What's the cause of WordPress being slow? Let's discover!

Apr 21, 2022
Featured image illustration for WordPress slow showing a person looking at a snail with a magnifying glass.

Understanding the reasons the reason WordPress doesn't work as it should isn't easy. It's not easy to identify the root cause of a WordPress website is comprised of a variety of elements, that includes its website server, along with the settings used to interface with various themes and plugins. The reason could be inadequately optimised content, for instance videos, embedded videos images, or videos.

How do you identify the source of the issue? It's difficult to determine the issue you're dealing with. There's an array of possible solutions and we'll look at the possible solutions we can think of in this piece.

Then we'll not simply look at the root of why your WordPress site isn't working properly. We'll show you several ways to improve the performance of your WordPress site.

Excited? Let's go!

What's the cause behind WordPress isn't flexible?

A variety of factors could affect your WordPress site's performance. Common issues to include:

  • The web hosting provider hosts your site.
  • Server-side optimizations (PHP version, caching, compression, etc.)
  • Slow WordPress themes
  • The WordPress plugins run extremely slowly. WordPress plugins
  • Content that is not optimised (mainly images)
  • There are too many external HTTP requests are originating from different HTTP
A diagram showing various elements of a typical WordPress website.
A variety of elements comprise the foundational WordPress web page.

In addition to the server optimizations performed by your host company In addition, there are many different things that you need to do to ensure your website runs at a high speed. In the next section, first, we'll figure out the reason that's the cause for your site's slowness.

Four Steps to Find Out the speed of your WordPress website is having issues

Conducting tests on your website is a great way to determine what is slowing your site down, whether it's your web hosting service provider the website, or even a mix of both? Here's a look at some internet tests you could conduct.

Step 1: Run Page Loading Speed Tests

How fast does your site load? If it takes longer than two minutes to load, that's not optimal to provide a great user experience. The ideal is to strive to speed up loading time to less than one second. The rest is fine however, you should consider improving your site to make it more efficient.

Open GTmetrix and running a test on your site. Select a server that is near your website (or the visitors to your site) to guarantee greater performance. ( Tip: Sign up for a no-cost GTmetrix account for additional servers).

Screenshot of the GTmetrix homepage.
GTmetrix home page.

We're testing the WordPress home page because it's the most popular page that users go to. The homepage also houses many pages of information , which makes it ideal to test.

Once the test is complete It will then display the GTmetrix results report. It follows the format.

An example of a GTmetrix speed test report.
GTmetrix report example.

GTmetrix analyzes websites using an array of different indicators. It also shows a visual timeline of how the site was loaded throughout the test. If you want to fully understand the test, scroll down.

A screenshot of the GTmetrix report's Summary tab.
GTmetrix report's Summary tab.

Summary Tab Summary Tab provides a summary of the major issues that affect the speed of your website. The most important thing to consider is the speed at which your website responds to the server. It almost always implies the possibility of switching your hosting plan or moving to a more reliable hosting company. Before making the decision-making process make sure you address the issue and review the situation.

A different issue is "Avoid the enormous size the DOM could be able to occupy" this is the biggest issue when it comes to website page builders. A different issue concerns "Avoid major adjustments in the layout" could also be applicable to themes builders and page builders.

"Avoid the huge load on your network" refers to the heavy volume of data, which includes pictures, scripts and scripts in addition to CSS files. The webpage's "details" section gives a concise overview of this. The total dimension of the website and the amount of pages accessed is very frequently.

If you click the tab labeled Performance by clicking on the tab called Performance, the tab will offer users additional information which is reported by the browser. The tab will also give information on Lighthouse Performance.

A screenshot of the GTmetrix report's Performance tab.
GTmetrix reportson the performance tab.

This testing webpage doesn't have much to offer. Visit the report's structureand Waterfalltabs could provide more details.

The next step is Pingdom Tools, another popular software that tests the speed of your computer. This website will also be available on its homepage.

A screenshot of the Pingdom Tools website speed testing tool.

Pingdom Tools website speed testing tool.

Pingdom Tools uses its own method of testing the website. Results aren't appealing at all on the site.

A screenshot of Pingdom Tools speed test results.
Pingdom Tools speed test results.

In the next part, we will show suggestions to improve the effectiveness of your site. Each suggestion will be considered in order to provide more information regarding how to make your website more effective.

A list of Pingdom Tools' performance enhancement recommendations in its speed test report.
The Pingdom Tips for Performance Improvement.

