High resource usage is often caused by plugins and themes. In most cases, uninstalling resource-heavy plugins and installing LiteSpeed Cache can reduce resource consumption.
Plugins
The following plugins are known to be resource-hungry. Uninstalling them can reduce resource consumption:
- All-in-One WP Migration
- BackWPup
- Duplicator
- iThemes Security
- Jetpack
- MainWP
- UpdraftPlus
- Wordfence Security
- WPvivid Backup
- Other backup and security plugins
Note:
- Uninstall the plugins (remove the PHP scripts), and do not just disable them. Disabling them can still cause high resource consumption when you access the admin dashboard.
- In general, backup and security plugins are resource-hungry plugins. If you have any other backup and/or security plugins installed, uninstalling them can reduce your resource consumption.
- Some plugins have additional configuration options to reduce resource consumption.
LiteSpeed Cache
In addition to disabling plugins, you can enable LiteSpeed Cache to reduce resource consumption dramatically. It will also increase your website performance by multiple folds.
How to install LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress?
Wp-cron
If the above steps do not reduce resource consumption, consider disabling wp-cron. Usually, backup plugins, security plugins, and wp-cron consume the most server resources.
Xmlrpc
Xmlrpc is another common source of high resource consumption. If you are not using it, consider disabling it via your .htaccess file.
WooCommerce and Oxygen/Elementor
If your website is a WooCommerce-based site or uses Oxygen/Elementor, your resource consumption will be higher than regular WordPress websites.
Index MySQL
Indexes can make WordPress faster. Consider adding indexes to your database tables if your site is large with many users, posts, pages, and products:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/index-wp-mysql-for-speed/
Make sure to take a backup before making any changes.
Note:
It is a third-party plugin. MechanicWeb does not endorse its use and is not affiliated with them.
Monitor Resource Usage
You would want to monitor your resource usage from time to time to check if you are having any 'Faults'.
If you have any 'Faults' and/or your average resource consumption is high, you would want to reduce resource consumption or upgrade to a larger hosting package.
PHP X-Ray
Identify which URLs, plugins, themes, functions, or SQL queries are slowing down your website. These are likely the ones consuming the most resources:
Final Notes
An upgrade isn't always necessary, as resource consumption can be reduced by optimizing a site, installing LiteSpeed Cache, configuring a plugin properly, or uninstalling resource-heavy plugins.
However, not all websites are the same. Some sites require more resources to run. We have larger packages for those sites. If your resource consumption does not drop after following the above steps, you might need to upgrade to a larger package.
