Thankfully, the fix is incredibly simple, so let’s cover it now!

The Website is Undergoing Scheduled Maintenance Fix

You know how it goes. You log into your dashboard and see it’s prompting you to authorize one or more ready updates. You run the update, and while it typically resolves within seconds, it gets stuck on the loading icon. You refresh the page or go to any other URL associated with that site and you see this message:

It doesn’t matter which URL you go to, how many times you refresh; the site will only display this. Note that sometimes if you wait long enough, the update will resolve. I’ve had this issue where I’ve waited 20 minutes and the update eventually completed/refreshing the page reverted the site back to the normal display.

For many webmasters, having their site essentially down for that amount of time isn’t an option.

At this point, there’s only one resolution.

We need to get to where the files are stored for our website.

You need to open the root folder for the website at this point using either the FTP program you use or simply by accessing the cPanel account associated with the website via your host.

In the root folder, below your typical “wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes” folders, you’ll see a file labeled “.maintenance”:

Simply delete this file, then refresh your website and it should go back to normal.

WordPress will create a new instance of that file, so no worries about losing important files associated with your WP installation.

Check back in your dashboard to see if the update(s) took or not. Occasionally they’ll have resolved, other times you’ll need to run them again which will likely update without issue.

How to Avoid the The Website is Undergoing Scheduled Maintenance Error

The easiest way to avoid running into this lockout “website is undergoing scheduled maintenance” error is to avoid running too many updates at once.

Try to stay on top of your updates. Setting your plugins to update automatically is a good way to minimize the number of updates you need to run when you log in, especially if it’s infrequent.

Still, occasionally this error will still crop up.

If you don’t feel like waiting it out or if waiting it out isn’t resolving it, simply take matters into your hands by deleting the “.maintenance” file from your site’s root folder.

You might think nothing of it or assume it’s not an important error warning, so you go ahead and finish writing a lengthy post. You save it as far as you know, then come back to it later ready to publish and it’s gone.

This potentially extremely frustrating error can cost you a lot of work and time. Fortunately it’s an easy fix, so let’s talk about how to fix an invalid JSON response in WordPress.

Invalid JSON Response – How to Fix It

An invalid JSON response message essentially means that there’s a disconnect in the communication between your site and its server.

There are many different causes to trigger this response, so let’s go through each one.

Permalink Issues

Your site’s permalinks dictate the URL structure of your entire site.

Sometimes the quickest fix for resolving an invalid JSON response is to go to your site’s “Settings”, selecting “Permalinks”, and clicking “Save Changes” without making any changes.

If the permalink structure has changed from what it should be, set it back to what it should be and click “Save Changes”. This can fix your site’s .htaccess file which can be causing the communication issue.

If this still hasn’t worked, log into your site’s hosting account’s cPanel and go into the File Manager.

Delete the .htaccess file (while copy any unique information to it you might have created in it before), then click “Save Changes” in your Permalinks to create a new .htaccess file which should resolve the JSON error if it’s permalink related.

WordPress Site Address Settings

Another cause of the miscommunication which generates the invalid JSON response stems from a problem in your site’s address settings in WordPress.

In the “General” section of your WordPress settings, you’ll see two fields near the top for your site’s URL address and its WordPress address. If either if these is different from the other, then update them to be identical.

Both of these should begin with HTTPS (assuming you have an SSL certificate) and should feature the same prefix of either WWW or without WWW.

Getting these on the same page can resolve the JSON issue, as well.

Plugin/Theme Issues

Lastly, a very common cause of the invalid JSON response message is a conflicting plugin.

In my most recent case, I had an issue with the W3 Total Cache plugin on one of my sites after migrating it to a new host (see how to transfer web hosting from one company to another).

Caching plugins affect your site’s .htaccess file because they instruct browsers in how to engage with your site.

I say this to establish that if the previous tips on fixing your site’s .htaccess file didn’t work, it could be due to a plugin (or theme if it has access to make changes).

This is the very plugin I’d try disabling before trying to replicate the error in creating a new post.

I swapped out W3 for another caching plugin on my site and just like that it was able to begin autosaving again and the JSON message disappeared.

Invalid JSON Response Tips

• An invalid JSON response message indicates a disconnect between your site and its server.
• There are a few different causes of this error, so try them one by one, then try replicating the error to see if the fix(es) worked.
• First try clicking “Save Changes” on your site’s permalinks structure in WordPress even if you see that it hasn’t been changed from what it should’ve been.
• If this doesn’t work, try deleting your .htaccess file via your site’s host’s File Manager (copying any unique data you need from it) and clicking “Save Changes” in permalinks again to generate a fresh .htaccess file.
• Check your site’s listed URL addresses in the general settings. Make sure that they match one another (http vs https, www or not) and update if not.
• Like with so many errors in WordPress, oftentimes they can stem from a conflict from a plugin. Caching plugins in particular can cause these errors due to their control over the .htaccess file, so try disabling yours first and try replicating the error.

