Is your WordPress admin slow? Do you know the reason behind it?
You may have these questions in your mind and searching for the answer. No need to suffer anymore, we will introduce you with the real causes for your WordPress admin slow as well as the solutions to get rid of it.
Even the frontend of your site might loads lightning fast, but the backend admin panel in WordPress still run extremely slow. Backend speed issues are very common and regularly asked questions about WordPress. Below we will quickly run through some of the key reasons why you might have a slow WordPress admin dashboard.
Read: Best Cloudflare Settings for WordPress For GTmatrix 100 Score – Free CDN Settings (2021 New Guide)
Then we will also provide some simple troubleshooting tips to help you fix the problem. By following these tips, you will get your WordPress admin loading quickly again. We will try to show you how to speed up both your website and WordPress admin panel.
Why is your WordPress admin slow?
Many reasons can cause a slow WordPress admin panel. That’s why we can’t tell you what’s exactly causing a lazy WordPress admin for your specific website. But we can share some of the most common issues, such as-
- Resource-heavy plugins.
- The low memory limit of WordPress.
- Overloaded or under-powered hosting.
- Older PHP version.
- Too much content loading.
- Unnecessary dashboard widgets.
- WordPress Heartbeat API.
- Cluttered database.
There are some other reasons to slow loading the backend admin panel, like low-quality hosting. Your webpages may take several seconds to load if you have slow and poor quality hosting or the server is under the heavy load.
Because every time you load a page in the backend, the server or hosting needs to execute the PHP commands and work with the database to generate the page for you. Keep in mind that the backend is always not cached. If you are on a host that is likely going to be limited, then the backend will run slow.
How to fix a WordPress admin slow?
Though you are using a good quality hosting, your backend may be slow for some other reasons. Here are few best solutions on how to fix these things. So don’t waste time and let’s go through the fixes.
1. Clean out the massive database
Every page load or operation of the backend depends on your site’s database because the backend of the website doesn’t use caching. If you have a large amount of expired transients or the database size has gotten out of control, then these database lookups can take a long time to load.
You can use the plugin “WP-Optimize,” which is an easy way to reduce the size of your database and delete expired transients. You also can perform an “optimize” of your database with this plugin. It will effectively reorganize the structure of the database to make it smaller and improving the speed of queries.
Your WP database also can pick up lots of bloat in the form of post revisions. It’s a common scenario with WooCommerce websites. Because here you will have lots of expired transients in your database. You may use the Database tab in the “WP Rocket” plugin to safely delete much of this bloat.
In this plugin, you also can set up an automatic schedule to clean your database at every single days or week. WP Rocket lets you delete the trash folder, spam folder and the probably thousands of post revisions which are stored in your database. You can follow the database settings that we provide above in the screenshots.
Note: You should create a backup before doing these settings because Database cleanup can be a risky operation.
2. Upgrade to the latest PHP version
Broken JavaScript or PHP can be a massive reason for WordPress admin slow. Sometimes the old plugins can use the out of date PHP code or making calls to URLs that are no longer exist. It also can be a case of simply updating the plugin. Quite often, it could be an awkward situation where your hosting is running on PHP 7.0 or higher.
But the plugin or the theme doesn’t fully support it. As a result, it is submitting errors in the backend of the site. Your first step should be generally updated to the latest version if you found with these issues in your plugin. If it is still problematic, then discuss with the developer.
As you can see here, PHP 7.3 can handle more than a triple number of requests per second that PHP 5.6 version can handle. You should know that WordPress is developed with PHP. But the exact version of PHP that your website is using depends on which version of PHP is installed on your server.
As expectations, newer versions of PHP offers significant performance and improvements than the older variants. That’s why the WordPress team is always trying to push their users to update to the most recent PHP versions. Sometimes your host might not support PHP 7+ versions, which should be a big reason to consider switching hosts.
If your theme or plugins are not compatible with the hosting company, they will not automatically upgrade you to the latest version of PHP. So you have to do it yourself or request some help from your host. You can easily make your site 2 to 3x faster by upgrading the PHP versions. Look for the “PHP Version Manager” feature in your hosting account to update on PHP 7+ version.
Note: you should check your website for errors after upgrading the PHP version. If you found any error, then you may revert to an earlier PHP version.
3. Upgrade your hosting
Low-quality hosting can be one of the most common issues to slow down your WordPress admin panel. If your hosting cannot keep up with other tasks, then it’s going to lead to a slow WordPress admin dashboard.
Sometimes you might have a quality host, but you should upgrade your hosting plan for a better result. You will often see that upgrading hosts can fix all the issues without correcting others.
4. Find slow and high CPU plugins to avoid them
Your dashboard may be loaded fast when you first installed WordPress, and it was empty. But it should start to slow down after you installed more plugins. It does not always happen that more plugins mean a slower WordPress admin. Only more resource of heavy plugins can cause to reduce the admin panel.
