WordPress is the CMS which is used by millions of users every single day and by default many of these users have issues with their web hosting service providers who keep complaining about the high server resource sage and then suspend the blogs for the same reason. You can signup for WordPress Web Hosting but its not really suggested because most of the tweaks can be performed by you. In this article we will be discussing about all the different ways using which you can fix and optimize your blog to the maximum.
Backup
The first suggestion we would give you is to take a backup of your hosting account first, because if something goes wrong you can easily revert back to the original state. Check out the WordPress Blog Backup Plugins or our article on Reinstall WordPress Database. You also need to Find Server Load prior to taking back ups because if the load is very high the backup job would get struck in the middle. Also ensure that you have upgraded WordPress to the latest version and have Optimized Blog Database Tables to ensure that the script version is perfect with no clutter.
Cache Data
The next important suggestion would be to install a plugin which Caches all your blog data. 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.
Themes
Most of the times its not the Server configuration which makes the blog load slowly and also perform very bad, but its the theme which is used. 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. You also need to ensure that the theme is not having any issues which could generate errors, you can confirm this under the Cpanel > Logs for Error Logs and fix all those errors.
Most of the recent WordPress Themes support dynamic image resizing which takes a huge server resource and which would increase your load, try to disable these kind of options. Try to use simple themes which are not backed with any framework in order to reduce the number of queries run when a page is loaded. Our suggestion would be to try our customizing the default Twenty Ten WordPress theme to the fullest and using it.
Disable Plugins
Few months back we had published a article on Reduce CPU Server Load for Blogs by Removing Related Posts Plugin which was mainly going to give you a idea on why we don’t suggest using Related Posts Plugin along with few statistics. Along with this its also suggested to use third party services like linkwithin which don’t use your server resources for displaying the thumbnails and would quickly load the blog pages. We had also suggested the same under the Best Plugins to Display Related Posts with Thumbnails. There are many other Related Posts plugins like WordPress Related Posts, YARPP which significantly cause high load.
Next if you have installed any plugins like StatPress, Live, WP OnlineCounter etc you need to stop using them because they also add additional server usage and its suggested to use Google Analytics for detailed stats and services like whos.amung.us for tracking live visitors on your blog. Always make sure that all those plugins which need more sql queries to be run should be disabled and this can help in better hosting management.
Crawl Rate
Few blogs which are linked from thousands of different websites are generally crawl on a very high rate which literally means that the Search Engine spiders are crawling those blogs 24×7 and increasing the load on the server. If you are not really adding much content on your blog, then its suggested to reduce the crawl rate. You can do this visiting the Google Webmaster Tools. Here in under the Site Configuration > Settings > Crawl rate – you will be shown with two options :
- Let Google determine my crawl rate (recommended)
- Set custom crawl rate
Select the second option and then make changes to the available settings by moving the slider. Click on save and this would ensure the search engine spiders would visit the blog less and make less use of your resources.
The above listed different options wont give you any guarantee on decreasing the CPU resources but can for sure help you in decreasing the same to a considerable level. You can also try out discussing with your hosting service provider’s tech support or contacting a professional server techie in order to fix all of the above issues and making sure that you Increase Blog Loading Speed.
excellent suggestions, Amit. These suggestions are really worth considering i think. On a side note, a few days ago, i think i had been click bombed by one of my competitors. But nothing happened to the account and i also notified the adsense team. Have you ever been in such a situation?
I bet there are a ton of people jealous of your success and might even be thinking of click bombing your site. How do you deal with that if that happens? Wouldn’t such a thing make you lose the adsense account? I have always thought adsense is a risky business model. Or maybe i am just being too paranoid. Does adsense have a system defending such attacks having its roots in jealousy.
Any details would be appreciated. Thanks again. You are a great inspiration to all webmasters and wannabe entrepreneurs.
Rajesh i would suggest to care less about those things and ensure that you get the maximum traffic from Search Engines because this way the source of the traffic is always legit and Google Adsense team would be in your favor. Along with this there are chances that Adsense Team would not count those clicks under payment and just not count the same.
