Why is my WordPress site slow? 10 things to check

Work through this list from the top. You might find the problem in the first few minutes.

First, get a baseline

Before you change anything, measure how fast your site is now, so you can tell whether your fixes worked. Free tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix give you a score and a list of suggestions.

Run your homepage and one or two other key pages (a popular service page or a product page, for example) through them, and write down the results. Test a few times, as scores can bounce around a little between runs.

1. Your hosting

Sometimes the problem isn't your site, it's where it lives. Cheap shared hosting crammed full of other websites can slow everything down, especially at busy times. Signs it might be your host:

• The whole site is slow, including the WordPress dashboard
• It's slower at certain times of day
• It speeds up for a while after a fix or restart, then slows down again

If this sounds familiar, a plan with more resources, or hosting built for WordPress, can make a big difference. Location matters too: if your visitors are in NZ and your site is hosted overseas, every page takes a longer trip. We explain why in why local hosting matters.

2. Large, uncompressed images

This is one of the most common culprits. A photo straight off a phone or camera can be several megabytes, far bigger than a web page needs.

What to do:

• Resize images to the size they'll actually be displayed
• Compress them with a plugin such as ShortPixel, Smush or Imagify
• Use modern formats such as WebP where possible
• Turn on lazy loading, so images only load when someone scrolls to them

3. No caching

Without caching, WordPress builds each page from scratch every time someone visits. Caching saves a ready-made copy and serves that instead, which is much faster.

What to do: Install a caching plugin (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache and W3 Total Cache are popular), or ask your host what works best on their servers. Our servers run LiteSpeed, which pairs well with the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, and we often set up WP Rocket as part of a health check.

4. Too many plugins, or heavy ones

Every plugin adds code, and some add a lot. A site with 40 plugins isn't automatically slow, but a few badly built ones can drag it down.

What to do:

• Delete plugins you don't use (don't just deactivate them)
• Look for several plugins doing small jobs that one plugin could handle
• If your site slowed down after installing a particular plugin, switch it off and test again

5. A bloated theme or page builder

Some themes are packed with features, animations and sliders that look impressive but load a lot of code. Page builders can add weight too.

What to do: Test a plain page with minimal content. If it's slow even then, the theme may be the problem. A lightweight theme (such as GeneratePress, Astra or Kadence) is often a good alternative, though switching themes on an established site is a bigger job, so plan it carefully.

6. An old version of PHP

PHP is the language WordPress runs on. Older versions are slower and less secure, and newer versions are noticeably faster.

What to do: Log in to your hosting control panel and check which PHP version your site uses. If it's out of date, switch to a current version that WordPress and your plugins support. Take a backup first, and test your site afterwards.

7. Outdated WordPress, themes and plugins

Updates often include speed improvements as well as security fixes. Running old versions leaves you with slower code and a bigger security risk.

What to do: Back up your site, then update WordPress, your theme and your plugins. Keep an eye out for plugins that haven't been updated in a couple of years, as these are worth replacing. Our guide on how to update WordPress safely walks you through it step by step.

8. A cluttered database

Over time, WordPress collects clutter: old post revisions, spam comments, expired temporary data and leftovers from plugins you've since deleted. A swollen database can slow down every page.

What to do: Use a cleanup plugin such as WP-Optimize, or ask us to take a look. Always take a backup before cleaning up your database.

9. Too many outside scripts and fonts

Live chat widgets, tracking scripts, social media feeds, embedded videos and multiple Google Fonts all load from other servers. If one of them is slow, your page waits for it.

What to do:

• Remove tracking and widgets you don't actually use
• Limit your site to one or two fonts
• Embed videos with a "click to load" option rather than loading them straight away

10. No content delivery network (CDN)

A CDN stores copies of your images, scripts and stylesheets on servers around the world and delivers them from whichever is closest to the visitor. It's especially helpful if you have customers overseas.

We offer optional QUIC.cloud or Cloudflare CDN with our hosting, and we set it up for you, so you don't have to fiddle with DNS settings yourself.

When it's time to ask for help

If you've worked through the list and your site is still slow, it might be a hosting issue, a configuration problem, or something specific to your site. That's where talking to a human helps.

Our WordPress health check and tune is typically $165 + GST as a one-off. We:

• Update your plugins
• Move your site to the newest PHP version it can handle
• Check and adjust your PHP settings
• Set up a performance plugin such as WP Rocket
• Give you honest recommendations for anything else worth fixing

We'll tell you plainly whether it's a quick fix or something bigger. No jargon, no passing you around.

Is your hosting holding you back?

If your hosting is the bottleneck, moving can be the biggest single speed boost you make. Our hosting runs on LiteSpeed servers in Auckland, with daily backups kept for 30 days, 24/7 automated monitoring and free SSL certificates.

When you buy a year's hosting, we'll move your WordPress site for free and include the health check described above. Our WP Optimised shared hosting starts from $295 a year, and our WP Cloud managed cloud servers start from $175 a month for busier sites.

Is your WordPress site feeling sluggish?

Have a look at our NZ web hosting plans, or contact our team and we'll help you find out why.