Have a slow WordPress admin panel?
A slow WordPress dashboard is usually caused by high CPU plugins, cheap shared hosting, a bloated database, or incorrectly configured cache plugins and CDNs.
These tips should speed up your admin panel while also making your website load faster in GTmetrix by lightening the load on your server. And if your WordPress dashboard is still slow after this tutorial, drop me a comment with your GTmetrix report and I can have a quick look.
How To Speed Up Your WordPress Dashboard
- Move Away From Poor Hosting
- Avoid Slow Loading Plugins
- Upgrade To PHP 7.4
- Disable WordPress Heartbeat
- Remove Bloat From Your Dashboard
- Remove Junk From Your Database
- Offload Resources To CDNs
- Add Cloudflare Page Rules
- Clear WooCommerce Transients
- Increase Memory Limit To 256MB
- Configure A Solid Cache Plugin
- Disable “Object Cache” In W3 Total Cache
- Block Spam Bots From Hitting Your Server
1. Ditch Shared Hosting
I’m guessing you’re using GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, SiteGround, an EIG hosting company, or some form of shared hosting if your admin panel is slow.
I would also guess you have a slow server response time in PageSpeed Insights and slow TTFB in GTmetrix. That’s because shared hosting lacks server resources and can barely support high CPU tasks like WooCommerce, Elementor, AdSense, or Jetpack. SiteGround has CPU limits too.
That’s why I would skip shared hosting all together and go straight to Cloudways. They do free trials and free migrations.
They’re who most people recommend in the WordPress Hosting Facebook Group and #1 in most recent Facebook polls, especially since SiteGround increased prices and went downhill. I migrated from SiteGround to DigitalOcean on Cloudways and you can view the results below.
I use them and you can check my GTmetrix report, or visit cwdoserver.com to test the speed of a $10/month Cloudways DigitalOcean test server I set up with an Astra Site. It loads instantly (for reference, stgrndserver.com is the identical Astra Site only on SiteGround’s GrowBig plan).
Affiliate Disclaimer – if you sign up for Cloudways or Kinsta using my affiliate links, I earn a commission at no expense to you. I am not an affiliate for Bluehost, HostGator, or GoDaddy since they’re not fast and the results show it. I also donate a good chunk of my blog’s income to GoFundMe campaigns and seriously appreciate your support.
If you see this in Google PageSpeed Insights, you know the issue:
2. Avoid Slow Loading Plugins
Thank you Ivica from the WordPress Speed Up Facebook Group for contributing to this list (and ps. that’s an amazingly helpful group if you need tips on WordPress speed). The most common slow plugins are social sharing, backup, statistic, chat, sliders, page builders, and plugins that run ongoing scans/processes – or appear multiple times in your GTmetrix report.
- AddThis
- AdSense Click Fraud Monitoring
- All-In-One Event Calendar
- Backup Buddy
- Beaver Builder
- Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps
- Broken Link checker (use Dr. Link Check)
- Constant Contact for WordPress
- Contact Form 7
- Contextual Related Posts
- Digi Auto Links
- Disqus Comment System
- Divi Builder
- Essential Grid
- View Full List Of 65 Slow Plugins
You can use Query Monitor to find your slowest plugins:
Or the GTmetrix Waterfall tab:
Alternative Lightweight Plugins
- Backup – UpdraftPlus.
- Sliders – Soliloquy, LayerSlider, or Meteor Sliders.
- Comments – WPDiscuz, Disqus Conditional Load.
- Portfolio – Envira Gallery, FooGallery, or The Grid.
- Social Sharing – Sassy Social Share or DVK Social Sharing.
- StudioPress Plugins – lightweight plugins for the Genesis Framework.
- Analytics – Google Analytics and Search Console should be plenty, or Clicky.
- Page Builders – Elementor for the win, or WordPress Page Builder by MotoPress.
3. Upgrade To PHP 7.4
Upgrading PHP versions can easily make your site 2-3x faster.
According to WordPress stats, most users run outdated PHP versions since your hosting company won’t upgrade you automatically. The Display PHP Version plugin tells you which PHP version you’re currently running, otherwise you can just find it in your hosting account.
Upgrade to the latest PHP version in your hosting account:
*Check your website for errors (if you see them, revert back to an earlier PHP version, or analyze your plugins to see which ones are not compatible and causing the errors).
4. Disable WordPress Heartbeat
The WordPress Heartbeat API can slow down your WordPress dashboard since it consumes resources by notifying you when other users are editing a post, real-time plugin notifications, etc. You have a few options: copy and paste this code into your functions.php file, use the Heartbeat Control plugin, Perfmatters, or WP Rocket also has an option to disable Heartbeat.
add_action( 'init', 'stop_heartbeat', 1 );
function stop_heartbeat() {
wp_deregister_script('heartbeat');
}
5. Remove Bloat From Your Dashboard
90% of WordPress bloat can be removed using the Perfmatters plugin by Kinsta.
