WordPress Assets: How to Properly Serve Static Files

With a market share of 63.2% in 2023, WordPress is the leading Content Management System (CMS) for the majority of websites across the web. There are plenty of good reasons for this: it’s easy to use, extremely flexible, and some of the best sites in the world use it as their basis. It’s however quite common to overlook a very significant aspect of a WordPress site’s performance: the management of its static assets.

Not paying attention to this can have a severe impact on your site’s results. Having your eager visitors have to navigate through sluggish load times or, worse, a frustrating file not found error can seriously affect your conversion rates and negatively impact the success of your online business. These issues are typically due to improperly served static assets, including images, JavaScript, and CSS files, which are quintessential to having a successful, fully-functional site. 

This article will therefore guide you through the path of efficient management and delivery of your static WordPress files. By the end, you will be able to properly serve your site’s assets, not only optimizing your website performance but also creating a smooth user experience. If you need support, you can also consider hiring one of our Codeable WordPress experts to help you with your setup so you can have more time and ease of mind dealing with the operation of your business.

Now, let’s unveil the secret of serving your site’s assets efficiently!

Understanding WordPress assets and their importance

Assets greatly contribute to your website’s success as they are responsible for your site’s styling, design, interactivity, responsiveness, and functionality. But what are they, exactly?

What are WordPress assets?

To better grasp the concept of assets, imagine your website as a vibrant cityscape, with different elements coming together to form a captivating environment for tourists. The images and videos on your website can be likened to the city’s beautiful landmarks, drawing attention and leaving a lasting impression. The stylesheets and Javascript files represent the well-designed roads that guide your visitors through the dynamic infrastructure of your website, ensuring smooth navigation and adding functionality and interactivity. 

Just as a city thrives on these elements, your website’s assets work harmoniously to create a captivating online experience for your visitors. If they are improperly implemented or not optimized, you can run into a variety of issues with your website, like poor functionality and missing content.

Here is a breakdown of some asset types you might have on your WordPress website:

• CSS files and custom fonts

CSS files are Cascading Style Sheets that control the look and feel of the site. They contain rules for how HTML elements should be displayed. You can also include custom fonts, which will also be considered an asset.

• JavaScript files 

These files add interactivity to your site. For example, a JavaScript file might be used for a contact form validation or to control a slide show on the homepage.

• Images, videos, and audio

Your site’s images are considered assets in any format (JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, SVGs, etc.). Your site may also include embedded videos or audio files.

• PDFs and other documents 

These assets are any downloadable files you provide to your visitors, like PDFs, doc files, etc. 

By harnessing the power of these assets, you can unlock the true potential of your WordPress website and make a lasting impact on your audience.

Why optimize and manage your WordPress assets?

Whether you are adding new content, expanding your product offerings, or integrating third-party services, managing your assets enables a smoother transition and better long-term scalability. Let’s explore several reasons why you should never neglect optimizing and managing your site’s assets:

• Improved website performance

Optimized assets, such as images, scripts, and stylesheets, can significantly improve your website’s loading speed. Faster load times lead to a better user experience, higher engagement, and increased conversion rates. Users are more likely to abandon a website if it takes too long to load, so optimizing assets is essential for retaining visitors.

• Search engine optimization (SEO) 

Search engines like Google consider page speed as one of the ranking signals. Higher search engine rankings can result in increased organic traffic and visibility for your website. By optimizing your site’s assets, you, therefore, improve your website’s performance, which positively affects your SEO efforts.

• Better user experience 

Your visitors are more likely to engage with your content, navigate through your online shop, and place orders if they have a smooth and seamless experience. Optimized assets can provide a positive user experience, which will lead to increased user satisfaction and loyalty.

• Bandwidth and storage optimization 

Optimizing your assets reduces the file size of the images, videos, and other media on your website, which will reduce the amount of bandwidth required to serve your website to your visitors. Additionally, it helps you save storage space on your server, especially if you have limited storage resources or are using a shared hosting environment.

• Cost efficiency

Optimization can help you reduce bandwidth and storage usage, leading to potential cost savings, especially if you are on a hosting plan with usage-based pricing.

