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The “wordpress very slow admin” is a problem that many WordPress users have. There are 11 ways to speed up the WordPress admin panel.
Have you ever wondered why your WordPress admin is so sluggish and whether there is anything you can do about it?
To be honest, nothing is more aggravating than when your WordPress dashboard begins acting up. You know the situation: you need to publish a content quickly, but WordPress isn’t cooperating. What should just take a few seconds appears to take an eternity.
Fortunately, there are a number of strategies that may help ease this widespread issue, and I’ll go through a few of them in this piece.
Table of Contents
What’s Causing Your WordPress Admin Dashboard to Load Slowly?
There are a variety of reasons why your WordPress backend could be sluggish. Among the most common are:
- Choosing a hosting company
- There are far too many plugins that slow down your computer.
- Plugins that have been improperly setup
- Problems with the theme
- PHP version that is no longer supported
- Database that hasn’t been optimized
- The RAM limit in WordPress is too low.
- WordPress Heartbeat API frequency is incorrect.
Please keep in mind that the following list is not complete, and identifying the actual culprit(s) may need a lot of trial and error.
11 Ways To Make Your WordPress Admin Run Faster
Now I’ll teach you some tricks for speeding up your WordPress admin panel.
It’s possible that only one of them makes a big impact. However, it’s likely that you’ll need to combine a few to achieve the greatest results.
I recommend starting with the easy ones and progressing to the more complicated ones if they don’t work.
1. Consider switching to a different hosting company.
Switching hosts is a harsh option, yet it could be the one you need to cure your sluggish WordPress admin.
It’s a sad truth of WordPress life that not all hosting companies are created equal, with some providing superior performance. A sluggish host will not only slow down your site, but it will also slow down the WordPress backend.
The following is the rest of the article.
Furthermore, although you may not have any problems when your site is first launched, as it increases in popularity, the increasing traffic may have an effect. Switching to a more competent host makes sense in this case.
While there’s nothing wrong with saving money on hosting, especially in the beginning stages of your WordPress adventure, it’s typically a waste of money. This is because, in order to keep prices down, cheap hosting companies will cut corners. Unfortunately, this typically means they’re utilizing considerably lower-spec equipment than more costly, performance-oriented WordPress hosting providers.
SiteGround is a fantastic choice if you’re a beginner. WPLift utilizes this host, and you can read a review of it here. Kinsta is a little more expensive, but it regularly delivers quick WordPress dashboard load times. For additional information, see this Kinsta review.
Migrating to a new host isn’t as difficult as it may seem, and the firm you’re switching to will frequently assist you with the transition.
Finally, please see WPLift’s post 5 Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers for some alternative possibilities (2021).
2. Look for Plugins That Slow You Down.
Some plugins, in addition to slowing down the frontend of a site, may also slow down the WordPress admin dashboard.
There are a few methods to figure out which plugins are causing your dashboard to slow down:
To determine whether disabling all plugins on your site helps speed up the dashboard, use this option. If it occurs, you may deactivate each plugin one at a time until you find the source of the problem (s).
You may use an additional plugin like Query Monitor to discover other plugins that are consuming system resources, which may seem counterintuitive:
- Use the Chrome Extension for WP Hive.
WP Hive is a Google Chrome addon that shows how a plugin may affect the speed of a website. WP Hive will provide basic metrics beneath the plugin description anytime you search for a plugin in the WordPress plugin directory after you install the extension:
You’ll need to do one or more of the following if you’ve detected any problematic plugins:
- Make sure it’s set up appropriately and that any unneeded features have been disabled (where possible). Broken Link Checker is a good illustration of this since it is often configured to run in the background, slowing down everything. In this scenario, it’s best to turn off the plugin altogether and just use it when you need to check for broken links manually.
- Replace the plugin with a comparable one that is more performance optimized.
- If the plugin isn’t absolutely essential on your site, remove it.
- To deactivate plugins on individual sites, use a plugin manager like Freesoul Deactivate Plugins (including backend ones.)
3. Eliminate Plugin-Induced Bloat
Some plugins have a tendency to bloat sites (both frontend and backend) with unnecessary functionality and scripts. Unfortunately, unless you employ an extra plugin to aid, reducing that bloat is tough – if not impossible.
Hide SEO Bloat, for example, allows you to disable several of the Yoast SEO plugin’s unneeded backend functions. Disable WooCommerce Bloat, on the other hand, allows you to remove unneeded chaff from your WooCommerce installation.
4. In your Caching Plugin, disable Object Cache.
W3 Total Cache is a double-edged sword if you chance to be utilizing it.
On the one hand, it provides a plethora of parameters and adjustments aimed at improving the speed of your website. Using a lot of those options, on the other hand, might slow things down. This issue is exacerbated by the use of less expensive shared hosting.
If you’re using W3 Total Cache and your WordPress admin dashboard is slowing down, make sure Object Caching is turned off first. To do so, go to your W3 Total Cache settings and make sure ‘Object Cache’ is turned off:
Check out WPLift’s post How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for WordPress for more information on correctly installing W3 Total Cache (2021.)
While I explicitly specified W3 Total Cache, you should check the settings of any caching plugin you use to verify it isn’t affecting the backend speed of your WordPress.
5. Examine Your Theme
It may seem counterintuitive considering that themes are designed mainly for the frontend of your site, yet themes may often slow down the WordPress admin panel.
As with plugins, theme authors often utilize the flexible functions.php file to provide extra functionality. And, similar to plugins, some of that extra functionality might be slowing down your backend.