Perfmatters lets you disable pingbacks, trackbacks, heartbeat, XML-RPC, jQuery migrate, limit post revisions, increase the autosave interval, and includes plenty of other features that can fix a slow WordPress admin panel. It can also help optimize WooCommerce sites, host Google Analytics locally, prefetch/preconnet external scripts, and even has a script manager for selectively disabling plugins. It basically takes care of speed optimizations WP Rocket doesn’t.
Delete Unused Plugins + Themes – all unused plugins and themes should be deleted if you’re not using them (don’t forget to check WP-Optimize for database tables they may leave behind).
Use Script Managers To Selectively Disable Plugins/Scripts – Perfmatters includes a script manager for disabling plugins/scripts on specific pages/posts (you can also do this with the Asset CleanUp plugin). For example, contact forms can usually only be loaded on the contact page. Social sharing buttons can only be loaded on the blog. Schema plugins can often be disabled on pages not using schema, and so on. Viewing which scripts/plugins are being loaded on your pages and posts (and disable the ones you don’t need) can greatly improve load times.
Pro Tip For Yoast – install the Hide SEO Bloat plugin. This blocks all Yoast’s advertisements.
6. Remove Junk From Your Database
A bloated database can slow down your WordPress dashboard which you can use WP Rocket or WP-Optimize to clean.
This deletes your spam folder, trash folder, transients, and the potentially thousands of post revisions stored in your database. You usually don’t need these, so delete them and schedule a cleanup to run every week (or at least every month) which can be scheduled in either plugin.
Delete Tables Left Behind By Old Plugins – when you delete a plugin, it can leave behind old tables containing pre-configured settings and other information. That’s why you see it’s tables are still in your database, but the plugin is “not installed.” If you deleted a plugin and don’t plan on using it again, go through the “not installed” tables and delete them. You will need to use WP-Optimize or Advanced DB Cleaner since WP Rocket doesn’t support going through tables.
7. Offload Resources To CDNs
CDNs help speed up the WordPress admin by offloading resources which lightens the load on your server. I recommend either Cloudflare or RocketCDN (if using WP Rocket). Cloudflare can be set up by changing nameservers, RocketCDN can be bought from your WP Rocket settings.
Once setup, check your analytics in your CDN’s dashboard and make sure it’s working. Offloading 58GB of bandwidth last month? Yeah, that will definitely improve your server.
Some hosts have an option to activate Cloudflare in the cPanel, otherwise you’ll need to add your website and change nameservers in your domain registrar (eg. GoDaddy or Namecheap).
8. Add Cloudflare Page Rules
Free Cloudflare accounts come with 3 free page rules.
Here are 3 page rules I recommend setting up for WordPress sites.
Page Rule 1: Cache Everything And Force HTTPS – ensures your site is cached aggressively.
http://*yourwebsite.com/*
Page Rule 2: Secure The WordPress Admin And Bypass Cache – sets the security level of the WordPress admin to high and bypasses Cloudflare’s cache inside the admin, since you don’t want your CDN (or apps + performance features like Rocket Loader) running inside the admin.
yourwebsite.com/wp-admin*
Page Rule 3: Decrease Bandwidth Of WP Uploads – since the content in your WP Uploads folder does not change frequently, you can increase the Edge Cache TTL to a month. This can potentially save on your bandwidth since the WP Uploads folder cache won’t refresh as often.
yourwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads*
You should also enable hotlink protection in Cloudflare’s scrape shield settings which prevents people from pasting your images on their website when the image is still hosted by you, which means you’re consuming the bandwidth. Enabling Cloudflare’s hotlink protection prevents this.
9. Clear WooCommerce Transients
If you’re running WooCommerce, transients can cause bloat in your database and slow down the dashboard. To clear them, go to the WooCommerce Status settings → delete all transients.
10. Increase Memory Limit To 256MB
WooCommerce sites, Elementor, WPML, and other systems require a 256MB memory limit, but you should really increase this anyway, since most hosts will set the default as 128MB.
Step 1: Edit your wp-config.php file.
Step 2: Add the code before the line that says, “Happy Blogging”.
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');
Your host may have an option to increase memory limits (below is for Cloudways).
11. Configure A Solid Cache Plugin
I recommend WP Rocket and that you check my WP Rocket settings.
It’s usually the #1 cache plugin in polls primarily because it comes with more features than any other cache plugin (resulting in faster load times and less plugins needed on your site). If you’re not using WP Rocket, I suggest WP Fastest Cache, however try using WP Rocket if you can.
Correctly configuring a solid cache plugin has a huge impact on your GTmetrix scores, load times, and speed of your admin panel. If your WordPress admin is slow, recheck your settings.
With most other cache plugins, you would need to install about 6 extra plugins to get these features, when WP Rocket has them all built-in, reducing the number of plugins on your site. If you’re like me, you only want to use 1 plugin, otherwise you will need to research which features your cache plugins comes with, then install these plugins if it doesn’t support them.