Each speed test tool comes with its own indicators of performance. There is no way to evaluate the results from one speed test with the results of another. Therefore, no matter what you decide to do you prefer, adhere to the speed test you feel comfortable with.

The second step is to download the application , and then visit the site.

The load test offers the latest information regarding its speed under real-world circumstances. That's why we'll employ K6 to evaluate this. K6 is a free and open-source load test instrument that can be run within a localized environment within your device.

A screenshot of the k6 speed testing tool's homepage.


    K6 FOSS Speed test tool.

The trial version of HTML0 developed by K6 requires command-line expertise and can be extremely efficient once you've mastered the command line. ( Note: an alternative is to utilize the cloud-based service offered by K6 or an easier load tester that is cloud-based like Loader.io)

Alongside the fantastic report extension, you are able to conduct an online load testing, and then receive accurate outcomes in HTML:

A screenshot of the k6 load testing results showing the Request Metrics.
Results of the test of load for K6 Metrics.

These results come directly from the website that has been tested and loaded over 10 minutes with the most users. It also contains important details.

A screenshot of the k6 load testing results showing Other Stats.
Test results of load testing K6Other Stats.

It is important to note that the vast majority of requests did not succeed, which may suggest that the server's not able to manage the request.

Additionally, you can create conditions and thresholds using k6 scripts (e.g. that the loading speed of your website is not more than 1.5s or that users are able to register or not and so on.). These statistics will be visible on the Dashboard.

Below is a picture of the results from a load test on a different website that utilizes the exact same test conditions to give an even more precise view.

A screenshot of the k6 load testing results for another website showing the Request Metrics.
Results of the K6 load test Round 2.

The 28 failed requests could appear to not be a problem, however, it's not the case given the volume of requests. This is only 0.25 percent of requests that I make on my personal computer. The numbers indicate that the host company can handle a lot of simultaneous users.

3. Take a look at the themes and plugins you can download for Your WordPress Themes as well as Plugins

Review the performance of your WordPress plugins and themes . This is the initial procedure to find the performance problems. There are a lot of choices for you to select from and it's the possibility that some plugins or themes offer better designs than others.

Before we covered our speed-testing section We covered the identification of issues which are caused by themes or plugins in the outcomes of our tests. There's a different way to do it: turn off one plugin or themes at a single time and then observe what happens to the site (in an loading test and speed test or both).

If the issue with performance persists persists, switch to the theme or plug-in before evaluating the results. Repeat the process until you've found the root cause.

This strategy should not be applied to sites with a production link. The staging of websites is a great way to do this. It's a good way to experiment with different variants of the layout of your website, by altering, adding or even eliminating certain elements.

If your site is being managed by a company and you're looking for a suitable spot, as each WordPress installation is unique and has its own staging environment. You just need to visit Your My Dashboard and choose your website, after which you'll be able to change the configurations of your website from live and in the staging.

A screen showing how to use 's one-click staging feature.
This function allows single-click management of the program.

The site functions exactly identical to the live version until the server as well as server-side configurations. You can use the web interface to make changes to your site , and also to try it out without changing the actual website.

Step 4. make use of to the Application Performance Monitor (APM) Tool

An APM tool that is combined with load tests and speed tools , can increase the ability of your site to detect.

Instead of creating a web site to try it out before deciding which theme or plugins you need to turn off at any time, an effective APM tool can assist you to identify the source of the slow performance, without altering every aspect of your website. It monitors and analyses the performance of slow transactions and the database query. Additionally, it tracks the demands from different sources, such as WordPress plugins, hooks and others.

Showing how to enable  APM in the My dashboard.
It is possible to turn on APM inside My dashboard. My dashboard.

A majority of the time making use of an APM tool can be difficult for newbies. Even professionals require training on how to utilize the instrument effectively. There's also an additional cost as the majority of instruments need a license in order to use.

I decided to create an unoptimized website. designed to be optimized for this feature. After that, I turned on APM on the site through My dashboard. Then, I put the site through some load tests to make sure that APM was able to collect the data. The result is as follows:

Graphs from  APM’s ‘Transactions’ tab showing the overall transaction time.
APM's 'Transactions' tab.

The Transactions tab lists those transactions which were the longest over the time period it was monitored. It is a great way to increase the efficiency of your website. This is due to the the truth that wp-cron.php is the most efficient. It is a plugin that can be activated through WordPress it's own theme or plugin.

The following tab is APM's WordPress tab. There you'll discover the slowest WordPress plugins, as well as hooks.

