Hey everyone! I recently started volunteering for an animal protection NGO, and I noticed that their WordPress site is incredibly slow, both on the front end and in the admin area. I'm not the most experienced in troubleshooting slow WordPress sites, but I'm eager to learn. Here's what I've thought to check:
- Audit the installed plugins to see if any are known to slow things down.
- Verify if caching (they're using WP Rocket) is set up properly.
- Examine the database performance; I'd appreciate any tips on tools or methods to identify slow queries.
- Assess the traffic—could bots or unexpected high traffic be overloading the server?
What steps do you recommend for diagnosing and fixing performance issues on a WordPress site? Any personal experiences would be super helpful!
2 Answers
WordPress isn’t known for being fast on its own, and plugins can really slow things down. One of the first things you want to do is figure out if the site needs to serve dynamic content for each user. If it can be static, generating a static site from WordPress can improve both performance and security. Also, check the host’s metrics for memory and load issues—sometimes just tuning can help, but occasionally, upgrading the server is the most straightforward solution.
First off, you should try loading a static file, like an image, to see if it loads quickly. If it does, the hosting might be the issue. If it's slow, then you know it’s a problem with the server itself. It’s also worth considering whether they're on a budget hosting plan. If they're using a complex theme or WooCommerce, upgrading to a host that specializes in WordPress could make a huge difference!
Thanks for your input! I agree that a static site might be the best option since it seems there’s no dynamic content being served to visitors.