Is your WordPress admin slow? A slow WordPress dashboard might mean something very wrong. Learn the reasons behind a slow WordPress admin and how to fix them.
A slow website may feel like a nightmare, especially, if you are an admin of that site. Nobody likes a slow website. If you manage a WordPress website, you need to work from both the front-end and the back-end.
Maybe you use a caching plugin like WP Rocket to make the site faster for visitors. But what about the back-end? You must avoid caching your WordPress dashboard and wp-admin pages to avoid glitches.
With that being said, if you find your WordPress admin panel slow, you need a different approach than caching the front-end. First, you have to find out why is WordPress admin so slow. If you can identify the reason, you can get a solution thereafter.
But how to do all of these? Don’t worry, in this post, we’re helping you with this.
What makes a WordPress admin slow?
There might be several reasons behind a slow WordPress backend. Let’s have a look at the most common ones:
- A slow hosting server
- Resource hungry or resource-heavy plugins
- Low memory limit for WordPress
- Old PHP version
- Unoptimized database
- WordPress Heartbeat API
- Too many dashboard widgets
We’ll address these above-mentioned reasons. Also, we’ll see some additional measures that you can take to speed up your slow WordPress admin panel. Mission reduce loading time for wp admin!
How to fix a slow WordPress admin panel?
Is your WordPress backend very slow? We’ll discuss several ways to speed up your slow WordPress admin dashboard. We believe you’ll find your solution in them. You might have to try out several ones and you’ll discover the best way eventually.
WordPress admin slow? Get a better hosting
Many often, an underpowered or overloaded hosting server is the main reason behind a slow loading WordPress dashboard. If you find your WordPress admin super slow, it’s possible that you’ve outgrown your current hosting plan.
Probably you started with a basic package. Now you have more visitors, more content, and more functionalities on your site. They demand more server resources. Since the backend panel is generated dynamically, they need more computing power than the (cached) frontend.
So if you think that you’ve made great progress with gaining more visitors and have added more functionalities to the site, it might be time to get a better quality host.
If you get a managed WordPress hosting like WP Engine or Cloudways, they will take care of your site optimization. This is why they are called “managed WordPress hosting”. If you want to go with a less expensive hosting service, HostGator could be a good choice.
Replace the resource-hungry plugins
Do you use a lot of plugins? That could be a reason why your WordPress site has a very slow admin panel. To determine whether it’s the plugins that are making your WordPress backend slow, you can run some diagnostics.
You can use the Query Monitor plugin to quickly generate a report on the resource usage of all plugins you’re using. Install and activate the plugin. Then access it from your dashboard or the top admin bar. Based on its report, you can get rid of a slow plugin and find a better alternative. If it solves your slow wp admin issue, then congrats!
Or, you can also try a manual method. Simply disable all the plugins. Then look if it fixes the WordPress backend slow issue. Then activate the plugins one by one. Every time, in another tab, browse the WordPress dashboard.
If it gets significantly slower after activating a specific plugin, mark that and try to find a better alternative. This can be a good way to fix the WordPress dashboard slow issue.
Increase the PHP memory limit for WordPress
Hitting the PHP memory limit can make your WordPress backend slow to load. An amount of 256M (MB) is a good PHP memory limit for WordPress. You can find out your current PHP memory limit from WordPress Dashboard → Tools → Site Health→ Info→ Server→ PHP memory limit. Is it lower?
If your hosting company allows, you can increase the PHP memory limit for WordPress. You’ll need to edit the wp-config.php file and add the following code:
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);If you don’t have access to your WordPress root directory, you should contact your hosting support to get a better PHP memory limit.
Upgrade the PHP version
WordPress is written using the PHP programming language. To run WordPress, your server needs to have PHP installed. PHP has several versions. The latest supported version will give the best performance for your WordPress site.
It’s been found that PHP 7.3 can handle 3x requests per second than PHP 5.6. So if your server has a lower PHP version, you should upgrade to the latest recommended version.
Visit the official WordPress download page to learn the latest recommended PHP version. To find out your current PHP version, go to WordPress Dashboard→ Tools→ Site Health→ Info→ Server→ PHP version.
If you use a web hosting panel like cPanel or CyberPanel, you can upgrade the PHP version easily from the panel backend. Otherwise, the process can be a bit complicated.
If you don’t have enough time or experience to do this yourself, you can use a WordPress maintenance service like WP Buffs. They will take care of your site’s performance and technical stuff to make it function properly. Or, you can hire a freelancer from Fiverr to get your task done without going for a long-term contract.
WordPress admin slow? Optimize the database
First, a cluttered database may not make your WordPress backend super slow. But if you don’t ever optimize your database, that will make your WordPress admin slow to some extent. So, you should give database optimization a try.
Optimizing your WordPress database means basically removing unnecessary content. These include post revisions, trashed items, spam comments, transients (especially for eCommerce sites), etc.
You can optimize your site database using a plugin like WP Optimize. Some caching plugins like WP Rocket also offer this feature.
Control WordPress Heartbeat
WordPress uses its Heartbeat API to let the web browsers contact the site server when an admin page is open. That means, when you visit any backend page of your WordPress site, the Heartbeat API constantly keeps contact between that page and the server. Usually, it happens in a regular time interval.
For example, when you’re editing a post on the backend WordPress editor (the classic editor), the Heartbeat API is automatically saving the changes every 15 seconds. It is also used to keep you signed in. Plus, when you’re editing a particular post, if another user tries to edit that post, WordPress shows a warning that it’s already being edited.
The WordPress Heartbeat API is helpful. But at the same time, it uses server resources because every time it contacts the server, the CPU gets to do some work. If your site does have many backend users, you can limit the Heartbeat “rate” or even disable it for many pages to save your server computing resources. You can use the Heartbeat Control plugin to do this.
Disable some dashboard widgets
Let’s face it. Many of the automatically added dashboard widgets are not that much useful. But every time you visit the dashboard, they fetch live data from many parts of your site and beyond. It can cause your wp admin slow to load.
You can use the free Widget Disable plugin to reduce the number of dashboard widgets.
If you don’t have enough time or experience to do this yourself, you can use a WordPress maintenance service like WP Buffs. They will take care of your site’s performance and technical stuff to make it function properly. Or, you can hire a freelancer from Fiverr to get your task done without going for a long-term contract.
Summary
If your WordPress site’s front-end is fast enough but the back-end is slow, you need to look for the reason behind this. If the entire site is slow, you should take separate approaches.
The front end can be made faster using a caching plugin. The back-end speed can be increased by applying the above tips. Don’t forget to share your experience with us via comments. Happy optimizing!
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