Slow and high CPU plugins are mostly related to post, chat, statistic, calendar, sitemap, and page builders. We can tell you a name that will help you to find the resource of heavy plugins. You can use an excellent free tool called “Query Monitor” to find your slowest loading plugins. Another tool, “GTmetrix Waterfall” also can do the job for you.
After installing, you have to activate the “Query Monitor” feature. Then click on the new option in your WordPress toolbar to open the interface. Now you can look for any slow plugins in the “Queries by Component” tab. When you find a lazy plugin, consider to disabling and deleting it if possible. Otherwise, try to find a better-performing alternative if you must need that functionality.
5. Block the bad bots
You can block more than thousands of spammy bot requests within a few minutes of configuring the blocking and rate limiting feature of “Wordfence” plugin. This plugin comes with an easy interface. At first, you have to install it and then go to the “Live Traffic” tab under the tools settings to view your live traffic report.
It shows you all the bots that hitting your site in real time. You may find some bot that is well-known for sucking up bandwidth. Then go to the “Blocking settings” and add the spam bots which you want to block.
You may save thousands of requests or bandwidth just by blocking only two or three spammy hostnames. Now click on the “Blocking” log and enjoy watching those spam bots that get stuck.
You should also configure the Rating Limiting feature of “Wordfence” tool. It can limit or block the crawlers as well as humans from making excessive requests. It also can block the fake Google crawlers and improves security on 404 pages.
We recommend the above settings by “Wordfence” on their Rate Limiting page. You also can use the “Block Bad Queries” plugin to protect your site against the known bad bots. This plugin can be an easy way to reduce your CPU from spammy bots.
6. Delete the unused themes and plugins
Do you know that unused themes can store preconfigured settings in your WordPress database? So you should disable or delete these unnecessary garbages. Easily you can do it. Just go to your plugins menu and then delete or deactivate all the plugins that you are not currently using.
You also can similarly remove the unused themes. In this case, go to the “Appearance” tab and delete all the themes that you are not using.
7. Use Heartbeat control
When you are signed into your WordPress admin dashboard, the WordPress Heartbeat feature will help you to provide the real-time communication between your web browser and your server. There are things like auto-saves in the WordPress editor.
Instantly, it can also slow down your WP admin as it is sending an AJAX request at every 15 seconds while you are working in the WordPress editor. You can drastically reduce the frequency of these requests if you are using the “WP Rocket” plugin.
You need to disable them altogether from the “Heartbeat” tab in the WP Rocket dashboard. You also can use a different plugin known as “Standalone Heartbeat Control” plugin to control the Heartbeat API. You have to install and activate the plugin before using.
Then go to the “Heartbeat Control Settings” menu to disable or reduce the Heartbeat API for different areas of your dashboard. You should start by decreasing the frequency limit. You may consider to disabling it altogether if that doesn’t work correctly.
8. Improve the WordPress memory limit
Your WordPress admin dashboard can hit a bottleneck because of your website’s PHP memory limit. You can fix this issue by only increasing your site’s memory limit. Typically, your host allows you to increase the PHP memory limit by yourself.
You also can do this by adding the following line to the top of your wp-config.php file.
Code: define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);
Sometimes your hosting provider may not permit you to increase the PHP limit manually. In this case, you have to reach out to your host’s support, ask them if they can do it for you.
9. Disable unused dashboard widgets
Your WordPress dashboard usually comes with a lot of built-in sidebar and dashboard widgets that you probably never use or even look at those. You will find several unnecessary widgets on the main dashboard page, such as news and events widgets.
Though you are not using them, these widgets are still making external calls to load the information. So it slows down your dashboard eventually. You may use the free “Widget Disable” plugin to disable unnecessary widgets from your dashboard panel.
After completing the installation and activation of this plugin, you have to go to the “Appearance” menu. Then choose the “Disable Widgets” submenu. Select all the unnecessary widgets to get rid of all the widgets that you don’t want to use. If other plugins have some added widgets just like “Woo-Commerce,” you also can disable those widgets.
10. Disable the unnecessary plugin settings
This process will increase the loading time of your WordPress admin. You have to check each of your plugins and decide which parameters should you turn off. As a result, it will lower the CPU. You can do this in your “Yoast” plugin. Click on the “Settings” option and then go to the “Features” tab. Enable or disable the following settings.
You will acquire the best result if you disable those plugin settings which provide statistics, run ongoing scans, and also send admin or email notifications.
Final Words
You need to fix the WordPress admin slow issue if you want to speed up the front-end of your website. Repairing a slow WordPress admin dashboard always requires a unique approach. Most of our tips will give you the best result, which is 100% focused on your WordPress dashboard.