It’s simple to determine whether your theme is the source of your speed issues. If your WordPress admin performance returns to normal after switching back to the default WordPress theme (currently Twenty Twenty Two), you’ll know the problem is most likely in your theme’s functions file.
Once you’ve determined that the issue is caused by your theme, you should contact the theme’s creator. You may also hire a freelance developer to attempt to solve the issue for you. Furthermore, you may easily switch to a different theme.
6. Verify the PHP Version
WordPress is written in PHP, a general-purpose programming language for web development.
PHP, like the WordPress core, is continually evolving. Unfortunately, although most individuals are quite good at upgrading their WordPress on a regular basis, few recognize that their PHP also has to be updated on a regular basis.
Updating the PHP in your WordPress installation has a number of advantages, including increased security and speed. However, not all web hosts will install the most recent version automatically, so you may have to do it yourself.
The method varies from host to host, although in many situations, C-Panel is used. Here’s a snapshot of my GreenGeeks C-Panel, which shows the current PHP version on my account:
Even if there are a few later versions of PHP available in this situation, GreenGeeks installs the most recent stable version of PHP automatically. You should check with your own host to see what procedures they have in place for PHP upgrades.
7. Improve the performance of your database
Your WordPress database will accumulate a lot of useless garbage over time, namely post revisions and transients. The databases of WooCommerce sites, in particular, are prone to expiring temporary buildup. This may all contribute to a sluggish WordPress admin dashboard.
Thankfully, caching plugins like WP Rocket and LiteSpeed Cache generally provide methods to securely clear this garbage from your database, allowing you to increase the performance of your site’s front and backend.
8. Determine Your Memory Capacity
The PHP memory limit on your site might be the cause of your backend’s slowness.
Fortunately, this is a simple repair, particularly if you can change it personally with your host provider. In such scenario, all you have to do is add the following line at the top of your wp-config.php file:
define(‘WP MEMORY LIMIT’, ‘256M’); define(‘WP MEMORY LIMIT’, ‘256M’); define(‘WP ME
If your server doesn’t allow you to manually raise the PHP RAM limit, you’ll have to ask them to do it for you.
9. Examine the frequency of the WordPress Heartbeat API.
When you’re signed in to your WordPress dashboard, the WordPress Heartbeat API allows your browser and the web server to communicate. Simply said, it synchronizes data between the two.
WordPress can utilize the Heartbeat API to perform things like automatically save drafts, display when another user is changing a post, and so on.
However, like with many helpful features, they might have the unintended consequence of slowing down the WordPress backend. Thankfully, there are methods to solve this without completely deactivating them.
One option is to utilize the Heartbeat Control plugin, which is available for free. You may do this by going to Settings Heartbeat Control Settings and then selecting one of the following options:
- Alternatively, disable the Heartbeat API entirely.
- Adjust the frequency to 60+ seconds, for example, to have it run less frequently:
You’ll receive all of the advantages of the Heartbeat API while utilizing less resources this way.
If you’re still having problems after increasing the frequency, you may try turning off the Heartbeat API entirely to see if it helps.
By the way, if you use a caching plugin like WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache, it’s possible that it includes built-in options for controlling the Heartbeat API.
10. Fix a Slow WooCommerce Dashboard With Third-Party Tools
If you operate a WooCommerce shop, you may have observed that as you add more goods, the backend slows down. Unfortunately, when your business grows, so does this issue. Running queries and reports is a big chore as a result of all of this.
Using a WooCommerce analytics plugin like Metorik is the quickest way to solve this issue. This will provide you with a more user-friendly interface as well as improved performance. Because Metorik is not bound by the same database structures as the WordPress dashboard, this is possible.
Reports that take over 30 seconds to load on the WordPress dashboard take just a fraction of that time in Metorik.
11. Make changes to the wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
If nothing you’ve done so far has improved the performance of your WordPress admin panel, you may upload new versions of the ‘wp-admin’ and ‘wp-includes’ directories to your website as a final option.
To do so, go to WordPress.org and download a fresh copy of the most recent version of WordPress. You should download the latest version of WordPress if you’re still using an older version.
Then, using FTP, upload just the wp-includes and wp-admin files from the ZIP folder. Select the option to replace existing files when requested.
Hopefully, the speed of your WordPress admin panel has returned to normal.
What is your preferred method for speeding up your WordPress backend?
Because there are so many factors, resolving a sluggish WordPress admin panel may be a trial and error process, as I’ve described. However, in most circumstances, the strategies I’ve provided in this post should be sufficient. If you have any further recommendations, please leave them in the comments section below.
Finally, I suggest reading WPLift’s blogs on how to speed up WordPress, the best CDN services, and the best caching plugins for more information on how to improve your site’s performance.
The “why is wordpress so slow to edit” is a question that has been asked many times. There are 11 ways to speed up your WordPress admin panel.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I speed up my WordPress admin panel?
A: There are many different ways of speeding up your WordPress admin panel. One easy way is to switch out the PHP-FPM worker process that WordPress runs on for a lighter one, such as Nginx or Varnish. If you want more speed and stability, be sure to also check out Memcached instead of MySQL!
Why is my WordPress admin page so slow?
A: The WordPress website you are trying to access may be experiencing a high load of traffic.
How do I fix a slow WordPress dashboard?
A: It is possible to speed up your WordPress dashboard. You can do this by installing a caching plugin and also adding a back-up of the theme to an external host like Dropbox or Google Drive which you keep updated with new themes from other sites in case anything happens on your site.
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