Why is my WordPress website running slowly?
This article will explain the most common reasons why your WordPress website may be running slowly.
Here are some of the most common features that can increase the loading times or latency for your site.
Plugins
Adding plugins to your WordPress site can increase its latency, so try deactivating any unnecessary plugins to see if it improves the load time. For more details on how to do this, please read our Support article: How do I deactivate a WordPress plugin?
Theme
The coding of a WordPress theme can also contribute to site latency, particularly when using a third-party theme. For more information on changing the theme, see our Support article: How do I install a theme in WordPress?
.htaccess
The .htaccess file does not normally impact the speed of a website but it may happen if something has been misconfigured. Try disabling it by renaming it to something like 1.htaccess, .htaccess.bak, .htaccess_disabled.
If this resolves the issue, you’ll need to edit your .htaccess file to correct the error. Otherwise, if you leave the original .htaccess file disabled, then you will need to reset the Permalinks on your WordPress site.
For information on this, please see view our Support article: How do I reset my WordPress permalinks?
Website content
If the content on your webpages is poorly optimised, then more data will be sent than what is required which will affect the performance of your website.
Having large images on your website can be affect this, so make sure that all images throughout your site are under 1MB in size. For details on how to do this, please read our Support article: How do I change the size of my images?
You may also wish to optimise your tables in MySQL, as this can remove gaps in data. For more information on this, check out our Support article: How do I optimise my MySQL tables?