Optimizing and managing your WordPress assets

Let’s now cover the important techniques that will contribute to the overall performance and optimization of your assets.

Cache busting and efficient cache policies

Cache busting is a technique used to force browsers to retrieve the latest version of a file from the server. It plays a crucial role in optimizing your assets because it ensures that your visitors will always receive the latest version of your web page, even if they have previously cached a previous version. By appending a unique identifier or version number to the URL of your web page, cache busting ensures that any changes made to your web files are recognized by the browser, thereby preventing the delivery of outdated content to your customers.

To implement cache busting in your website, you can use 3 different techniques: query strings, file versioning, or content-based hashing. Here is how to do each:

• Query strings

A common method for cache busting is to append a unique query string parameter to your web page’s URL. For example, instead of style.css, you’ll have the version number in the URL like style.css?v=1.2.3. This version number or timestamp can be automatically updated whenever the file changes. WordPress plugins like WP-Optimize provide options to add versioning or timestamp-based query strings to your asset URLs.

• File versioning

Another cache busting technique is to rename your files with a version number or unique identifier. For instance, style.1.2.3.css. This approach ensures that whenever a new version is released, the URL of your file will change. This will prompt your visitors’ browsers to fetch the updated version of your web page. Tools like Grunt, Gulp, or Webpack can automate file versioning during the build process.

• Content-based hashing 

Content-based hashing generates a unique hash based on the file’s content and includes it in your web page’s URL. This guarantees that whenever your file’s content changes, the hash will also change, leading to a different URL. Webpack or other build tools can assist in implementing content-based hashing.

Additionally, configuring efficient cache policies for your assets is also important for optimal performance. By specifying appropriate Cache-Control headers, you can control how long files are cached in the browser or intermediate caching servers. For static files that rarely change, you can set a longer cache duration, while for dynamic or frequently updated files, a shorter cache duration may be more suitable. Here is an overview of how you can configure efficient cache policies:

• Cache-Control headers

To set efficient cache policies for your assets, you can configure the Cache-Control headers in your web server or utilize caching plugins. These headers can define whether caching of your web files is allowed, the duration your web files should be cached for, and how the caches should validate the file’s freshness. You can set the Cache-Control headers via a WordPress caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket. On the other hand, if you’re a seasoned developer, you might want to do so via your server configuration files (e.g., .htaccess). Here’s an example of how to set Cache-Control headers to cache your static files for one year, which will improve your asset optimization by reducing server load, speeding up page loading times, saving bandwidth, and enhancing the overall user experience of your site:

<FilesMatch "\.(css|js|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$">
    Header set Cache-Control "max-age=31536000, public"
</FilesMatch>

• Expires header

Alongside the Cache-Control header, you can also set an Expires header to indicate the specific date and time when your file should expire. While the Cache-Control header takes precedence over the Expires header, some older browsers still rely on the latter. Here’s an example of setting the Expires header to one month from the current date:

<FilesMatch "\.(css|js|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$">
    Header set Expires "access plus 1 month"
</FilesMatch>

This sample code will instruct your users’ browsers that once they download a static file from your website, they will not make another request for that file for the next 30 days. This significantly reduces the number of server requests and improves page load times for your returning visitors.

It’s important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the recommended expiration time. You can adjust the expiration time based on your specific requirements and aim to set it to a value that allows for a reasonable caching period without sacrificing the freshness of your content. For instance, if your static files rarely change or have infrequent updates, setting the expiration time to a longer duration, such as three months or even one year, could be appropriate. 

Optimizing stylesheets, JavaScript, and images

Optimizing your stylesheets, JavaScript, and images can significantly enhance the loading speed and overall performance of your website. Here are some key techniques to consider:

• Minification

Minify stylesheets and JavaScript files by removing unnecessary white spaces and comments and reducing your code’s complexity. This will decrease your file sizes, leading to faster downloads. Look at the following example:

CSS code before modification:

h1 {
font-size: 18px;
}
p {
font-size: 13px;
}

CSS code after minification (perfectly valid CSS):

h1{font-size:18px;}p{font-size:13px;}

We know it doesn’t look like much, but just by doing this, you will have minimized your file size from 51 to 38 bytes, effectively reducing its size by 25%! Also, depending on the size and complexity of your CSS, you can minify it with up to 40% savings or more.

