November 25, 2019
3min Read
Domantas G.
Wouldn’t it be great if your site could perform better, even if it’s just a little bit faster? To make such a difference, you should learn about WordPress minify.
In this article, we will explain how to minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files in WordPress to ensure the absolute best performance!
If you’ve ever seen an HTML, CSS, or JavaScript file, chances are you’ve noticed that there is a lot of whitespace or line breaks. These characters make the code easier to read, but the files containing them will be bigger and slower to load.
That’s why WordPress minify is crucial for site owners. The process removes unnecessary whitespace, characters, and lines from the code and produces more compact data.
Although many experts argue that minification makes little difference, we still highly recommend it. You need to squeeze out every bit of optimization that you can get to improve user experience. After all, even a split second matters.
You can minify your WordPress resources manually or use a WordPress minify plugin. Read on to find out which one suits you best.
When we say “manually”, it doesn’t mean that you need to delete the unnecessary characters all by yourself. There are lots of helpful tools that can speed up the process. However, you do need to upload the minified files to your site later, so be mindful when following this guide.
Alternatively, you can also use Minify Code — a WordPress minify tool that offers separate CSS, HTML, and JavaScript minifiers:
If you want to avoid dealing with code, check the second method below.
Using a WordPress minify plugin is way easier since the tool will minify your files automatically. Here are our best choices to do the job, selected based on their features and ease of use:
Whichever plugin you choose, all you need to do is pick the files you want to minify and the tool will work in the background.
However, since those WordPress minify plugins offer other different features, it would be great if you try them all to see which one gives you the most value.
Make sure to check that you’ve optimized your site to the fullest by using GTMetrix. The tool will score the size of your files and show the unresolved issues.
For instance, our test shows that we got a score of 99 for CSS, with two files that could be furhter improved:
Once we fixed those problems, we scored a perfect 100:
WordPress minify is a practical optimization that can boost your website performance. And the best thing is, anyone can do it without a problem.
Let’s take a look one more time on how to minify WordPress files:
After you’re done, make sure you get a perfect score on GTMetrix!
Let us know in the comment section if you run into any problems.
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