WordPress is the most popular CMS on the web and very easy to use with a great eco system of pluggins. How to reduce your WordPress CPU load without upgrading your web hosting server? Website performance will also influence your rankings in search engines. In addition to being ranked higher, many website owners report seeing an increase in search engine spider crawling after speeding up their design. CPU related errors are quite common for those using wordpress on a shared host. Most webmasters complain that their web host account has been suspended due to excessive CPU usage. This can happen even if your site isn’t receiveing unusually high traffic, which most people find very confusing. Here are some method I used to reduce my WordPress CPU load and bandwidth without upgrading to a much more expensive server.
CPU usage usually depends on the amount of request that your server receives. Besides, it may also depend on the number of people accessing your site/blog at the same time. Whatever the reason may be; your objective is to reduce CPU usage.
Following are the top tips to keep your CPU usage minimal:
#1.Monitor Your Plugins
When it comes to WordPress, plugins consume maximum resource. Moreover, with time, several plugins come unresponsive. Certain plugins are known for causing websites to be slow. There are many reasons for this including bad coding, calls to external servers and persistent calls and updating of your WordPress database. Pay close attention to how much CPU plugins use too. Many plugins can bottleneck your CPU due to persistent processes. If this happens, your whole server could go down.
Using too many plugins overloads the server. Avoid using poorly coded plugins and deactivate the unnecessary ones.There are many plugins available but the best ones would be :
#2. Update to the Latest version plug-ins
Updating plugins is not a cakewalk. The update process may bring along a number of bugs, particularly if you have up have upgraded to the advanced wordpress version but have forgot to keep pace with new developments. However, ensure to check the plug-in discussion groups as well as forums to ensure that it’s fine to update. Updates often pop-up on your screen however, read the pop-up message carefully before clicking the update version.
#3. Routine Database Tables Optimization
To keep things running smoothly, you need to log onto PhpMyAdmin on a routine bases and optimize the database tables. Unoptimized data tables can overload the server. More over, the CPU usage is also more for reading unoptimized data tables. Besides data table optimization, you can also delete spam/unapproved data.
#4. Use a Fast WordPress Theme
A design that has been coded badly, or uses images throughout the design, will add unnecessary weight to your page. It is not uncommon for some WordPress themes to be a few megabytes in size. This is because in most of the cases bloggers tend to use Magazine Styled themes which have a lot of effects and images displayed increasing the server load.
The more stylish themes you choose, the more loaded the CPU is. Simpler or optimized themes work better and don’t consume much resource. Some themes may come with plugins; in that case you should update the plugins as well. Prefer using a light them that has fewer queries.There are many plugins available but the best ones would be :
Unfortunately, most theme developers optimize their theme demo website using caching and content delivery networks.
#5. WordPress Upgradating and Caching
Are you still laid behind with the older WordPress version? Well, if that is so then it is high time you upgrade to an advanced and latest version. Most of us ignore the idea of upgrading wordpress just because it works perfectly. An upgradation helps because the newer versions are better in terms of security and optimization.
You may also install wordpress caching program. Caching archives each web page on your site. This lowers server load as it doesn’t require sending multiple queries to the database for generating multiple pages.There are many plugins available but the best ones would be :
Both of the above suggested WordPress plugins work great and are having almost similar functions which also support very huge traffic spike and give a static page to the readers when the server load is very high. You need to ensure that the Page Cache is Enabled, Page Cache Method = Disk (Enhanced)
and Database Cache is also Enabled. Once this is done you can find that the blog posts loading speed is also decreased and the CPU Consumption is also reduced.
#6. Reduce widgets
There may be certain widgets that aren’t essential. Check them thoroughly and remove the ones that may not be beneficial for the readers. The more widgets you use the more strain you are enforcing on the server. Hence, to lower server load and CPU usage, get rid of unwanted widgets.
#7. Using CloudFlare CDN
CloudFlare is a free blog optimization service which can also be considered as a basic CDN service. Don’t expect too much from their CDN as it accelerates your blog without any bucks. However, you can significantly improve your page loading speed and CPU load.
It works as an intermediate between the blog and the server. Whenever user requests a page, CloudFlare provides the page without letting the blog from accessing the server contact. It automatically catches your pages from the server side and stores in its own large data servers.Check more detailsover
CloudFlare
#8. Lower load on index.php file
At peak hours, your homepage may create a load on your server during the peak hours. To lower this load, ensure keeping your homepage simple. Try to lower the number of posts on your homepage and remove unwanted files, links and high resolution images. It would be even better if you choose a CDN service like CloudFlare
#9 Disable WP-Cron
Disable WP-Cron or change to a scheduled task to run every hour. This will greatly reduce your CPU usage. WP-Cron manages all your scheduled events so it is continuaally active on many sites when it isn’t necesssary.
#10 Avoid plugins that use excessive CPU load.
These are often backup and security pluggins. These functions are best being offered by a quality host provider that has integrated solutions.
Overview
Optimizing your website is no longer an option. With search engines placing so much importance on the speed of web pages, it is vital to your website’s success to have fast loading web pages.
A lot of people wrongly assume that you need to be an expert to optimize a WordPress website. Nothing could be further from the truth. 99% of optimizing your website correctly is following good practices and taking advantage of caching and content delivery networks.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial on optimization. Like to know how your way to optimizing in comments.
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