What do you think are the best ways to speed up WordPress?

There is an excellent blog, about speeding up Wordpress in Azure. Though it is old blog post, the points mentioned in the post are relevant.

https://azure.microsoft.com/sv-se/blog/10-ways-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-site-on-azure-websites/

Hope this helps

How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site

Run performance tests.  
Choose a reliable hosting provider.  
Update everything.  
Use the latest version of PHP.  
Delete unused plugins.  
Install high-quality plugins only.  
Use a lightweight theme.  
Optimize images.  
Try lazy loading your content.  
Don’t host videos on your server.  
Reduce CSS and JavaScript file sizes.  
Install a WordPress caching plugin.  
Simplify your page designs and content.  
Tidy up your WordPress database.  
Limit or disable post revisions.  
Avoid redirects.  
Turn off pingbacks and trackbacks.  
Use a CDN.  
Compress files with GZIP.  
Limit external scripts.  
Don’t fall victim to hotlinking.  
Schedule tasks for low-traffic periods.  
Split long posts into multiple parts.  
Paginate posts.  
Paginate comments.  

https://blog.hubspot.com/website/easy-steps-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-site

Thanks for reaching here! If Understand right your query is speeding up Wordpress in Azure.

To elaborate on this: The key design elements in App Service that may contribute to the latency.

• App Service uses Azure Storage as the persistent storage for Web Apps, WordPress is installed on the persistent storage by default.
• If you are not using MySQL in-app feature (Windows only), then any other MySQL solution used with Web App is not living on the same virtual machine as the website.

You may consider implementing below easy steps to speed up your WordPress site.

1. Co-locate WordPress site and database
2. Choose the right MySQL database solution for your WordPress needs
3. Optimize your database
4. consider adding some form of caching for your site
5. For low traffic web site, you can enable AlwaysOn to keep your web app always loaded, as by default, apps are unloaded if they are idle for some period of time.
6. Compress images
7. Reduce HTTP requests
8. Use Azure CDN
9. Diagnose if your theme is slowing down your site
10. Diagnose if any plugin is slowing down your site
11. Check Permalink format
12. Turn off Pingbacks and Trackbacks if you don't use it
13. Specify image dimension

Reference: Best Practices for Hosting WordPress Site on Azure App Service

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