What is WordPress

WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) and the fact that it has a standard WordPress dashboard makes it a universal platform that can be effectively used by anyone.WordPress is a free and open-source CMS. It is most associated with blogging but supports other types of web content of forums, media galleries, and online stores.

Load Time

When a visitor lands on your site for the first time, you only have a few seconds to capture their attention for surfing or compelling him to revisit. Microsoft Bing search team says, a 2-second longer delay in page responsiveness reduced user satisfaction by 3.8%, increased lost revenue per user by 4.3%, and a reduced click by 4.3%. Another study by Tagman.com revealed that just one-second delay in page-loading time could potentially cause a loss of 7% in conversions.
According to search engine land, Google also includes site speed in it’s ranking algorithm. Fast loading pages improve user experience, increase your page views, and help with your WordPress SEO.
SO LOADING TIME OF WEBSITE MATTERS A LOT.

Website Load Time

I encountered a speed problem with my WordPress website “guuhuu.com” where my loading time was 6.2 Sec in the Pingdom test. Following is my experience in the process of improving load time. I thought the speed of my website is ok. Then I realized that Google Chrome stores website in catch so for me speed was good, However on the different computer, when I opened my website, it took more time. So a user opening website first time must be facing the same problem of more load time. I then tested on Pingdom and load time was 6.2 sec far away from the standard time of 2 sec.

What Slows down WordPress Website

1.Web Hosting-A storage place for storing your website PAGES, IMAGES ETC. The server should be of the latest technology. In WordPress it should be PHP version 7 or greater; MySQL version 5.6 or greater as on today.
2. Page Size-Your website will load very slow if its content is big. Mainly images that aren’t optimized for the web.Image size should be  150px square for thumbnails, max width of 300px for medium-sized images, and a max width of 1024px for large images.IN MY CASE I HAVE OPTIMIZED ALL IMAGES AND LOAD TIME CAME DOWN TO 4.92 SEC (image)
3. Plugins-Some plugs are not well coded or simply some don’t suit your combination of other plugins.

Case Study

I am using following free plugins. (PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT ADVOCATING OR ADVERTISING ANY PLUGINS)
Elementor, Anti-Spam, Broken link checker, Cookie Notice, Far Future Expiration Plugin, Insert Headers, and Footers, JCH Optimize, Leverage Browser Caching, Nofollow for external link, Post Expiration Date, Redirection, Smush, Ultimate Nofollow, WP Super Cache, and Yoast and GADWP.
I checked on various blogs on speed increase of website. Most of the bloggers advertise certain plugin only. I installed and configured various plugins, deactivated some and ultimately Speed Booster Pack in addition to my plugins, was able to reduce load time to 2.60 Sec and also requests 55, Page size 9.4 MB and Performance grade to 79.
Speed and performance grade is still low. With this plugin Elementor < page builder plugin is not accessible. So I deactivated speed booster pack and load time increased to 4.53 S
I further googled. I found using a CDN, or Content Delivery Network can help to speed up loading times for all of your visitors in the different region of the world. Luckily my host “hostinger.com” provide this basic facility free of charge through cloudfare.com and free plugin “Cloudflare”.After its configuration, my speed remained 4.53 S
Finally, I deactivated following plugins and load time now is 2.28S which is best for me.
Plugins  Removed
1.Far Future Expiration Plugin
2.JCH Optimize
3.Leverage Browser Caching
4.Post Expiration Date
5. WP Super Cache
LOAD SPEED -2.28 s
ANOTHER CAUTION “USE LEAST NUMBER OF SLIDERS”.Sliders increase the load speed. I am using  Slider animation of elementor.

Now I installed and configured W3 Total Cache and load time came down to 1.80 seconds.

My Website stats

On average,
Load Time – 2.7 seconds
Page size – 1.2 MB.
Requests -54
The average score of one million websites analyzed by Hubspot
Stats of my website, after this case study,are
Load Time 1.80 seconds
Page Size-9.7 MB (Unable to reduce size) Any suggestion
Requests-52
Performance Grade79
My System Configuration
Operating System-: Linux
Software-: Apache
PHP Version-:5.6.38
WordPress Environment
Version-:4.9.8
Theme-OceanWP 1.5.31 (free)

What I conclude
1.Most of blogs who has explained about various plugins are outdated as plugs gets updated but blogs are not.
2.These recommended plugs are basically sales programmes.
3.The basic free plugs are good in all respect and works perfectly.