It’s incredibly simple to do, so let’s talk about what are anchor links in WordPress and how to make them.

Anchor Links in WordPress

First, let’s actually identify what anchor links in WordPress are.

This is an element on a page which allows you to link from one section to another within the same page.

This is especially helpful when you’re talking about a variety of things within one post and for longer posts. In this case, you might want to make a table of contents above the fold/at the opening of that post to better organize your content within the page.

This is also helpful when someone just wants to jump to the specific section/content they’re looking for in your post.

Your visitors should never have to work to find what they’re looking for on any given page of yours, and anchor links can do a lot of the lifting for you.

How to Make an Anchor Link in WordPress

It’s incredibly easy to make an anchor link in WordPress. You’ll actually notice that the two links in the second paragraph of this post itself are anchor links, one going to each heading section.

Making an anchor link is a two step process in WordPress.

Step 1 – Make an HTML Anchor

This sounds technical, but it’s not.

All you need to do is click on the block you want to jump to with your link (see classic editor vs block editor for more information on WordPress blocks).

This is the section you want the link you’ll make in the next step to jump to.

In the case of this post, I wanted to link in my opening section to jump to the “How to Make an Anchor Link in WordPress” heading of this section.

So I simply click on the heading, then click on “Advanced” in the block section on the right.

I then fill out the “HTML anchor” field with whatever text I want. I just used the text I used for the heading itself with dashes between the words:

This block is now ready to be linked to, we just need to create the link in Step 2 next.

Step 2 – Create the Anchor Link

This part’s a bit more conventional.

To create the anchor link, we highlight the text we want to be clickable and send people to the desired section of our page we just established.

In this case, I highlighted the text “how to make them” in that second paragraph in the opening. I then clicked on the link icon.

Normally we’d put in a link to an external page or to another page on our website. Instead, we’re going to paste in the exact text we put in the HTML anchor field a second again, but with a hashtag symbol (#) in front of it like so:

You have the typical link options, though I recommend leaving them all unticked as they don’t typically apply for anchor links (unless for some reason you want them to open in a new tab).

In Summary

That’s all there is to it. Once you save the draft of or publish the page, you’ll find that the text is now a live link which goes to the section you created the HTML anchor for.

Note that you’re not limited to Headings to link to. You can add an HTML anchor to many different types of blocks including any kind of text as well as images.

Try to get in the habit of creating anchor links in WordPress to make your content more navigable and especially to help people find the specific content they’re looking for quickly.

Not only does it look more organized, but this will keep people on your website for longer and will earn you better rankings and more traffic.

Replacing the TinyMCE based word processor-like classic editor, Gutenberg was touted by WordPress as simplifying what is already one of the easiest softwares for creating and running a website.

Gutenberg introduced the concept of utilizing unique “blocks” to create your content with far greater ease and versatility.

As of right now, you can still run the classic editor by default using the official classic editor plugin from WordPress. According to the plugin page, there are roughly 5 million active installations still using the classic editor, so there’s still a good demand for it.

This begs the question, in the classic editor vs block editor debate, which should you use?

Classic Editor Vs Block Editor

If you’re just familiar with one or the other, let’s take a quick look at the differences and how to use them both. Like anything WordPress, they’re both very user friendly.

Classic Editor

The classic editor is the simple WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor that made everyone fall in love with WordPress in the first place:

A new page or post presents you with a field for your post’s title, an option to add an image via the media button, and basic word processing controls including the ability to make text a heading or paragraph format.

The attraction of the classic editor is that it’s simple and all right there in front of you.

If you have the simplest of simple websites like a personal blog, the classic editor can work just fine for you.

Block Editor

The block editor looks more sparse when you create a new page or post.

Creating a new line gives you the option to click on the “Plus” icon, bringing up a bank of every block type available:

This will range from several dozen to potentially hundreds, depending on any added functionality that plugins and/or your theme brings.

This page from WordPress details the most common and other blocks you’ll find here.

Your most frequently used blocks will appear in the short menu, you can search by the name of the block you want to use, or you can click “browse all” to see more blocks:

Hovering over any block gives a short description and example in an image.

Whenever you select a block in your content, you’ll notice on the right side of your dashboard in WordPress you’ll get a block specific configuration section:

In the case of selecting an image, you can set the alt text, custom sizing, alignment, etc.

Every block has specific options for adjusting the content as you need.

All of this combined makes the block editor the preferred choice for versatility and providing granular control over every element you include with a few clicks.

Moving blocks and rearranging your content is easy as each block can be cut and pasted wherever you want or just resituated using the arrows or drag button.

While it can seem overwhelming at first, after learning how it works in about 5 minutes, you’ll be creating content faster than with the classic editor, and there are far less limitations in what you can achieve using it.

