This is a common thing that a fancy newly launched wordpress website takes more than the usual time to load. This is perhaps one of the downsides of using a content management system that is open source in nature. And because of the fact that numerous users extend it profusely, it takes a hell lot of time to load when you add extra features to it.
That definitely leaves you wondering what you should look for when it comes to optimizing the wordpress website and how you are supposed to amplify the performance of your site. Discussed below are few of the important reasons that make a wordpress site slower than it should be:
Inadequate Caching:
Have you ever bothered to take a look at the wordpress page template? Depending on how much you have customised the site, it can be extremely complicated. The most common practice, hosting providers use LAMP (usually referred as Linux Apache MySQL PHP) environments to run the shared hosting. This is basically a common stack of software that keeps the provider’s servers running. Apache is the web server that serves the files to viewers when they browse any site. However, it doesn’t communicate with PHP which is a programming language WordPress is built on. The PHP resides in the server.
Since Apache can’t directly reach PHP, it interacts with it through a model that is included in every site hosting package. This module is the middleman between the PHP and Apache. This implies that when a visitor comes to the site, the Apache sends the request to PHP via the PHP module which then generates the HTMLs send those back to the module. Finally, Apache displays the page to the visitor.
Now the question is, how do you implement the page caching? There is an endless list of plugins available for WordPress. W3 Total Cache is generally used for advanced users while the WP Super Cache is for more basic caching needs. The former offers tons of options that might make the fine tuning challenging but rewarding as well. While the latter takes care of most of the functions itself.
WordPress comes with a wonderful tool called Transients that allows developers to store data in the WP database so that it can be retrieved later. If needed, the HTML of an entire site can be stored in a transient even.
Top reasons why your WordPress site is damn slow
Spaghetti Code:
With a lot of developers working on the same project, there is every chance that things go out of control the code base starts growing. Eventually, it leads to a mess with, kind of, shaghetti becoming no less than noodles.
The only way out of this situation is to clean code all the time or refactor the code. Codebase must be optimised in regular intervals and a small portion of budget and time must be dedicated to this. Refactoring also helps developers improve the product and keep preparing new features. Refractory helps to load the sites fast thereby keeping the users happy.
Use of too many plugins:
Just like the way, a plugin can make things easy for a developer, it can also be a pain in the neck, if a developer uses too many of those. It has been seen quite a few times, that is a great number of plugins are being used that is really not needed. Plugins become unnecessary when the same result can be accomplished with less than 10 lines of code and with less overhead.
Use of shared or cheap hosting:
It was definitely the bad news for you if you are running multiple sites with the same plan. Shared hosting is equal to resource sharing. This implies that there are multiple sites fighting for a common resource. Also, a serious hacker onboard a site on one of these shared resources can easily get access to the remaining sites around. Hope that justifies that the expensive looking hosting plans do offer something more for the price paid for them.
Hope the above factors help you understand why wordpress websites become slow in spite of the developers or the coders and the designers and perhaps the entire team giving their best shot? So, from now on, do give a thought to this checklist.