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The vast majority of websites are built using the WordPress content management system. This user-friendly, essentially free, easy-to-use and secure solution is now available from all web hosting providers and can be installed quickly after purchase.
It is important to realise, however, that creating a WordPress website requires a great deal of practice and knowledge, as it is very easy to get it wrong right from the start. This can result in fundamental security vulnerabilities remaining on the site, or lead to the dreaded WordPress slowdown.
As well as being a particularly unpleasant and frustrating issue, it is also problematic from an SEO perspective, as slower websites receive less organic traffic, meaning Google tends to rank them lower in search results.
What could be causing your WordPress site to slow down? In our latest article, we’ve compiled a list of the most common causes, as the issue may not only be down to a programming problem, but could also be caused by unsuitable web hosting.
A poor-quality template often causes WordPress to slow down
It is no exaggeration to say that one of the most common causes of WordPress slowdowns is an unsuitable theme. Many people try to create visually appealing and feature-rich solutions by customising free themes, but this can cause more problems than it solves.
Most free templates remain fast and efficient as long as we do not make any drastic changes to them. Otherwise, it is better to spend money on a paid premium template, as we can be sure that the developers have spent enough time on it.
When it comes to free-to-download templates, many people focus solely on the visual appeal, whilst paying little attention to efficiency and speed. As a result, it is very common for WordPress to run slowly when using such templates.
So, if you’re using a free template and experiencing these kinds of issues, it’s worth trying a paid version created by reliable, reputable developers, as this will help you avoid slowdowns.
Your website may also slow down due to having too many plugins
If your WordPress site has started to slow down whilst in use – that is, if the site was running at a satisfactory speed with the default theme – then having too many plugins may be the cause of the problem; however, in our experience, it is common for even a single faulty plugin to cause this sort of issue.
However, it is more common for the number of plugins to be the factor causing the slowdown, so if you notice WordPress slowing down during development, it is worth checking your plugins.
The most effective method is to disable the plugins one by one and check the page load speed after each one. If you notice a change with any of them, you’ve found the root cause of the problem.
If the situation does not improve even after updating the plugin, it is worth looking for an alternative and removing it from the site, as in the long run it may cause more harm than good.
Unoptimised images
It may come as a surprise, but very often the cause of WordPress slowing down is unoptimised, oversized images. This is because these have to be loaded along with the template when the page loads, and if images of 10–15 megabytes have been added to the page – especially if they are in PNG format – this can cause problems.
This is particularly true when there are dozens of such images right on the homepage. Optimising images is therefore a very important step if we want to prevent our website from slowing down.
It’s worth sticking with the JPG format, for example, whilst also ensuring that your images are resized and compressed. For this, it’s worth having some decent graphics software – it only takes a few clicks – and there are free alternatives available, so you don’t need to think on the scale of Photoshop straight away.
The website is receiving too much traffic
Of course, the slowdown in WordPress could also be due to a drastic increase in traffic to the site. In such cases, the root cause may lie with the programming side of things, but it is also worth looking into whether the hosting provider is up to scratch.
If there are too many page loads at any one time, this can essentially slow down WordPress, as the database becomes overloaded, leading to this consequence. If the overload is temporary, we can optimise the system with a good caching plugin.
However, there may be cases where a site’s traffic remains consistently high. In such cases, good results can be achieved either by optimising the database tables or by upgrading our web hosting, for example by switching from shared hosting to a dedicated server.
A common cause of WordPress slowdowns: unsuitable web hosting
In our experience, in the majority of cases, inadequate web hosting is the underlying cause of WordPress slowdowns. Although users do check the above points thoroughly when encountering this problem, most eventually conclude that they need a new hosting provider, as this is the root cause of the slow loading times.
The easiest way to check this is to temporarily install an alternative template on your site, without any plugins, images or other elements. If the slowdown is still noticeable in this case, or has only improved slightly, then unsuitable web hosting is the cause of the WordPress slowdown.
Contrary to popular belief, there’s no need to immediately consider a dedicated server or other, more expensive solutions; if the web hosting service has the right infrastructure, even shared hosting can perfectly meet our needs.
Obviously, this depends largely on the site’s functionality and traffic levels, as there’s no point in hosting a large online shop on shared hosting – even if it were possible – as the slowdown in WordPress would still not be resolved.
That is why, in such cases, it is very important to migrate our website to a new web hosting provider that guarantees high-clock-speed CPUs and infrastructure based on SSD drives.