Is Block Editor Better for SEO?

One of the main questions people have regarding the classic editor vs block editor is which is better for SEO?

On the surface and on their own, neither the classic or block editor will give you an advantage in SEO. If you write the exact same post in each editor, it will read to search engines the exact same way.

Where the block editor does have an advantage is in adding additional media and code to your posts.

If you want to embed a video in your post, for example, with the classic editor you need to switch to HTML and ensure that you enter the specific embed code for that video perfectly.

Adding any kind of content outside of plain text can result in mistakes while using the classic editor which CAN have an adverse affect on your SEO efforts.

Alternatively when using the block editor, there’s a simple block for any kind of content you want to include or embed in your post.

In the case of a video, there’s a specific block for YouTube, one for Vimeo, etc. where you simply need to paste the URL to the video you want to include.

This ensures that no mistakes are made, the content will display properly, and no added or unnecessary code is included.

How to Keep Using Classic Editor in 2022

If you didn’t even know that you could go back to the classic editor in 2022 and long for the TinyMCE days, you’re in luck for the moment. Again, there is an official plugin from WordPress themselves: the classic editor plugin.

Once you enable the classic editor plugin, you’ll find the WYSIWYG editor back in place the next time you go to create a new post or edit an existing one.

It’s unclear as to how long this plugin will remain active and compatible. The block editor is clearly the future of WordPress, and the developers want to continue to push the last few million stragglers to using it in place of the classic editor.

It should be mentioned that the block editor EVEN has a “classic editor” block (I added one right here and took a screenshot):

This allows you to either embed a classic editor block in your post around or alongside other blocks, or you can create that block as soon as you start a new page or post on your site and create the entire thing within it.

This is a nice workaround rather than using the classic editor plugin which, at the time of this article, hasn’t been updated in 8 months and is untested with this version of WordPress, potentially leaving its users open to secure vulnerabilities.

WordPress Switch to Block Editor

By default, the block editor has been the editor in WordPress since late 2018.

Older content created prior to this will, be default, still be in the classic editor format.

If you’d like to switch to the block editor in WordPress on your older posts, you’ll find an option labeled “Convert to Blocks” when selecting the content of an older post made with the classic editor (like this image shows):

Clicking on this will make WordPress detect the various types of content in your post and convert them to the applicable blocks accordingly.

In converting the post listed in the image above, my post created a paragraph block for the normal text, an image block for the image, and a list block for the image:

If the page or post is still displaying properly before making the switch, you don’t need to necessarily update it to blocks.

If you do update a post, you should go through it to ensure that everything was converted properly after making the switch.

You can undo any changes you’ve made to revert to the classic format before you hit update if you change your mind.

In Conclusion:

Regarding the classic editor vs block editor, the block editor is the way to go because:

• It’s the present and future of WordPress.
• Anything you can do in the classic editor you can do easier/faster in the block editor a hundred times over.
• The original form of the classic editor is only available via an outdated plugin, potentially exposing your site to vulnerabilities.
• You can create content via a classic editor interface using the “classic editor” block.

It’s arguably the single most important thing you can do regarding how to increase website speed in WordPress.

But what does a caching plugin do exactly? This caching tutorial will explain everything you need to set up caching on your website and more importantly why you should do it.

What Does a Caching Plugin Do?

Let’s answer the main question straight away: what does a caching plugin do?

Caching itself as it relates to a website refers to saving an instance of the elements which make up that site after they’ve loaded for the first time.

A practical example is say someone comes to your website for the first time.

Their browser loads everything it takes to display your website on that person’s device.

With caching enabled, the browser will create a copy of all of the elements of your website in itself.

Then, if that person leaves and returns to your website at a later date, with caching enabled your website will effectively communicate to the browser that it can just load up all of that previously saved information instead of having to load the entire site fresh. Only the latest content itself needs to load.

This means that on that subsequent visit, the person’s device has a lot less to load from the server your website is stored on.

The result of this is that your website loads much faster, delivering a much better user experience.

The caching plugin itself inserts lines of code into your website’s htaccess file. These lines of code include dictating refresh rates for the various elements which make up your site.

While you might create fresh content in the form of new pages or posts on your site regularly, most of the elements and code which make up your site are static and do not change.

The caching plugin takes advantage of this and designates long periods of time of weeks, months, or even a year before a browser needs to load that content fresh.

Best of all, this is all done with a few clicks on your end via a free caching plugin.

Personally I use W3 Total Cache on my websites and find it to be the best WordPress caching plugin because of the amount of control it gives you.

It’s the plugin I’ll be referring to as I go over my WordPress cache settings next.

WordPress Cache Settings

With the case of W3 Total Cache, it offers a lot more options than some caching plugins as it goes beyond simple caching instructions and instead works as a all-in-one solution for running your site more efficiently.

By default, most of this is configured for optimal performance after you enable the plugin, but let’s go down the list to get a better idea of how caching is working here.