• Concatenation

Combine multiple CSS or JavaScript files into a single file to reduce the number of HTTP requests required to load the assets. This consolidation minimizes latency and improves loading times.

• Compression

Enable GZIP compression on your web server to reduce the sizes of your stylesheets, JavaScript files, and other assets during transmission. Compressed files are quicker to download, resulting in improved page loading speed.

• Image optimization

Optimize images by compressing them without significant loss in quality. This can be achieved by resizing images to the appropriate dimensions, choosing appropriate file formats (such as WebP or JPEG), and using efficient compression algorithms.

In order to easily implement these optimization techniques, you can use plugins such as WP Rocket, Autoptimize, Fast Velocity Minify, Asset CleanUp, and WP Super Minify. These plugins are usually user-friendly, making it easy for you to improve your website’s speed without requiring extensive technical knowledge or manual effort.

You can also hire a WordPress professional if you want to take a more customized and efficient approach. Enlisting the services of a Codeable expert will ensure that your website remains competitive, user-friendly, conflict-free, and prepared for future growth.

Using Content delivery networks (CDN)

Utilizing CDNs can greatly enhance the performance and availability of your assets. CDNs distribute your static assets across multiple servers worldwide, reducing the physical distance between your customers and your server. This will result in faster content delivery. By offloading the delivery of assets to a CDN, you can leverage their global network of servers and take advantage of their caching capabilities, reducing the load on your WordPress server.

Among the most popular CDN providers are Cloudflare, MaxCDN (now StackPath), Amazon CloudFront, KeyCDN, and Sucuri. These CDNs will help you achieve faster load times, reduced server load, and global content delivery, which will contribute to higher engagement, lower bounce rates, and increased conversions for your online business. 

Using caching plugins

Caching plugins, such as W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache, are valuable tools when it comes to optimizing your assets and enhancing your website performance. These plugins generate static HTML versions of your dynamic web pages, which can be served directly to your visitors, reducing the processing load on the server and improving the overall performance of your site. 

Moreover, caching plugins will help you implement a technique called object caching. This technique involves storing frequently accessed data in memory, which eliminates the need for repetitive database queries or API calls to speed up your site’s response times. They also provide the option to exclude specific pages or sections from being cached. This ensures that dynamic content, which needs to stay up-to-date, is not affected by the caching process.

By employing the four asset optimization techniques explained in this section, you should be able to significantly enhance the delivery and performance of your static assets, resulting in faster page load times, improved user experience, and better overall site performance.

Even better, WordPress offers a comprehensive solution for managing and organizing your digital assets effectively to take your asset optimization to new heights. Let’s delve into this powerful tool in the next section. 

WordPress Digital Asset Management (DAM)

WordPress Digital Asset Management (DAM) is a centralized hub for organizing, storing, and efficiently managing the digital assets used on your website. Let’s explore the best DAM plugins and tools available, as well as how to integrate your WordPress with external asset management systems.

Best DAM plugins and tools

There are several plugins and tools that you can use to streamline and enhance the overall efficiency of your asset management. Among the most popular ones are Media Library Assistant, FileBird, and Brandfolder.

These plugins extend the functionality of the default WordPress media library, allowing you to organize and categorize assets with additional metadata, taxonomies, and custom fields. They provide advanced search and filtering options, making it easier to locate specific assets.

Moreover, they offer a user-friendly interface for organizing and managing media files in your WordPress.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a more advanced and technical approach to get the most out of your static files, read on.

Advanced asset handling techniques

There are two coding-based key techniques to handle your assets: enqueuing scripts and styles and adding metadata and taxonomies to assets.

