The importance of using HTTP/2 for WordPress

You open your laptop, double click on the browser and type www.xyz.com. In a very few seconds, you see a fully loaded interactive web page that you requested. All this is just the output of what you requested, but do you know how the backend works? Well, if not, then hold on. Because today we will discuss some important things about the HTTP protocol in layman terms so that everyone can understand. So, let’s get started!.

Whenever you click or enter a website address, your browser takes that address as an input and requests the webserver to get all the required data, assets, and other things necessary to load that page. All of this gets transmitted to your browser almost instantly. And if you don’t know, the data transmission is handled via HTTP/1.1. This is a protocol that is used by every browser and web server while requesting and transmitting data from each other. 

However, with the continuous advancement of the computers and internet with time, it has become harder and harder to load web pages quickly because of its high complexity and heavier assets nowadays. Web pages now have much heavy assets to load. This creates a bottleneck for today’s dynamic websites. Therefore, with the regular updates and improvements in the HTTP protocol to increase the efficiency, security, and speed, developers have created a whole new protocol named HTTP/2.

Why do you need HTTP/2?

The older version, HTTP/1.1 is been used for the last 15-16 years. It was introduced in the times when data transmission was in mere bytes/seconds. Whereas in today’s world, data transmission has increased up to a few megabits/seconds. This clearly shows us that the system needs a drastic change. With the introduction of much more complex and heavy multimedia web content, it became very hard for any site to load using HTTP/1.1 because of its low bandwidth. However, with HTTP/2, there is no more waiting. You can now transfer tons of megabits of data per second.

Key advantages of using HTTP for your WordPress website

Better speed than before

The importance of using HTTP/2 for WordPress

The HTTP/2 protocol was created with the sole purpose of increasing the overall performance and speed of the websites. And with the ability to transmit a greater amount of data per browser-server communication cycle, this will totally eliminate any hurdle that used to come in between your WordPress site and its performance. 

More multimedia-rich websites

To make the site more interactive and good looking, developers use more and more multimedia web content. This, when transferred at the optimum speeds, gives the perfect media-rich experience. So, to do this, people often make use of Google cloud services, etc. by expending a lot of money. However, with HTTP/2, you can now speed up your website with zero cost. Features like header compression and stream prioritization not only reduces the few bytes to load per request but also transfers multimedia-rich web content very fast from the webserver to the browser.

Better mobile experience

With over 53% of the total searches happening on Google every day are from mobile devices, we can now understand the importance to optimize every website according to mobile users. With the latest HTTP/2 protocol, it has now become much easier to load heavy pages even on a slow data speed. Thanks to the added features like reduced data consumption, latency, and header compression.

Better security

HTTP/2 not only increases the speed and performance of a website. It has also added more security to your WordPress site with a completely new HPACK, header compression, and improvised version of the Transport Layer Security, TLS1.2. Because of this, it has now become harder to circumvent the security threats like compromising text-based stream. This has compressed header info and other crimes. 

Better SEO advantage

Increased speed not only gives a better user experience but also helps you get a better rank in the search engines. Although HTTP/2 doesn’t affect the SEO directly, it boosts your chances to be ranked better in the results. Because the performance of a website is also a prominent factor that decides the rank of a webpage in the search results.

Compatibility

Almost every browser in the market now uses only HTTP/2 protocol instead of the conventional HTTPS ones. This means it is very much important for your website to be using HTTP/2 to be compatible with 90%+ users in the world.

Cheap Linux VPS