Page Cache

This simply enables your site’s pages to be cached as just discussed. Disk: Enhanced is the recommended method here.

Try measuring your site’s performance before and after enabling this over at https://pagespeed.web.dev/ and enjoy the difference.

Minify

Minifying your site’s code removes unnecessary blank spaces which allows browsers to read and load your site more efficiently.

Opcode Cache

This caches PHP code specifically which can again drastically improve website loading time.

Database Cache

Your database is where the content you create, so your articles/posts, pages, etc. are stored. Enabling caching here improves database query response time by caching and retrieving past searches.

Object Cache

The object cache is similar to the database cache in that it works on improving fetching information from your site’s database, albeit a bit more efficiently. Typically you only need to enable one or the other.

Browser Cache

This section dictates the terms for storing your site’s various elements in your visitor’s browser.

This is where you can get into the nitty gritty of setting refresh rates for various types of elements:

By default, your site’s CSS and Javascript files are set to refresh after 31536000, the equivalent of one year.

This is in contrast to your site’s HTML which has a decidedly shorter refresh rate by default of one hour which makes sense as this makes for the dynamic content of your site’s posts and pages.

Any changes you make here will be reflected in your site’s htaccess file automatically.

CDN

CDN stands for content-delivery-network. It’s makes your site load more efficiently in a manner similar to caching.

With a content delivery network, cached versions of your site’s files are stored on servers around the globe.

This makes loading your website much faster regardless of where someone is located in the world. Instead of someone on the opposite side of the globe having to access your website via just the one server, their browser locates the nearest server geographically your site is stored on and loads it from that.

This dramatically reduces website speed regardless of where in the world your visitors are located.

While W3 Total Cache doesn’t do this for you, it integrates with CDN providers seamlessly, and this can be configured in this section.

User Experience

This section gives a few additional options to boost site performance, such as lazy loading for images. This instructs browsers to load images last after the rest of the page has loaded so that the more important content loads faster.

What Does Delete Cache Mean on WordPress

“Delete Cache”, “Empty All Caches”, “Purge All Caches”… no matter what language is used, they all mean the same thing.

If you’ve made changes on your website and aren’t seeing them being reflected when you load the page itself, it’s likely because your browser is still showing you the last cached version of the page.

Deleting the cache via your caching plugin (oftentimes an option is available at the top of your WordPress dashboard bar) should allow the page to load fresh and any changes you’ve made to be reflected in real-time.

A practical example of this is a website I own where I publish two new playlists each month. I talk about the playlist, embed the playlist itself via a block, and highlight and write a bit about a few of the songs featured. The format of the post is always the same, so to save time I had been opening a previous version then copying and pasting the blocks into a new post and editing as necessary. Blocks aren’t really meant to be copied between posts like this, and it caused some alignment issues in the new post.

Thankfully there’s a better way for how to duplicate a post in WordPress, and it couldn’t be easier.

How to Duplicate a Post in WordPress

I’m really not sure why there’s not a built in functionality in WordPress itself to be able to duplicate posts alongside the options to edit/trash/etc. in the post overview section.

Instead, you need to use a plugin.

There are a couple in particular designed for this purpose. There’s Copy and Delete Posts, but I’m going to highlight the Yoast Duplicate Post plugin.

This plugin, from the same people behind the Yoast SEO plugin, gives you all the functionality of the Copy and Delete Posts plugin but with the added feature of being able to update any existing post.

Not only does this save us time in creating a duplicate of our WordPress post, but we know that everything is formatted exactly how we want it.

Once installed, you’ll notice additional options below your posts in the post or pages section of your dashboard.

Clone

Clone allows you to do just that; it instantly creates and opens a draft of the post you just clicked clone for.

All of the content will be exactly the same, but the URL slug will have a “2” at the end of it.

This is ideal when you create a lot of cookie cutter content where you just need to swap out a few things but keep the same structure of another post. If you have an online store, for example, where you just want to change the product and description, this is useful as an example.

New Draft

New Draft is similar to Clone except it creates a duplicate of the original post, allowing you to essentially keep a backup of your post live while you make changes.

In this case, it doesn’t create a new URL slug; it remains the same on that draft as if you were writing the post for the first time.

So if you’re about to do extensive changes to an existing page, simply create a “New Draft” of the page and work on that.

This way, the original remains live while you make your changes, and if anything goes wrong during the updates and you want to revert, you still have that original page without having to worry about multiple revisions which WordPress keeps and can be difficult to keep straight.

Rewrite and Republish

This feature is specific to the Yoast Copy and Delete plugin and is similar to “New Draft”, except “Rewrite and Republish” allows you to make changes in the same post without creating anything new. This simplifies the workflow when you want to update a post.

Incidentally this makes keeping your content fresh much easier without worry of having duplicate versions of the same post by mistake and with it canonical URL issues which can hurt your rankings.