Before we start coding, make sure to add the new code in a child theme instead of your main function.php file directly. A child theme will provide a way to customize and extend your parent theme in a separate entity without modifying the original codebase to avoid any complications when updating your theme in the future.

Enqueuing scripts and styles

Enqueuing scripts and styles in WordPress allows you to efficiently load and manage external JavaScript and CSS files. By using the built-in enqueuing system in your theme’s functions.php file, you can ensure proper dependency management, avoid conflicts with other themes or plugins, and improve page loading performance.

To enqueue a script or style, you can utilize the wp_enqueue_script() and wp_enqueue_style() functions provided by WordPress. These functions allow you to register and enqueue scripts and stylesheets, specifying their dependencies, version numbers, and other parameters. They allow WordPress to ensure that the necessary security checks and validations are performed before your files are loaded onto your website. This helps protect your site from potential vulnerabilities and malicious code injections that could arise from improperly included scripts.

Moreover, using these widely used functions promotes best practices by encouraging you to separate your script code from your HTML. This aids in maintaining a cleaner and more organized codebase, making debugging easy and maintaining your website in the long run.

Here is a sample code that you can add to your child theme to enqueue a script file:

function mytheme_enqueue_scripts() {
    // Enqueue a custom script
    wp_enqueue_script( 'my-custom-script', get_template_directory_uri() . '/js/custom.js', array( 'jquery' ), '1.0', true );
}
add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'mytheme_enqueue_scripts' );

In this example, we are registering the my-custom-script JavaScript file located in the theme’s js folder. We specified that it depends on jQuery (array( ‘jquery’ )) and set the version number to 1.0. The last parameter, true, indicates that this script should be loaded in the footer for better performance.

In the same way, you can enqueue stylesheets, this time using the wp_enqueue_style() function instead.

Adding metadata and taxonomies

WordPress also provides the capability to add metadata and taxonomies to assets, allowing for more advanced organization and categorization. By leveraging metadata and taxonomies, you can enhance the organization, searchability, and filtering capabilities of your assets within WordPress, making it easier to manage and retrieve specific files when needed.

These advanced asset handling techniques provide flexibility and control over the way your scripts, styles, and media files are enqueued and organized, allowing for a more efficient and customizable asset management workflow.

Metadata can be used to store additional information about an asset, such as its author, creation date, or copyright details. To add metadata to an asset, you can use WordPress’s metadata functions, such as update_post_meta() and get_post_meta(). For example, to store the author information for a media file, try the following code in your child theme:

$attachment_id = 123; // ID of the media file
update_post_meta( $attachment_id, '_wp_attachment_image_author', 'John Doe' );

Taxonomies, on the other hand, provide a way to classify assets into specific categories or tags. WordPress comes with built-in taxonomies like categories and tags, but you can also create custom taxonomies to suit your specific asset organization needs.

To create a custom taxonomy for your assets, you can use the register_taxonomy() function. For instance, use the following example code in your child theme to register a custom taxonomy called asset_category for media files:

function mytheme_register_asset_taxonomy() {
    $args = array(
        'label' => 'Asset Categories',
        'public' => true,
        'hierarchical' => true,
    );
    register_taxonomy( 'asset_category', 'attachment', $args );
}
add_action( 'init', 'mytheme_register_asset_taxonomy' );

In this example, we register a hierarchical taxonomy called asset_category for the attachment post type (which represents media files). This will allow you to classify media files into different categories, providing an additional level of organization.

So, the next time you need to include your static files in your WordPress project, remember to leverage the powerful functions we’ve covered here and reap the benefits they offer.

Implement effective WordPress asset handling with Codeable

If the above sounds a little too technical for your liking, don’t worry! Here at Codeable, we offer the best and most skilled WordPress and WooCommerce developers who understand the importance of WordPress asset management and optimization. They are highly skilled at cache busting using query strings, file versioning, and content-based hashing. In addition, they have the necessary expertise to optimize your stylesheets, JavaScript, images, and any type of assets for your site. They can also help you set up  CDNs and the right caching plugins which work best for your site. 

Submit your WordPress project or task now and reap the rewards of having optimized and well-managed WordPress assets!