My website is slow

If you are not happy with your website speed, these tips might be helpful in making it faster.

There are a few possible underlying reasons for the slowness on your site, which WP Rocket (or any caching plugin) can only mitigate. Keep in mind that page caching only works on the front end, so when a site is slow in the admin, it means there are other factors.

Hosting

Your site can only be as fast as your hosting allows. When you choose hosting for your website, keep in mind that the cheapest option is not the best option. There are many web hosting companies available, and sometimes it's hard to choose the right one. 

Feel free to read these articles, these are great start points for choosing a proper hosting solution for your needs:

• http://winningwp.com/best-wordpress-hosting/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/09/25/the-ultimate-guide-to-choosing-a-wordpress-host/
• http://chrislema.com/choose-a-wordpress-host/

Your theme

If your theme isn't well coded it can cause slowness. An easy way to test is to switch to one of the default themes like Twenty Twenty-One and see if it makes a difference.

Here are few articles that can help you choose the right theme for your purposes:

• http://www.wpexplorer.com/choose-new-wordpress-theme/
• http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-themes/selecting-the-perfect-theme-for-wordpress/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/12/04/what-to-consider-when-choosing-a-wordpress-theme/
• http://atlantisthemes.com/selecting-perfect-wordpress-theme/

Your plugins

It can just take one poor plugin to create a slow site. You can test by disabling plugins to see which ones cause the slowness. Also remove any that you don't need. For example, if you have two sliders on your site, our recommendation is to use only one of them and get rid of the other.

If you have multiple security plugins (or any other plugins with same purpose) feel free to get rid to one of them.

Note: Do you have any plugins that execute regular, or constant scans of your site? For example, the Live Traffic option in Wordfence can make your site slower. Also, the DELUCKS SEO plugin’s stats module does intensive tracking and can blow up the database which in turn can result in very slow WP Admin and site performance, including higher TTFB values.

Images

if you have a lot of large images that are bigger than they need to be (especially those over 300-400kb), they will make your pages slower than necessary.Make sure to:

• Upload images at the dimensions they need to be, no larger
• Compress your images using our new image optimization tool Imagify and its WordPress Plugin:
  https://wordpress.org/plugins/imagify/

Note: Read our blog post for more detail on managing images: https://wp-rocket.me/blog/image-optimization-easy-win-faster-site/

Database

Try using our database optimization feature to reduce the size of your database.

Admin Ajax

Sometimes, admin-ajax.php will take a long time to load. This is a fairly common issue on WordPress and Woocommerce sites. Unfortunately, caching plugins are not able to cache admin-ajax.php, but here are a couple of things you can try: 

• Sometimes the problem is with the WordPress Heartbeat API which you can enable the WP Rocket feature Heartbeat under WP Rocket > Settings > Heartbeat tab.
• Try loading all the Woocommerce scripts only on the pages they are needed on, instead of on every page: https://wiregrasswebsites.com/2013/05/remove-woocommerce-styles-and-scripts/