Why is my WordPress so SLOW is most frequently asked question. You need to understand how WordPress works, what is the purpose of its usage and what to do. Perhaps, you have noticed that, since May 2013, we are changing the design – that is yet not complete. I and 3 professionals are taking months after months for re-designing and better performance. But why so much time is invested with traffic loss, money loss? The answer of why is – for long term better result. As this website was our first WordPress website, it was hacked many a times, we ourselves did wrongs, we had to shift WordPress – we need to give it more time than usual. This treatment is not possible unless you understand WordPress. This is a nice guide on what WordPress is ‘manufactured` for, why we should use only certain themes, Why we should only use certain webhosts and numerous tricks – links to tricks. It is never possible to answer the question, Why is my WordPress so SLOW in one sentence.
Why is my WordPress so SLOW : Understanding WordPress
WordPress is basically a blogging platform written in PHP which uses MySQL database. When WordPress was first written, the target was never in mind to make it a highly scalable platform – frankly, there was no resource. MySQL, possibly the most used database with PHP combination has certain issues – itself it is not great. MySQLi is the improved version of MySQL. There are many types of database – we have individual article about them. You can perform a search on our website if you are curious. What we have seen, with PostgreSQL database, WordPress backend becomes quite fast. But management is pathetic as we need to force WordPress to use PostgreSQL database. Clearly – WordPress by default has no real Physically present Post page or Pages – they are dynamically generated. We use some Cache Plugin to make the HTML pages. Whatever we do, we are using some memory of the server in continuous parallel manner – whatever we perform, it is never possible to make WordPress faster after a limit – that is what is its bottleneck. But, even with the bottleneck, pagespeed can be enough good.
Why is my WordPress so SLOW : Plugins and Optimizing Database
PHP itself, usually do not give much stress than MySQL and Plugin API Callbacks can do. With time, automatically the Database becomes a huge. It is not a bad plugin – but default Akismet also adds burden to MySQL database – there is a Plugin named WP Optimize. This is great for day to day usage but has limitations. That is why you have to follow our guide – Reduce WP_commentmeta Table Database Size in WordPress.
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But, what about the treatment for a database that is already loaded with hundreds of previously used Plugins which are deleted now? This is what we said in Repairing WordPress Database. Frankly, you’ll not use the old wp_options Table. It demands experience. This is what is done on bigger websites on regular basis – be it WordPress ot non WordPress.
Never install a bad Theme. Limit the usage of theme within few options – the default themes, Themes by Akismet or Automattic (most are premium), Studiopress Genesis (best in our opinion), Thesis, Woo Themes (not all are good). Your design must be done on the Theme framework as a Child Theme. Those themes sold on ThemeForest or some specific Brand’s themes, might look great but can destroy your database, slowly. What we said in Repairing WordPress Database is the only way to get rid of such pain. Never ever use any SEO Plugin – you frankly need the Meta Tags – those can be added by PHP Functions or WordPress Functions on your child theme. Like Akismet, they also adds more burden to database. Plus some has API based callbacks. Speed depends on how the scripts are served, like using WP Enqueue Script Function, you can control a bit. There not a single theme available, which is universally fully optimized.
Why is my WordPress so SLOW : Web Hosting Part
There are only few real good, industry’s standard Web Hosts – Rackspace and Amazon. Another good is ServerBeach. The web hosts who has no own full infrastructure, will definitely give pain. Do you ever buy a computer which uses a processor manufactured by a less known company – no. Practically three processor manufacturers are well known – Intel, AMD and IBM. We are not going to ARM processor family.
About CDN, there is practically only one company – Akamai. From Microsoft to IBM all uses Akamai. Akamai is the global standard. It is better to use Rackspace Cloud Files – they uses Akamai’s infrastructure and costs in cents per month. We have websites with nearly 70K pageviews per day. Extra cost is below $1.00 per month for all 72 domains!
If you can not bear the cost of Rackspace managed, go for RedHat OpenShift or Heroku Cloud or App Fog. Search our website for tutorials. You will see the increase in crawl rate within few days in all these platforms. These happens due to their own infrastructure. Now, if you need a dedicated server – colored named Hosts costs around $100 – $150 USD per month versus Rackspace Decidated which costs around $800 USD per month! Why is the difference? Difference is due to fully isolated Dedicated Network. Dedicated, honestly never needed for medium, even to a website with 80-90K pageviews per day. Github like website uses Dedicated Servers.
When Rackspace like web hosts throws their servers, they possibly go to some second grade webhosts. None of them will ever officially accept this truth! After running 365 days for 24 hours for 3 years – any computer can not perform like the new hardware.
We said all the real facts. None paid us for ‘recommending’. If you want your WordPress to speed up, we can speed up, give custom design, fully optimized – it will cost you few thousands. Another easy cost saving way is – just reading our articles on this website – all are fully free!
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