- \n
- Step 1: Run some baseline page loading time tests<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Step 2: Put your website through a stress test<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Step 3: Check if your images need optimization<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Step 4: Test your website\u2019s theme and plugins<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t \t\n\t\t \t\tIs your #WordPress site slower than a turtle? \ud83d\udc22 Here's how to diagnose and fix the problem \ud83d\udc07<\/a>\n\t\t \t<\/div>\n\t\t \t\n\t\t \tClick To Tweet \n\t\t \t\t<\/span>\n\t\t \t<\/a>\n\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe big factors that can make WordPress slow<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Beyond your web host, there are plenty of aspects that can impact your website’s loading times \u2013 both for you and your users:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Displaying unoptimized images<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Using a slow WordPress theme<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Using unoptimized plugins<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Not implementing general performance best practices, like compression and caching<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Having too many scripts running in the background<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Using an old version of PHP<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
As such, without proper optimization on your end, your website won’t be as fast as it can be. However, even if you meticulously optimize every aspect of your website, your hosting provider can still act as a bottleneck to slow things down. Next, we’ll discuss how to find out if this is the case for your<\/em> site.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nHow to figure out if you need to speed up your WordPress website (in 4 steps)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Given there are so many factors that can impact your website’s performance, you need to rule them out to determine if your hosting provider is at fault. Let’s go through the process step by step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Step 1: Run some baseline page loading time tests \ud83d\udd04<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Before you carry out any other task, you first need to determine how fast your website loads. As a rule of thumb, you want your site to load in under two seconds<\/a> \u2013 anything below one-second makes for a great user experience. If you’re within the one- and two-second window, you’re in good shape, although there’s room for improvement here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a lot of solutions for testing your site’s loading times \u2013 Pingdom Tools<\/a> is a front-runner. Your home page is going to have a decent amount of content compared to other site pages, so it’s a good option for testing. To use Pingdom, simply enter a URL into the relevant field, then choose a test server that’s the nearest match to your hosting provider’s data centers:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Using](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/pingdom-tools.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOnce you click Start Test<\/em> and let Pingdom run, you’ll get a set of results that look like the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\t![\"Pingdom](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/wordpress-slow-1.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nIf you scroll down further, you’ll see that Pingdom scores your website on different aspects, such as using gzip compression, not having too many URL redirects, and more:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Pingdom](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/wordpress-slow-2.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThe better your ‘grades’ are, the faster your website should load. Each of those suggestions can significantly improve loading times. The lower the score, the optimization your website needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before you jump to any conclusions concerning your web host, take a look at our WordPress performance optimization guide<\/a>. We’ve also collected some quick-fire tips to speed up WordPress:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- 5 quick wins to speed up WordPress<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- 5 MORE quick wins to speed up WordPress<\/a> <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
If you’ve already spent time optimizing your website and you’re <\/span>still <\/em>getting bad loading times, it may point to a problem with your host. To be certain, we need to put your website under a bit of stress.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nStep 2: Put your website through a stress test \ud83d\udcc9<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Several speed tests in succession give you a pretty good idea of how fast your website is. However, the real trial of fire is looking at how your web host fares when it’s under the stress of heavy traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this step, we’re going to use the Load Impact<\/a> tool, which enables you to simulate up to 25 simultaneous visits to your website over five minutes on an ascending scale. You don’t need to sign up for an account to run a free test:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/load-testing.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOnce the test is over, you’ll see a graph that shows loading times for each user throughout the entire five minutes. Ideally, you don’t want to see any significant spikes in loading times (the blue line):<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Running](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/response-time.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOur results here look pretty good, which means our web host can handle the load we need it to. However, significant spikes in loading times can mean one of three things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Poor website optimization on your end (which you already took care of!)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Your web host can’t handle the amount of simultaneous traffic you’re throwing at it<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Your hosting plan is acting as a bottleneck<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
In our experience, good hosting providers can handle a decent level of concurrent traffic even with basic shared plans. If yours doesn’t, then you can give it a hand by integrating your website with a content delivery network (CDN).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Using a CDN<\/a>, you can decrease the load on your servers and let their datacenters shoulder it. This means even if your web host isn’t great under pressure, you can prevent performance decreases during spikes in traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nStep 3: Check if your images need optimization \ud83d\uddbc\ufe0f<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
High-quality photos can have massive file sizes. Add a few of those to any page, and it’s perfect for slowing your loading times. There are a couple of ways you can find out if this is a problem for you. However, the fastest approach is to use a free performance testing tool<\/a> such as GTmetrix<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Gtmetrix.\"](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/gtmetrix.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nThis service works very similarly to Pingdom Tools. You enter a URL, run a quick test, and it will give you a report containing a full breakdown of your loading times and suggestions on how to improve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
GTMetrix also notes if your website is using optimized images. It will even list all of the unoptimized images and the potential file savings if you expand the tab:<\/p>\n\n\n
\n![\"Unoptimized](\"https:\/\/mllj2j8xvfl0.i.optimole.com\/cb:c5QE.37290\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/wordpress-slow-3.png\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nOn average<\/a>, about 50% of a website’s file size comes from images, so you want to compress your images<\/a> either before or after uploading them to WordPress. We recommend the latter approach since there are a lot of image optimization plugins<\/a> that automate the work for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- 5 MORE quick wins to speed up WordPress<\/a> <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
- 5 quick wins to speed up WordPress<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Step 2: Put your website through a stress test<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n