Once you have made your changes, you can simply click the “Republish” button to make those changes live. Clicking “Save draft” works like it always does in keeping those changes ready in case you don’t have a chance to finish the update.

The upside is that the post remains online and live in its original format until you’re ready to send out the changes with the “Republish” button.

Make sure to submit the updated URL to Google Search Console once you’ve finished making the changes so it will crawl and recognize the updates you’ve made.

In Summary

• Working off existing posts as a template saves time.
• The Yoast Copy and Delete Posts plugin makes duplicating posts easy.
• You can use the plugin to also make backups of important posts or easily update existing posts with new content.
• It also allows you to toggle the user privileges to ensure only the those qualified have access to the feature.

Now that you know how to duplicate a post in WordPress, enjoy all of that extra time you’ll be saving!

Let’s talk how to increase website speed – WordPress edition. Here are the top 10 (all easy) ways to speed up your website.

How to Check Website Speed

The first thing you should do is actually check your website’s speed, meaning its load time.

Navigate over to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and plug your home page’s URL along with a few deeper pages into the tool.

After a few seconds you’ll get a speed score on a scale of 0-100 with 100 being the best. Note that you’ll get a unique score for both the mobile and desktop devices. It will look something like this:

This snapshot shows you the individual load time metrics from specific elements of your site. Green is good, anything in red or orange requires your attention.

Best of all, upon scrolling down, Google gives suggestions on the actual things you need to do to correct this speed liabilities.

If you’re unsure as to what these various metrics are, check out my overview on what each of these core web vitals mean and how to improve them.

How to Increase Website Speed in WordPress

Let’s go over the top 10 things you can do for how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Enable Caching

I begin with caching because it’s the easiest, fastest way of how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Caching means that when someone comes to your website for the first time, the majority of the files necessary to load your site are saved in your visitor’s browser.

This way, if they return to your site, it will load significantly faster.

To enable caching in WordPress, you need a free caching plugin. There are a lot of good and highly rated options (personally I use W3 Total Cache), so grab one and enable caching.

Most of the files needed to load your website are static and rarely change. The caching plugin creates code which instructs your visitor’s web browser which files are unchanged and can be loaded from the previous visit (thus saving time).

You can pick and choose the cache time for each file type on your site within most of these plugins but typically the defaults are fine.

You can also add some code to the bottom of your .htaccess file for your website to manually instruct browsers on caching times.

Adding the following code ensures that the following file types only load fresh after 30 days (measured in 2592000 seconds).

<FilesMatch "(?i)^.*\.(ico|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|woff)$">
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A2592000
</FilesMatch>

I still recommend just using a plugin because they usually have additional options for how to increase website speed in WordPress as I’ll discuss in a moment.

Upload Optimized Images

A lot of speeding up your WordPress run site is simply a matter of reducing file sizes. A good way to do this moving forward is to only upload optimized images to your site.

If you’re using a program to edit or create images for your site like Photoshop, make sure that you’re creating them to be as efficient and compressed as possible.

Typically setting your output setting above “high” quality just creates a larger file size with no noticeable change in visual quality.

Also remember that the image file type dictates the size and certain image types are better at compressing and optimizing certain images more efficiently than others.

A good rule of thumb is:

Use JPEG when it’s a photo or complex image with lots of colors and definition.

Use a PNG when it’s a simple graphic with just a handful of colors and well defined boundaries.

Optimize Images Upon Upload

You can also use an image optimization plugin to optimize existing and new images when you upload them to your site. These work by compressing images to smaller sizes without sacrificing image quality.

Using one retroactively can free up a lot of space on your site, particularly if you have a lot of images already on your site.

It’s worth noting that some of the caching plugins will do this for you, as well.

Use a CDN

One of the major causes of slow website load time is the user’s physical distance from the server your website is kept on.

The farther your site’s visitor is from where the content they’re loading is actually stored, the longer it will take to load.

This is why a content delivery network or CDN can be a very effective way to speed up your site’s load time.

It works like this: cached versions of your site are stored on secondary servers around the globe.

So when someone in Australia is loading your site in their browser, it will load significantly faster if a cached version of your site is stored on a more local server in say Melbourne than somewhere in the United States.

Their browser will connect to the closest server your content is stored on no matter where they are in the world.

Most caching plugins give an option to integrate with a CDN (hopefully you’re getting an idea by now of how important a caching plugin is in how to increase website speed in WordPress.

Remove Excess Content and Scripts

Sometimes the easiest and most effective way to speed up your website is to just start cutting out existing yet excess content and scripts.

For example, javascript based content typically takes much longer to load over basic HTML.

Ask yourself what is better for your website’s visitors – that over the top loading animation on your website or a simpler, cleaner page which loads in a quarter of the time.