A screenshot showing  APM's WordPress tab.
APM's 'WordPress' tab.

If you notice any ineffective plugins on this page, or ones that have redundant functions, it's possible to take those plugins from your WordPress website. As an example, I have two contact form plugins that are listed on this page as well as an portfolio plugin that WordPress might be able to live without.

Moving further down this tab will show the slowest and unreliable WordPress hooks.

 APM showing the slowest WordPRess hooks.


    APM giving information on what hooks are the Slowest WordPress hooks.

The monitoring of the slowest WordPress hooks is among the most requested features provided by APM. It is possible to click the hyperlink for the hook to display the transaction.

Seeing a slow WordPress hook's transaction samples.
The slow hook's sample transaction made using APM.

Knowing what plugin, theme , or hook, is the most significant bottleneck to performance You can improve web performance by reducing the time it takes to.

17 strategies to increase the speed of loading for a WordPress site

You won't win the battle until you understand the best way to win! Making use of this information is how you can increase your chances of success. Did you pass all the tests that were mentioned in the past. Let's now examine ways to speed up the performance of your WordPress website.

You can jump into one of the sections by simply clicking on the links listed below:

1. Verify that you maintain your WordPress Website up-to-date

One of the primary elements needed for maintaining the quality of your WordPress website is keeping your site up to date. While it might sound as if it's an obvious thing but it's crucial to keep in mind.

WordPress Updates include security patches, the most recent technologies, and improvements in performance.

It's equally important to ensure that every themes and plugins remain up-to-date. If you notice the application or theme you have on your site that haven't received any new updates for more than a year, you should reconsider the alternative.

2. Be sure that your images that you post on your site have been properly optimized

Based upon HTTP Archive (Mar 1-20 and 2022) The weight of the page of the WordPress site is 2408KB. With images making up close to 1117KB (46.38 percent of the total content).

A graph from HTTP Archive's WordPress: Stage of Images showing that Images take up almost half of any page's weight.
WordPress is currently in the process of updating Images. (Source: HTTP Archive)

There's no doubt that big images can make your site slow and lead to a poor user experience. Therefore, optimizing your images manually or using an application could significantly speed up the loading times of your website.

To improve the quality of photos you can make use of lossy or non-lossless compression methods. A lot of image editors will make top-quality adjustments when saving an image to ensure the most efficient picture compression. The lossy compression can be an ideal compromise for maintaining image quality and reducing the size of the photo's dimensions.

Setting the image sizes in WordPress Media Settings.
WordPress Media Settings -> Images' sizes.

WordPress has responsive photos by default. You can choose what size you prefer for your images and allow WordPress take care of the rest. If you're looking to reduce the storage space you have, you're capable of using a free WordPress plugin like Imsanity for scaling images down to the specified size frequently.

3. Utilize Plugins Carefully (and only when it is absolutely essential)

Plugins form the backbone of WordPress and the WordPress community. With a variety of plugins, which include over 54,000 plug-ins that are on WordPress.org together with a variety of other plugins, it's possible to get confused you're using WordPress plugins.

Poorly-designed WordPress plugins can slow down your website's performance, and can extend the amount of time required to load the pages.

You can however make use of a variety of WordPress plugins, without impacting the speed of your site however, you should make sure that they're well coded and optimized for speed. Furthermore to that, plugin developers must have designed their plug-ins in such a way that allows them to collaborate with each other.

A screengrab from 's hand-picked WordPress list.
Hand-picked WordPress plugins list.

Whichever plugins you've installed. If you are having difficulties, you can refer to Step 3 and/or Step 4 in this blog post to discover the solution to problems that arise with plugins.

4. Pick the top Fast WordPress Theme

The choice of a user-friendly WordPress theme is vital to the speed of your site and your users' overall experience. The features of the theme, such as layout, menus to navigate as well as the color palettes, fonts along with the order of the images will be the first things your visitors will be able to notice.

If those components aren't optimized appropriately, it might be a beautiful website but it's also an extremely slow site.

A homepage screenshot of the popular Hello Elementor WordPress theme.
Hello Elementor is among the most popular WordPress themes.

When you are deciding to select a WordPress theme, write down all of the features you'd like for your site. Then, you can browse themes and take notes to meet your requirements.

Pick reputable brands with excellent reviews, and excellent customer service. Also, we suggest staying clear of themes that haven't been updated often.

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5. Configure Cache to Optimize Your Site

An illustration of various website caches.
Visual representation of various websites caches.