- Database cleanup (built-in to WP Rocket, or use WP-Optimize)
- Heartbeat control (built-in to WP Rocket, or use Heartbeat Control)
- Lazy load images/videos (built-in to WP Rocket, or use WP YouTube Lyte)
- Host Google Analytics locally (built-in to WP Rocket, or use CAOS For Analytics)
- Host Google Fonts locally (built-in to WP Rocket, or use CAOS For Fonts, or SHGF)
- Integration with Cloudflare + other CDNs (built-in to WP Rocket, or use CDN Enabler)
Most people have a cache plugin installed, but the settings aren’t configured optimally. Review my guides to make sure your cache plugin is configured for optimal load times.
12. Disable “Object Cache” In W3 Total Cache
If you’re using W3 Total Cache go to the General Settings and disable object cache. See my W3 Total Cache settings to make sure everything is configured properly since Cloudflare and StackPath may also be the culprit – plus most people don’t have the ‘performance tabs’ setup correctly. That tutorial has been used by over a million people with like… a million comments.
However, W3 Total Cache has bugs and the plugin developer doesn’t go a great job updating it, so do yourself a favor and switch to WP Rocket if you have $49 (they’re almost always rated the #1 cache plugin in Facebook polls) or WP Fastest Cache which is free and usually rated #2.
13. Block Spam Bots From Hitting Your Server
You would never know it unless you looked, but spam bots can constantly hit your server and consume resources. It’s a waste of bandwidth and can slow down your WordPress dashboard. In this step, we’ll find bad bots in Wordfence’s live traffic report and make sure they’re blocked.
Step 1: Install Wordfence.
Step 2: View your live traffic report (under Wordfence’s Tools settings) which shows you all bots hitting your site in real-time. Googlebot is obviously OK, but when I did this, I saw compute.amazonaws.com making a ridiculous amount of requests every couple seconds. I Googled it and sure enough, this was a bot known for sucking up bandwidth. View your report for a minute or two and see if bots with sketchy names are constantly hitting your site. If you have doubts, Google their hostnames and see if other people are having issues with that bot.
Step 3: Block the bots. You have a few options: Wordfence blocking (however the plugin itself consumes resources), Cloudflare firewall rules (comes with 5 free rules which means you can block 5 bots), or the Blackhole For Bad Bots. I have a tutorial for blocking bad bots using all 3 methods. It depends on how many you want to block; if it’s only a few, I’d use Firewall Rules.
Login to your Cloudflare Dashboard and go to Firewall → Firewall Rules → Create A Firewall Rule. Copy the bad bot’s hostnames (from Wordfence) and add it here in the “Value” field. Since you can create 5 rules, you would repeat this step for your 5 worst bad bots from Wordfence.
- Field = Hostname
- Operator = Contains
- Value = hostname of the bad bot you found in Wordfence
Step 4: Go to your Blocking log and enjoy watching those spam bots get blocked.
Frequently Asked Questions
🚀 What are the most common remedies for a slow WordPress admin?
The most common remedies for a slow WordPress admin are using a better cache plugin, configuring it with optimal settings, upgrading to faster hosting, and avoiding high CPU plugins. If using W3 Total Cache, try disabling the object cache option.
🚀 Will changing hosts fix a slow admin panel?
If your server response time is high in Google PageSpeed Insights, this can put stress on your server and slow down the admin panel. Changing hosts can fix a slow admin especially if you're using a low quality host like GoDaddy, Bluehost, or an EIG brand.
🚀 Will a CDN speed up the admin panel?
Using a CDN offloads resources and puts less stress on your server, therefore speeding up both your website and admin panel. Cloudflare is a great free CDN, and using multiple CDNs can help even more since more data centers means more offloading.
🚀 Do spammy bots slow down the admin?
Yes, spammy bots that constantly hit your site are a waste of server resources. You can use Wordfence to find all bots hitting your site in real-time, then use Wordfence, Block Bad Queries, Blackhole for Bad Bots, or Cloudflare firewall rules to block spammy bots.
🚀 Which plugins slow down the admin panel?
Most slow WordPress plugins include social sharing, statistic (analytics), sliders, portfolios, page builders, calendars, chat, contact forms, related post, sitemap, Wordfence, WPML, WooCommerce, and any plugin that runs ongoing scans or processes. Always make sure you're using lightweight plugins that are maintained and coded well.
🚀 Do cache plugins affect the speed of the admin panel?
Yes. Which cache plugin you're using and whether it is configured optimally has a huge impact on your website's overall performance. Make sure you're using a top-rated cache plugin and that you're taking advantage of all it's features.
See Also: How I Got 100% Scores In GTmetirx
Watch My Video – it’s a 42 minute video, but I cover pretty much everything (timestamps in video description) and you should learn a ton of great information on WordPress site speed:
Did it work? Let me know in the comments.
Is your WordPress admin still slow? Send me your GTmetrix report and I’ll have a quick look.
Cheers,
Tom