In a similar vein, take a glimpse at the plugins installed and active on your site. Do you need them all? Odds are you installed something months ago as an experiment to try it out but it’s not providing any value to your site.

It’s a good idea to audit not just your site’s content, but your site’s behind the scenes content like plugins and scripts and make sure every bit of it is essential.

Use AMP

Speaking of removing bloated content and scripts, this is especially true for loading your site on mobile devices.

Mobile devices on average have access to slower internet speeds, so it behooves you to have a lighter version of your website for mobile users.

Enter AMP.

AMP stands for accelerated mobile pages. It’s an open-source project initiative begun by Google.

It essentially involves creating alternate, lighter in code versions of every page you create which Google can serve up specifically to mobile users.

This sounds like a lot of work, but as I covered in my overview of what is AMP in WordPress, it’s virtually as simple as installing a plugin.

There are plenty of plugins for AMP, and most of them automatically create an AMP compliant page and communicate this to Google for you. They do this by cutting most of the complex scripts out of your page and just boiling it down to the loading essentials while preserving as much of the look and feel of your site but on mobile as possible.

Alternatively, they give you the option to manually create an AMP compliant page.

Optimize Existing Code

You can optimize the existing code on your site in a few ways.

This includes:

Minifying Code – Minifying code removes unnecessary gaps/white space in your code to make it more efficient and load faster because the browser can read it more easily.

Note that a good clean and maintained theme (see what is the best free WordPress theme in 2022) won’t have a great deal of this.

Regardless, you can minify your code and specify which types with most caching plugins and is a one click way to speed up your site in WordPress.

Lazy Load Images – Typically an image is lower priority in terms of importance with your content.

With that in mind, you can lazy load images on your site using either most caching plugins or image optimization plugins.

This lowers their priority when your page is loading, putting loading them off until the more important elements have loaded for your visitor.

Defer Javascript – I talked about removing bloated code like javascript you might not need, but just like with lazy loading images you can defer javascript or any other types of code for that matter to load last.

This allows the rest of your page to load more quickly rather than the browser struggling with loading the heavier code simultaneously.

You can specify different script extensions like JS to load last in most caching plugins.

Embed Videos Rather Than Host Them

Using videos and images is a good way to keep your content fresh and make it more easily digestible for your visitor.

Videos are typically easily the largest sized files you can have on your server.

With that in mind, it’s better to reference and embed a video from another site rather than uploading and hosting it right on your site, though.

YouTube makes it very easy to embed a video you’ve uploaded there directly into your page.

With WordPress’ blocks system, you can just pull up a YouTube block and paste the URL of the video you want to embed.

Keep Your Database Optimized

Your site’s database is where your actual website is organized. So think less images and code which dictate the look of your site but more the written content of your posts and pages.

Over time, this can get cluttered up just like your own desktop.

You can use a database plugin to optimize and cleanup your database.

This is useful for removing old unnecessary revisions of posts and pages you still have lying around, cluttering up the database.

It won’t give you a huge boost in performance, but every little bit helps and it’s good maintenance to get into the habit of.

Keep Site Updated

Lastly in this list of how to increase website speed in WordPress: keep your site updated.

This means keeping your plugins, theme, and WordPress version itself all up to date. So every time a new update rolls out, make sure that you install it.

I talked about this in my overview on 3 website updates I recommend doing every year, but it’s a good way to both keep your site secure and get the latest functionality. Many updates will involve any of those three elements (plugins, themes, and WordPress version) to run more efficiently.

You can automatically set plugins to update on the plugins page:

Updates for Themes and the WordPress version itself both need to be done manually (meaning click update automatically when they’re available).

Speaking of aesthetics, obviously the main thing which affects the look and feel of your site is your WordPress theme. There are tens of thousands of themes vying for your attention. And while there are a lot of great premium themes with more features than you can count, there are a number of free themes which can do everything you need and more.

So what is the best free WordPress theme in 2022?

There is a lot of criteria a good free theme has to meet to select the better and best ones. It should be mobile friendly and responsive, regularly maintained by the developers with updates, and should offer a lot of versatility. The best themes are highly customizable through an intuitive interface alone. And with respect to the thousands of premium themes out there, there are plenty of free ones which can handle most anything you throw at them.

I can only speak for myself, but after testing out dozens of popular themes, this is my pick for the best free WordPress theme (2022).

What is the Best Free WordPress Theme – 2022 Edition

For me, the best free WordPress theme in 2022 is the theme that’s powering the site you’re on right now: Astra.

At the time of this writing, it has a perfect 5 star rating on WordPress.

Note that Astra comes with a premium option with more features, but I’ve found that I can do everything I want with its free option. Its free option alone’s features stack up against the best premium themes out there.

Let’s do a rundown on why Astra is the best theme on WordPress at the moment.

Customization

Let’s start with the most important element: customization. With dozens of elements of your site to customize through Astra, you can create virtually any aesthetic and any style of site you want.