WordPress is powered by PHP and MySQL and MySQL. Both can be overloaded if you don't use caching. Therefore, the performance of your website is the result of a collaboration between your hosting provider and you, employing caching.

A comparison image of Pingdom speed tests of a -hosted website with and without caching.
Hosting Site, whether cache-free or not.

If cache is turned off the site performs exceptionally efficiently since it has been optimized. However, with cache activated it will improve the speed at which it runs by 33%. It is possible to adding load times in the case that you host thousands of customers.

6. Limit the amount of external HTTP requests (and API calls)

The theme, and the plugins for your WordPress theme, as well the plugins could contain external requests to various sources. These are typically used to download documents hosted externally such as scripts, styles, stylistic sheets, fonts, etc.

GTmetrix showing how CSS can be a major render-blocking resource.
CSS is a rendering-blocking tool.

These can be utilized to include features, such as analytics, sharing on social media platforms, sharing for instance.

There are many of them, however excessive use of any of them could slow the speed of your website. The speed of your website increases by reducing the number of HTTP requests. This will increase the speed that your website loads.

7. Your site must be clutter-free by using scripts Stylesheets, scripts, and Stylesheets

In the event that you shrink the dimensions of your website's code, you'll end up with a less JavaScript or CSS documents. In addition, they load faster loaded. However, they are also more efficiently processed by web browsers. They enhance the speed of loading pages.

Using the Cloudflare-powered code minification tool in My.
Utilizing"Code minification" using "Code minification" software in My.

8. Make sure you only use the scripts you require on every Page Load

The process of mixing and reducing the size of scripts can improve performance , however, it's best to stay clear of these scripts and styles from loading at all.

It is highly recommended that you use the cost-free plug-in asset cleanup to accomplish this task. It'll go through all of the content on a web page. It will then choose CSS and JS documents that aren't necessary for the page in question, and reduce the volume of data that's overloaded.

Using the Asset CleanUp WordPress plugin to block certain scripts and styles from loading on a page.
Utilizing the 'Asset CleanUp' plugin. (Source: WordPress.org)

Asset Cleanup works best when it is used with caching because the optimised website page does not need to be refreshed every day from the server.

9. Accelerate Your WordPress's slow speed The Dashboard for Admins

A majority of the enhancements to the backend are based on improving frontend performance. This is due to the fact that speeding up frontend performance generally solves performance problems in the backend.

If you're having difficulties with the performance of the performance of your WordPress administrator, you may utilize the same process reversed. Fixing issues with your backend's performance could assist in improving the speed of performance for your website's customers.

Finding the slowest transactions with  APM.
The most slow transactions to be found using APM.

10. The server's configuration, location and the Place are important.

Where where you host your server as well as the configuration of your server can dramatically impact the speed of your site.

For instance, if your server hosting is located in the United States, your website may be slow to visitors coming to Europe or India when compared with visitors who are from in the United States.

It is possible to reduce this making usage of

  • A server located near your site and receives the largest number of visitors to your site.
A global map of Google Cloud’s worldwide zones.
Google Cloud's worldwide zones. (Source: Google)

If you've got a website that is popular with an international audience, it is feasible to improve the effectiveness of your site by using an online service called the Cloud Delivery Network (CDN). Cloudflare is the principal driving force for the CDN which we'll explore it in the subsequent part.

Are server resources automatically enlarged during unexpected traffic spikes or must you change your strategy every now and then?

Below is a list of questions that a reliable web hosting company will be able to respond to with a lot of enthusiasm. It is vital to constantly examine these companies.

Combining these devices with the most recent software, like Nginx web server 8.1 LXD containers as well as MariaDB Your websites are loaded in the span of a second.

11. Use your access to Content Delivery Network (CDN)

One of the most efficient ways to speed up your site is to use the fastest and safest CDN.

CDNs CDN aids in decreasing the workload of your server by instant delivery of your content published to your site's visitors. They servers (also known as POPs) made to maintain and share various types of content such as images, stylesheets fonts, scripts, fonts and videos.

A screenshot from Cloudflare's website showing a global map of all its POPs.
Cloudflare CDN powers all websites.

We recommend that each site should use at least one kind of CDN to speed up their speed.

 integrates with Cloudflare CDN to power all its websites.
Cloudflare and Cloudflare are faster and more secure websites.

Guidelines:If your website uses one of the top-respected open source JavaScript libraries (e.g. JQuery D3.js, three.js, Web Font Loader) If you do you then have the option to take advantage of Google Hosted Libraries CDN, which speeds up publication of the content.

