Google has long said that the speed with which your site loads will affect how well it ranks in the search results. It’s not a major factor, but it certainly helps. A brand new feature from WordPress called “Photon” will help your site load faster, with no extra work needed on your end!
Bundled as part of the popular “Jetpack” plugin, Photon allows the powerful servers from WordPress to handle many of the images on your site, allowing your server to focus on sending users the content. By splitting the load and allowing the fast servers at WordPress to handle the images, the result is a faster loading website for your visitors and less load on your web host. This type of service is known as a CDN: Content Delivery Network. These are normally complicated to set up and come with a fee attached, but this feature from WordPress is completely free and can be set up in just a few minutes.
Setting it up requires just two simple steps:
- Install the Jetpack plugin if you don’t already have it, and make sure you’re on the latest version.
- Activate the Photon feature, as shown below.
That’s it! From that point forward, every image on your site that lives inside of a post or page will automatically be served by WP.com instead of making your server do the work.
If you’re a GreenMellen client, Jetpack (and Photon) are already installed and activated for you and you’ve been reaping the benefits of them without even knowing it. If you’re not a client of ours, just follow the simple steps above to take advantage of this great new feature.