This is good, too, because Astra has over 1 million installations. So even with potentially a million other webmasters using the same theme, your site can look uniquely yours with all of the options it gives you.

Here is a snapshot of the macro customization bar for Astra.

Opening any one of these gives you drilled down control over the most important elements of your site.

The “Global” tab, for example, allows you to instantly pick the font style, size, and colors of your content.

It’s not a one-size fits all solution, either; you can pick different colors for your headings, text, links, etc. all specifically.

Building the perfect header is simple, as well, as you can easily fit your logo and its layout in the header from the customization section, as well.

Like many of the best themes, Astra also allows you to create custom headers by device. This way, you can have a unique header for desktop users, tablet users, and mobile users.

You can set custom sidebar/no sidebar layouts between your various content types, as well.

This allows you to feature a sidebar on your home page and posts, for example, while omitting it on site pages. You can adjust the width of your sidebar to your liking, as well.

One of my favorite customization options Astra free gives you out of the box is for the content you display alongside your posts both on the home page as well as on the posts themselves.

Where most themes make you install an additional plugin or mess with the theme’s code, Astra simply lets you tick various types of content on or off.

So say you don’t want the date published for a post to appear either on your blog page or on the post itself? Just uncheck it from the list:

Astra is also very compatible with virtually anything you try to integrate with it. One notable example is that it integrates with and is WooCommerce ready; so if you sell anything on your website, Astra is a good option.

Ease of Use

Even if it’s your very first day with WordPress, the CMS is built to be user friendly.

Astra is especially easy to navigate through the previously covered customization options.

Virtually anything you want to change about the look of your site can easily be found in this section.

It’s “Header Builder” is a great example.

Clicking on it from the customization menu brings up a grid like layout where you can pick and choose anything and everything you might want to display in your site’s all important header section.

Just clicking on a button lets you pick what you want to add to that specific spot, and you can click and drag existing elements to different areas of your header.

It’s a great example of the point and click simplicity which Astra boasts for completely taking the learning curve out of website design.

Speed

Astra is built to be extremely lightweight; on the front end they boast that it’s less than 50kb in size.

It’s also integrated with Schema.org code and is Native AMP, making your site more efficient for Google and mobile users.

Where speed and accessibility are essential for ranking well, Astra is built with this in mind.

Frequent Updates

Astra averages about 4 updates a month, making it one of the most maintained themes available.

With roughly weekly updates, this keeps Astra virtually bug free and up to date with the latest necessary features.

Just as importantly, this makes Astra one of the most secure themes by efficiently addressing any security vulnerabilities as they crop up.

Like I just talked about in my post on yearly website updates to make, you never have to worry about having an outdated theme with Astra.

Huge Community

If you ever do end up running into any issues with your site and need help, the fact that Astra is one of the most popular themes on WP means that there’s a huge community of people built in ready to help.

More than likely the issue you’re having has already been brought up and a solution is a simple Google search away.

The importance of this point cannot be emphasized enough; it’s almost like having the premium version on a support level.

In summary, Astra is the best free WordPress theme for 2022 because:

• It’s highly customizable for getting the look and feel you want from your site straight out of the box.
• It simplifies an already user friendly WordPress environment to make it accessible to virtually anyone.
• It’s lightweight and fast as heck and optimized to be search engine friendly.
• It’s as well maintained and frequently updated as any WP theme.
• It’s popularity makes finding solutions to any issues you come across easier than virtually any other theme.

You can grab Astra for free over at https://wordpress.org/themes/astra/.

Add Expires Headers – WordPress

Add Expires Headers WordPress Plugin

First, we have the simplest method of using a plugin. Before you reach for a dedicated plugin, know that one of the caching plugins you likely/should already have installed will do this for you.

This makes sense because expires headers is a caching rule.

It dictates to web browsers whether or not they need to load a page or a page’s elements fresh or if conversely they can access a previously cached version to save time.

Add Expires Headers W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a caching plugin designed to speed up your site in a variety of ways.

Adding expires headers keeps your site from forcing browsers to load static elements fresh every time needlessly. Instead, you dictate a period of time before these elements load fresh.

Install the plugin and navigate to the “Browser Cache” option in the dashboard. Different files are broken up by group where you can set their lifetime durations like in the image below:

With these settings within the W3 Total Cache plugin, the CSS and JS elements on your site only refresh for someone who has visited your site after 31536000 seconds, or 365 days.

If someone revisits your site within that year, the browser will load more quickly because the CSS and JS elements have been cached in their browser.

Scrolling down the plugin, you can specify expiration terms for additional file types. Going with the default terms and settings is generally a safe option here if you’re not sure.

When you’re finished, simply click “Save Settings and Purge Caches” and you’re good to go.

Bear in mind that this plugin is automatically set up to add expires headers for your site by default.