12. Get rid of any unneeded URL redirects

Most of the issues stemming from unconfigured URL redirects could cause a series of redirects. Sometimes, this chain can be an endless series of redirects. Chains of redirect are usually responsible for the increase in the load time.

A graph of the 404 errors and 30x redirects breakdown as shown in My.
30x redirects and the 404 error break down in My.
’s Error 404 “Page not found” page.
Error404 displays on the "Page is not accessible" page.

It will also eliminate excessive redirects

  • Utilize the appropriate URL suffix (HTTP or HTTPS).
  • Make sure to remove or preserve any "www" subdomains within the domain (don't join them).
  • Include the URL's complete path.
Using the free WordPress 'Redirections' plugin.
Utilizing the no-cost WordPress "Redirection" plugin.
Adding redirect rules from your My dashboard.
Rules for redirection within My.

You can visit the website you would like to manage by selecting the "Redirects" part. Then, you can make a redirect with the huge "Add the redirect rule" button.

Using regex to customize your redirects in My's URL redirections tool.
Regex is a program that can alter the redirects you are sending.

13. Repair WordPress Mixed Content Error (HTTPS/SSL Errors)

The mixed content warning can be seen on sites with HTTP and HTTPS content. Unsecurely loading resources isn't only an issue for security, it could also be an issue with performance.

If you notice an inconsistentity with the content of your website It is possible to make use of an online tool such as How Can I Unlock The Padlock to reveal the pages which are not secure to load.

Using 's 'Search and replace' tool in My.
Utilizing the search and replace function of the tool in My.

14. Make Improvements to Your WordPress Database Regularly

If this is the case, for instance, The WordPress database could still contain the data it had when it first was made. The database includes posts, pages revisions, drafts and deleted comments as also deleted posts. Though they may be useful in making changes or publishing the most recent post however, as time passes, the database could accumulate a lot of useless information and eventually be filled with information.

So it's essential to optimize efficiency of the WordPress database so that you can increase and sustain the performance of your site.

Showing the UI of Advanced Database Cleaner WordPress plugin.
Utilizing the Advanced Database Cleaner' plugin.

15. Pick one of the services that is cloud-based WordPress Security Service

There are many WordPress websites get attacked every day. Security is a major concern in the case of WordPress sites, so it is crucial to remain vigilant always.

Two methods can be used to safeguard your WordPress site with firewalls.

  1. Make use of an external security service to safeguard your site

The best option is easy. An experienced WordPress hosting company is able to handle most of your security needs for you.

If you must go with the other option the two alternatives are:

  1. Opt to install Wordfence The WordPress secure plugin (e.g. Wordfence)
  2. Pick a DNS Firewall (e.g. Cloudflare)

Additionally, we provide Two-factor authentication (2FA) in addition to IP Geolocation blocking. Additionally, we are capable of blocking IPs which have had six unsuccessful login attempts in a period under 30 seconds. Also, we need secure connectivity (SFTP, SSH, HTTPS) along with solid passwords to sign up for the new WordPress installations, as well as an assurance of hack-fix.

16. Update to the most current PHP Version

Graphs for the WordPress 5.9-RC2 PHP Benchmarks.
WordPress 5.9-RC2 PHP Benchmarks.

The article was published in the moment of writing this in the present. PHP 8.1 isn't commonly used in the majority of WordPress themes or plugins, in addition to being an instrument for developing. If you're planning to upgrade an existing configuration of your website , you should upgrade it to PHP 8.1 We recommend testing the upgrade thoroughly on a test environment in order to make sure that the change won't go wrong.

But, if you're still running an older version of PHP, PHP 7.x version it can be upgraded to PHP 8.0 for all of the benefits.

17. Change to a reliable Managed WordPress Host

The majority of times, monitored WordPress hosting provides a broad selection of options for making WordPress websites function smoothly safe, secure, and efficiently. Technical expertise is managed by experts, so you can concentrate on managing your business.

Summary

We would love to hear your feedback by leaving a comment on what you can do to improve the speed of your WordPress site. Be sure to show the attention of our list of suggestions to increase the speed of your website.

Help you reduce time, cost, and maximize the performance of your site by:

  • Assistance and support available all hours of the day, by WordPress experts in WordPress hosting, all day, every day.
  • Cloudflare Enterprise integration.
  • Reaching a global audience with 29 data centers spread across the world.
  • Optimization via our integrated Application to track efficiency.

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