Name and delivery · Speed · an afternoon
How to speed up WordPress — Resolution, Redirects and Round Trips: the Speed That Happens Before PHP
Three redirects and four third-party hostnames cost a visitor more than most of the optimisations that get written about.
The short answer
A page starts loading before your server is involved: the visitor resolves your domain, follows whatever redirects sit in front of the final URL, and opens a fresh connection for every additional hostname the page references — and each of those steps costs a round trip you can remove.
Deal with that chain first, then cache what remains. Measure before and after each change, because the only interesting number is the one that moved.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
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Most speed advice starts inside the server. This page starts one layer out, at the name, and works inwards — because the cheapest wins in a WordPress site are usually the ones nobody has looked at.
An afternoon, and a baseline recorded before you touch anything. Without the baseline there is no way to tell a genuine gain from wishful thinking.
The request starts at a resolver
Before the browser can ask your server for anything, it has to turn your name into an address. On a cold cache that is a full lookup, and its cost is a real part of what a first-time visitor experiences. Sensible TTLs keep the answer cached at resolvers rather than being fetched again on every visit.
There is a balance to strike rather than a number to maximise. Very low TTLs make every visit pay for a fresh lookup; very high ones make any change to the record slow to take effect. Keep working records at a moderate value, and drop them the day before planned work.
Redirect chains cost whole round trips
Type the bare name into a browser and you may travel http to https, then bare to www, then perhaps a trailing-slash correction, before the real page is served. That is three requests and three responses before any HTML exists, and mobile visitors on a slow link pay for each one.
Collapse the chain to a single hop. One rule should take any variant straight to the canonical URL in one move, rather than handing the browser along a sequence of small corrections. Check it with a header trace on the bare domain, which is the version people actually type.
Every additional hostname is another handshake
Each new hostname on a page — a font service, an analytics endpoint, a chat widget, a CDN under a different name — needs its own DNS lookup, its own TCP connection and its own TLS handshake before a single byte of content arrives. Ten third-party hostnames is ten of those.
Serve what you can from your own name, and be ruthless about the rest. A CNAME chain pointing at a chain pointing at another provider adds lookups too, so where a service publishes a shorter path, take it. This is where 'the site feels slow abroad' usually originates.
Then the server: caching, images, engine
On LiteSpeed hosting, set the LSCache plugin up. Server-level page caching turns most anonymous visits into a pre-built file handed straight over, and nothing else available to you comes close to it. Run one cache layer, not three: overlapping caches fight, serve stale pages and occasionally corrupt one another.
Then images — WebP output, dimensions matching their containers, lazy loading below the fold — and the engine underneath: PHP 8.x, and Redis object caching for the dynamic pages and the admin that page caching never touches.
Measure the chain, not just the page. Put the main pages through PageSpeed Insights and record TTFB separately, because TTFB is what separates a server problem from a page problem. Then measure the parts this page is about: resolution time, the number of redirect hops on the bare name, and the count of distinct hostnames a page requests.
Tune for the number that survives real traffic rather than the laboratory trophy. A dependable 90 beats a fragile 100 propped up with tricks, and measuring again after each change is what keeps cause and effect attached to one another.
The platform that answers for the name
Hosted somewhere else already? We move the whole site at no charge, usually within 24 hours, and it goes on answering visitors throughout.
NVMe storage and LiteSpeed caching sit under every tier, the smallest plan included — that is the floor here rather than an upgrade.
- Every step checked against the live panel
- The trap named before you reach it
- What the clock is doing, at every stage
- Support that answers mid-job, not next week
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
Starts one layer further out
Resolution, redirects and hostname count — the part of the load that happens before your server is asked anything.
Redirect chains found and collapsed
http to https to www to slash is three round trips, and a header trace on the bare name exposes the lot.
Third-party hostnames counted
Every extra hostname is a lookup, a connection and a handshake, which is why the count matters as much as the bytes.
TTL treated as a trade-off
Not a number to maximise: high enough to stay cached, low enough that a change is not a two-day event.
Server-level caching, once
LiteSpeed's LSCache set up properly, rather than three plugins fighting over the same pages.
Everything measured twice
A baseline first, then again after each change, so no improvement is a matter of opinion.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Record a baseline, TTFB separately
Run the main pages through PageSpeed Insights and note TTFB on its own. Without a baseline there is no way to distinguish a real gain from a good mood, and TTFB is what tells you whether the server or the page is at fault.
- 2
Trace the redirects on the bare name
Follow the headers from the version people actually type. Count the hops from http://yourdomain.com to the final URL, then rewrite the rules so any variant arrives in a single move.
- 3
Count the hostnames a page requests
Every distinct hostname costs a DNS lookup, a connection and a TLS handshake. Serve what you can from your own name, remove the widgets nobody uses, and shorten any CNAME chain a service lets you shorten.
- 4
Turn on server-level caching, once
Set up the LSCache plugin on LiteSpeed hosting and run one cache layer only. Page caching hands most anonymous visits a pre-built file, and overlapping caches fight and serve stale pages.
- 5
Sort the images and the engine, then measure again
WebP output, dimensions that match their containers, lazy loading below the fold. Confirm PHP 8.x and Redis object caching for the dynamic side, then re-run the baseline and keep only the changes that moved a number.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- LiteSpeed caching in the server itself rather than bolted on by plugin
- NVMe storage on every tier, not only the expensive ones
- PHP versions set per site from the control panel
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- Staging copies for trying a change before it reaches a visitor
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- People on the support desk every hour of every day
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Does DNS really affect how fast a site feels?
For a first-time visitor with nothing cached, yes — the name has to be resolved before a single byte can be requested, and any redirect chain in front of the page adds a full round trip each. For repeat visitors it is negligible. It is the cold-start experience that these changes improve, and that is the one first impressions are made of.
Is www or the bare domain faster?
In themselves, no. What matters is that only one of them is canonical and that the other reaches it in a single redirect. A site serving both, or bouncing a visitor through two hops to reach the right one, is slower than either choice made properly.
How do I find a redirect chain?
Follow the response headers from the plain http version of the bare name and count how many 301s appear before the final 200. Anything above one is a hop you can remove by writing a single rule that sends every variant straight to the canonical URL.
Should I put static files on a separate hostname?
It was standard advice under older protocols and it is rarely worth it now. A separate hostname costs a fresh lookup, connection and handshake, while modern connections reuse the one you already have. Keep assets on your own name unless a CDN is genuinely serving them from closer to the visitor.
Keep reading
How to Park an Extra Domain
Putting the spare names to work with a single redirect hop rather than three.
Web Hosting
Web hosting with LiteSpeed and NVMe under every tier, not only the expensive ones.
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Mailboxes at your own name, so the site's mail does not depend on a third-party hostname.
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