How to Add Expires Headers in HTML

You can also add expires headers in WordPress without a plugin.

While not strictly HTML, it’s simple to do by adding one line of code to your .htaccess file.

Navigate to the root directory of your website and open up the .htaccess file.

Paste the following code to the bottom of the file:

<FilesMatch "(?i)^.*\.(ico|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|woff)$">ExpiresActive OnExpiresDefault A2592000</FilesMatch>

This dictates that your visitor’s browser to cache the listed file types (java, CSS, images, etc.) for the period of time listed.

In the above example, the length of time is in seconds, just like in the plugin examples above.

This translates to 30 days.

If the visitor returns to your site within that 30 day period, their browser will load the cached versions of the listed types of content. This ensures that your site loads much more quickly, providing a better user experience.

Once those 30 days are up, if the visitor returns to your site, those files will load fresh.

You can tweak that code to group whatever file types you want and specify various refresh times accordingly.

The above listed files are generally the types which don’t get updated frequently if ever, so a generous expire duration is suitable for them.

But there you go, plenty of ways to add expires headers, WordPress style! And don’t forget it’s also a great way to speed up your site for the core web vitals May 2021 update.

How to Pick a WordPress Theme

A lot of us make the mistake of not using our imaginations when it comes to WordPress themes. We look through the WordPress theme marketplace and simply go by the sample image(s) they show.

The honest truth is that most any theme these days is pretty customizable. If you can’t get the functionality you want from the theme, a free plugin can oftentimes get you there.

Instead, don’t worry about the aesthetic side of the samples, but think about the more important features.

When picking a WordPress theme, it’s essential to make sure it ticks all of these boxes:

It’s Responsive

If a theme is responsive, it means the website will adjust to the device loading it. More than half of all website traffic occurs on mobile devices, so it’s essential that your site loads with smaller devices in mind.

While you can create a dedicated mobile site which triggers on mobile devices, a responsive theme is a nice compromise. It ensures that the site doesn’t try to load to the static specs of a desktop browser.

Most themes let you set specific parameters on your site with responsiveness in mind in the “Customization” section:

By selecting the phone icon, I can see a preview of what my latest posts look like on Angry SEOer in realtime:

Any good theme will let you customize one of the most important elements of your website: your menus. You can serve up different menus by device type or just change how that menu is presented (along with your header image).

It’s Updated

One of the overlooked bits of criteria when deciding how to pick a WordPress theme is how often it’s updated.

When selecting “More Info” on any theme in WordPress, you can see when it was updated last.

If a theme hasn’t been touched by its developer in months or even years, that’s not very reassuring.

Similar to outdated plugins and WordPress versions, outdated themes carry vulnerabilities which hackers can exploit to attack your site.

As such, stick to regularly maintained WordPress themes. It’s important for security, but it also gives you other relevant updates and occasionally access to new features, as well.

On a similar note, be sure to update your WordPress theme whenever a new update becomes available as this will oftentimes patch security vulnerabilities and keep it compatible with the latest versions of WordPress.

It’s (Highly) Customizable

Sure, WordPress has a huge market of free and premium plugins to get any kind of functionality you want from your site. Ideally your theme can do this for you, though.

I talked about responsiveness, but be sure that the theme is able to give you the look and feel that you want from your site.

You can use the feature filter to sort themes by the layout that you want.

More customizable themes leave room for change down the road.

So if you initially set up your site to be a single column but later decide you want to change it to two or a grid layout, ideally your theme has that functionality built in rather than having to change the entire theme.

It’s Well Rated

Ratings can tell you a lot about a theme because they come from its users themselves. Clicking on the ratings section lets you see the positive and negative reviews a theme has accumulated.

Critical reviews can clue you in to potential issues with the theme you might not encounter until you’ve already installed and worked with it for awhile yourself.

It’s Popular

The number of active installations shows how many people are using that theme right now.

Your initial instinct might be to avoid the most popular themes out of fear that your site might look like someone else’s.

Honestly, there’s no upside to having a unique or lesser used theme.

Literally every theme in WordPress is customizable. You can change the color scheme, layout, background, and other aesthetic elements in seconds. Add in branding like your header image and that theme becomes yours. Plus the less popular and used themes are typically the least maintained which again is a liability.

The best themes are typically the most popular for a reason: they tick all of the other boxes I’ve covered so far.

Another notable upside to using a popular theme is that there’s typically a lot of community support for them.

Even if in depth support is reserved for premium users (if a premium version exists, as is usually the case with more popular themes), odds are with a popular theme that any question you have has already been asked and answered. And if it’s not, there’s typically someone who can answer it for you on that theme’s support forum.

The WordPress theme marketplace defaults on the most popular, so that’s a good place to start.

Again, one more reminder to use a bit of imagination when browsing WordPress themes. Make sure it ticks the points I covered here to get a winner. Then simply add your personal branding touches to make it yours.