How to Optimize WordPress
WordPress is currently one of the most popular blogging/CMS applications.
Here are some ideas for you to optimize WordPress and reduce the CPU consumption of this PHP script.
1. Back Up Your WordPress Account
Prior to updating to the most recent version of WordPress, create a backup of your account. The most recent versions feature optimised code that can lower your site’s CPU usage.
2. Avoid Starting with Category
Don’t begin your permalink structure with the author, postname, category, or tag fields. Instead, try / percent year / percent / percent / postname / or / percent / post id / / / postname /. Additionally, after the permalink change, WordPress will take care of 301 redirects on its own, so don’t worry about that.
3. Install WP Super Cache/ W3 Total Cache under WordPress Plugins
You can install the plugins from your WordPress Dashboard under Plugins. Follow the links below for information on how to set up these plugins.
- WP Super Cache (recommended)
- W3 Total Cache
4. Take concerns about CPU intensive
Many themes are more CPU intensive. Therefore,
- Make sure your page loads are generating no errors in your Error Log (in cPanel under Logs)
- Also, if you’re using dynamic image resizing, you may want to disable this if possible.
- If all else fails, contact the theme provider for assistance, or change to a different theme.
5. Disable CPU Intensive Plugins
Disable CPU intensive plugins or plugins that you no longer need.
- In most circumstances, all related post plugins (WordPress Related Posts, YARPP) can result in a noticeably high load.
- WPRobot3 and other auto-posters can also result in high load problems; if this is the case, they should be disabled.
- StatPress and other WordPress statistics plugins should also be disabled because they occasionally use up too much CPU. Instead of using statistics, use Google Analytics.
- Disable any other plugins that are not essential to your WordPress installation.
6. Manage Spambots
Non-human visitors/posters (aside from web spiders) should be blocked. Use a captcha such as SI CAPTCHA to prevent comment spam.
7. Lower the rate of web spiders crawling
Lower the rate web spiders crawl your WordPress blogs if you have a large number of blogs hosted under your account. High crawl rates can drive up the load on the server, as many bots try to index your sites.
