Website speed directly impacts user experience, search engine rankings, and conversion rates. Research by Google shows that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. On shared hosting, where resources are distributed among multiple accounts, optimisation becomes even more important. This guide covers proven strategies to maximise your website's performance on SakuraHost shared hosting.
Measure Before You Optimise
Before making changes, establish a performance baseline using free testing tools. This allows you to measure the impact of each optimisation and identify the biggest bottlenecks.
Image Optimisation
Images typically account for 50-80% of a webpage's total size. Optimising images is the single most impactful change you can make.
Best Practices for Images
- Compress images: Use tools like TinyPNG, Squoosh, or ShortPixel to reduce file sizes by 60-80% without visible quality loss.
- Use modern formats: Convert images to WebP format, which offers 25-35% better compression than JPEG. Most modern browsers support WebP.
- Resize appropriately: Do not upload a 4000px wide image if it only displays at 800px. Resize images to their actual display dimensions before uploading.
- Implement lazy loading: Add
loading="lazy"to image tags so images below the fold only load when the user scrolls to them.
Enable GZIP Compression
GZIP compression reduces the size of text-based resources (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) by up to 70% before they are sent to the browser. Add the following to your .htaccess file in public_html:
Browser Caching with Expire Headers
Browser caching tells visitors' browsers to store static resources locally, so they do not need to download them again on subsequent visits. Add these rules to .htaccess:
Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Minification removes unnecessary whitespace, comments, and formatting from code files, reducing their size. For WordPress sites, plugins like Autoptimize or WP Rocket handle this automatically. For static sites, use build tools or online minifiers before uploading.
Optimise Your WordPress Installation
If you are running WordPress, these specific optimisations can dramatically improve performance:
Use a Caching Plugin
Install and configure a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache (free) or LiteSpeed Cache (free, optimised for our LiteSpeed-enabled servers). Caching stores pre-generated HTML pages so WordPress does not need to execute PHP and query the database for every visit.
Reduce Plugin Count
Each active plugin adds PHP code that executes on every page load. Audit your plugins and deactivate or delete any that are not essential. Aim for no more than 15-20 active plugins.
Clean Up Your Database
WordPress databases accumulate post revisions, spam comments, transient options, and orphaned metadata over time. Use the WP-Optimize plugin to clean and optimise your database tables.
PHP Version Optimisation
Newer PHP versions are significantly faster than older ones. PHP 8.2 and 8.3 offer up to 3x the performance of PHP 7.0. Ensure your account is running the latest compatible PHP version by going to Software > MultiPHP Manager in cPanel. See our knowledge base article on understanding and configuring PHP versions in cPanel for detailed instructions.
Reduce HTTP Requests
- Combine CSS files: Merge multiple stylesheets into a single file where possible.
- Combine JavaScript: Bundle multiple script files into fewer files.
- Use CSS sprites: Combine small icons and graphics into a single sprite sheet image.
- Inline critical CSS: Embed above-the-fold styles directly in the HTML
<head>to eliminate render-blocking requests.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A CDN caches your website's static content on servers worldwide, serving it from the location nearest to each visitor. This dramatically reduces latency, especially for visitors outside Tanzania. Cloudflare's free plan is an excellent starting point and also provides DDoS protection and additional security.
Monitor and Iterate
Performance optimisation is an ongoing process. Schedule monthly performance checks using PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. In cPanel, monitor your resource usage under Metrics > Resource Usage to ensure your site operates within plan limits.
If your website consistently requires more resources despite optimisation, it may be time to upgrade to a VPS plan. Visit billing.sakurahost.co.tz or contact our team at sms.sakuragroup.co.tz to explore options.