My website is slow or uses too much CPU: here's how to make it faster

Is your website slow, or do you see 503 errors because your site is using too much CPU or processes? The cause is almost always the website itself: no caching, too many plugins, large images or a full database. With the tips below you'll make your site faster and the usage will drop automatically.

First: where's the problem?

• Only for you, or for everyone? Try your site on your phone via 4G or 5G, or in a private window. If it's fast there, the issue lies with your own computer, network or VPN.
• Are you running into the limits of your package? Check Resource Usage in DirectAdmin. If you see faults there, your site was throttled. See DirectAdmin Resource Usage and slow websites.
• Which page, plugin or query is taking the time? You can see this with X-Ray. Learn how it works in Resource limit reached / 503 / PHP X-Ray.

Tips to make your website faster

1. Turn on caching. Our servers run on LiteSpeed. For WordPress, the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin often makes your site much faster right away, because pages then don't need to be rebuilt on every visit. Also read our blog LiteSpeed Cache vs. WP Rocket.
2. Use Redis for heavy sites. For webshops and sites with many logged-in users, Redis helps as an object cache. Redis is included in Power Webhost Three, Power Webhost Four and Power Reseller. See Redis.
3. Shrink your images. Don't put photos of several MB straight from your camera onto your site. Resize them before uploading to the size at which you display them, or use a plugin that does this.
4. Limit your plugins. Every plugin costs time. As a test, turn them all off and check if the site is then fast. If so, turn them back on one by one until you find the culprit. Remove what you don't use.
5. Clean up your database. Old revisions, spam comments, statistics and log tables make your site slower over time. This is why a site that always worked fine can suddenly become slow. Clean up and optimise, see Checking, repairing and optimising a database.
6. Use a newer PHP version. Newer versions are considerably faster. See Choosing the PHP version.
7. Check your cron jobs. A task that starts every minute and takes longer than a minute will pile up. Run heavy tasks less often and at quiet times. See Cron Jobs.
8. Keep bots and spam out. Login attempts on wp-login.php, spam via comment forms without a captcha, and crawlers that copy your entire site keep your package busy. In the access log you can see which addresses are making many requests, see Site overview and logs.
9. Don't let scripts keep waiting. If your site fetches data from another server, such as an RSS feed or a connection, always give that call a short timeout. Otherwise processes will stay open if that other server is slow.

All steps with explanations can be found in My website is slow in the DirectAdmin manual.

What does the number of processes mean?

The number of processes is not the number of visitors. A web server process delivers a page and finishes within a fraction of a second. If processes stay open, for example because a script is waiting on another server, your package's limit fills up. Visitors then see the message 503 or Resource Limit Is Reached. In that case, read 503 or 'Resource Limit Is Reached': what now?.

Is your package too small?

Have you cleaned up the site and turned on caching, and does Resource Usage still show faults during busy times? Then your site needs more computing power. In My WebOké, go to My Products › Manage and choose Change hosting package. An upgrade takes effect immediately. Heavy sites such as webshops already need more computing power than a small site under normal use.

Can WebOké fix it?

We'll let you know if your site is asking too much, and we're happy to give you tips. Adjusting and optimising your website, plugins or database is something you do yourself or have done by your web developer. This also applies to software you've installed via Installatron: that's not ours. See also Costs of specific work.