Thanks a ton 🙂
Hi Amit,
Thanks a ton for the timely article. My site has been suspended last night by hostcats.com due to over usage of CPU resources and the they have suggested me to optimise the code or go for VPS hosting. As VPS is highly expensive for a starter website, I am searching for tips like these. These are really helpful. My 7 months old site has 200+ posts with simple text and a traffic of 1000- 1500 page views per day. I have purchased for a basic plan (Rs. 1600 / year) with Hostcats. Amit, can you please clarify these doubts?
1. I have 50 – 60 tables on my site using WP- Table Reloaded plug in. Is it causing any load on CPU? If I remove this plug in does all the tables will be there or lost?
2. I am using Twenty Ten theme with small customisations. Can you please suggest any other WP theme which reduce CPU usage as I am not much fluent with editing codes? Another problem is I am losing all customisations if I update WP version. I am not able to create child themes and request you please provide a detailed article on creating child themes for dummies.
3. Adsense codes cause any excess load on CPU?
4. Too many tags and categories impact CPU usage?
Please try to give detailed response.
Thanks and Regards
1. Yes you will loose all those tables because they were specifically made with that WordPres Tables Plugin and its suggested to copy them directly from the blog posts and then republish under ‘VISUAL’ format. Though this can break them or even not show them 100% perfectly because of css issues.
2. Twenty Ten is a very good theme and would suggest to continue with it, but try to use less Widgets or Plugins along with this theme.
3. Adsense does not cause any issues to the CPU
4. Yes if you are using many Tags with every single blog post then it does contribute to the memory usage.
Always try to minimize every thing and make sure that when the blog posts are loaded very less elements are required to load decreasing the loading time and increasing server performance.
Also hosting companies wont optimize your VPS for sure and you need to get it done by Techies who can fix it for once. Our this blog runs on a VPS completely managed by a professional who ensures the performance, security and finally blog loading speed.
Hi Amit,
Thanks for the suggestions.
Can you please explain ‘VISUAL’ format. Are you suggesting me to take screen shots (print screen) and publish the table as image?
I was referring to directly copy the table and paste in the wordpress visual new post section , if you cannot do that then try posting those tables as Images ie screenshots.
Hi Amit,
Thanks for the details.
As I said in my earlier comment, I have been facing Over Usage of CPU problem with hostcats.com . I like to get a small clarification from you as you are also offering Hosting services. They are saying that any shared hosting plan does not allow more than 2 % of CPU usage hence there will be no use with upgraded shared plans. And also suggesting that subscribing for VPS hosting is the only solution to this problem. My site with hostcats is getting about 1500 page views per day. I have another site with Hostgator (which I have subscribed after reading your article on moving your sites) with same traffic but they are not complaining with regard to CPU Usage.
Moving to VPS hosting is the only solution left for a site with 1500 page views per day?
Please clarify.
Thanks a lot for the useful info on this issue and I have followed all the tips you have suggested in this post.
I would say the hosting company should also suggest you the best ways to optimize your blog and ensure it does not cross their limits.
Hi Amit,
It is very unfortunate that they are not suggesting anything except asking me to go for expensive VPS hosting OR hire a developer for that small site. They did not give me single tip to optimize the code and just threatening to suspend the site if it overload. And they are not even saying how much traffic their server can handle for my plan. I have followed your tips and trying my best to optimize the code. I have subscribed for that company after reading an article on your site. After this experience, I feel it does not worth in that best hosting companies list. Do you have any suitable hosting plans which can handle about 2000 page views per day at the cost of Rs. 3000 – 4000 per year?
Thanks
Hey,
We would suggest you to opt for managed VPS from hostgator [http://www.couponsnext.com/hostgator.com/] which is backed with a excellent support team, rather than going for any smaller hosting service provider. Also we are not offering new hosting packages because we dont deal into over selling.
Regards
Hello Amit,
Thanks for providing an excellent info on various issues related to WP blogs. I have a WP self hosted blog with Twenty Ten Theme. In order to customize various functions of the theme, I have created Child Theme for Twenty Ten. I am using child theme files for style, header, footer, single page . Does using child themes create any negative impact on CPU Usage, Traffic etc.
Regards