced as images placed above the fold will be loaded.
You can ask your developer to add a lazy loading script to your website or you can use a plugin. For example, WP Rockets offers a lazy loading feature that when used on your website will display content for the section above the fold.
In addition to this, there are other plugins that offer lazy loading for WordPress websites, so you can check them online to see which one is the best. Check this out to learn how to speed up slow websites .
Replace Heavy Plugins with Lighter Ones
One of the surest ways to reduce the number of HTTP requests is to check the size of the plugins installed on your website. One of the reasons behind your website slowing down could be that one or more plugins are working harder for your website and creating more HTTP requests.
To define a plugin as lightweight or heavyweight, you need to make sure of a few things like professionalism and code quality, code execution efficiency, features, and file size.
There are a few more ways to flag plugins that are slowing down your website. Once you identify such plugins, you can flag them. Follow the 5-step diagnosis mentioned below to make a better decision;
Run a performance test of your website using a tool called Pingdom and check the number of HTTP requests it has to make. Also, note down the score you get.
Enable a plugin, A, and run the test again. Then you can write down your score.
Disable the first plugin, then install another plugin, B, and run the same check again.
Compare the HTTP requests each plugin makes and see which one makes more.
If one is less demanding than the other, delete the heavyweight one and keep the lighter one. You will get a lot of alternatives that will do the same job but are lightweight options.
Reduce External Scripts on Your Website
When a third-party script is loaded on your website, HTTP requests must be made. However, if you reduce the number of third-party scripts, the requests made will also decrease.
On the other hand, more HTTP requests slow down your website and affect its performance. Therefore, you should keep track of all your website integrations with third parties to identify the entities that are slowing down your website.
A large number of HTTP requests require resources to be fetched from the network, and you want to make sure your website’s performance is maintained. Check this out to learn how to reduce server response time in WordPress.
The external scripts we are talking about usually come from Facebook pixels, Analytics tags, social sharing buttons, YouTube videos, A/B testing tags, and other sources. To improve your website’s performance, it is very important to identify the files that contribute to the number of requests. You can manually optimize third-party requests or use a plugin for this.
Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
Duplicating HTML, CSS, and Javascript codes helps in removing unnecessary spaces, comments, and unwanted characters. It also helps in reducing file sizes, thus making them lighter.
This technique can be applied to all three files; HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Since it is all about cleaning up the code on the backend, the same will not affect the delivery to the end users.
You can shrink files manually, online, or with the help of a tool or plugin.
To minify HTML files, you can open the code page and remove all unwanted elements like comments, line breaks, etc. and your file will become lighter.
To minify CSS files, remove all extra spaces and comments. You should also remove the class, shorten the ID, and remove variable names as much as possible.
To minify JS files, you should remove extra spaces and JS comments from the source code. Also, convert all arrays to objects, look for answers to basic constant expressions, and optimize your conditional expression to get the best results.
Alternatively, when using a plugin to minify your files, you simply need to check the boxes for the files you want to minify and the task will be done automatically. If you are using WP Rocket for the process, they have a separate section for optimizing files.
Combine CSS and Javascript
HTML Combine CSS and Javascript
Source : Freepik
One of the easiest ways to reduce the HTTP requests generated by your site is undoubtedly to combine your CSS and Javascript files. Unfortunately, WordPress plugins and themes require the loading of a large number of JS and CSS stylesheets. This requires the browser to load all the resources to render the web pages. This ultimately results in an increase in the number of HTTP requests.
There are several online tools that can help you merge your CSS and Javascript files. Some of the best options include SmartOptimizer, CSS Crush, JSCompress.com, and more. You can upload the merged files of your WordPress site to these websites and experience increased site speed. It also helps optimize your website by reducing HTTP requests.
While there is no such plugin that will help you combine images with CSS sprites yet, there are a few incredible plugins that will help you optimize your website’s images. Of course, images are very important for a unique user experience, but you should know that every image you add creates an additional HTTP request. So, choose all your images wisely and only include images that add value to your content.
Alternatively, optimize all your images before adding them to your website. Optimizing images means reducing their size, ensuring their quality is not compromised.
The same is not true if you have blurry images on your website. Images should be high quality but not heavy, and the content and context should be visible.
Here's how you can optimize images in WordPress .
There are a few great resizing tools you can use for best results, some of which include Photoshop, Preview for Mac, GIMP, and many more. However, keep in mind that reducing the file size of images does not affect the number of HTTP requests made, but it does help the website to be lighter, resulting in shorter load times.
