WordPress can be tricky if you are on shared hosting.  Why? Because despite the fact that almost all hosting companies tout “unlimited” hosting, the only things that are unlimited are bandwidth and storage space.  Unless you are a household name like Apple.com, you are not going to get your host’s attention with your bandwidth or storage usage. However hidden in the small print of your hosting agreement is a limit on server CPU usage and the amount of RAM you can utilize at any given time.  If you are running a WordPress blog and have any traffic at all, you will eventually be limited.  Why?

Hosts like to cram as many websites on a server as possible.  A blog that uses 10% of the server resources would bad for their ratios (websites/server) so they simply limit each site to 4-6%.  What does that mean for someone with a WordPress blog? It means that when you use up your portion of the server resources, further use of your website will be limited.  

So, why does it take so much of the server resources to run a blog?  WordPress is a dynamic platform that makes many requests of the server each time a page is loaded.  It is not unusual for there to be >100 objects loaded for 1 page of your blog.  Want to check your website? Go to: http://www.tools.pingdom.com.

Eek! Now what?

Your host will try to sell you a dedicated virtual private server (VPS) to the tune of $150 or more a month.  Since typical hosting is ~$5/mo, a monthly charge like that can be the end of your blog.  There are a number of things you can do to optimize a WordPress blog and make it run more efficiently before throwing more money at it.  

1. Check for malicious code using the WPAntiVirus plugin.
2. Use WP DB Manager plugin to optimize your database.
3. Remove all plugins that are not critical – especially ones that are not being used.
4. Compress all images before uploading to your blog.  Do not use the “resize” option in WordPress to make your images smaller.  It results in 2 photos being uploaded instead of just 1 and it doesn’t optimize them for web viewing.  ROIT is a free program http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/ that takes care of both resizing and optimizing.
5. If you will be including a lot of pictures in your blog posts, use a free service like Photobucket to store them.  Every image is an object…the more objects, the more server resources are needed.
6. Use a caching program like WP Super Cache.  It can be a bear to configure, so go here for instructions: http://tentblogger.com/wp-super-cache/
7. Make sure your HTML (http://validator.w3.org/) and CSS (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/) code is validated.  Errors in the code are often corrected by the browser, but it uses extra time and server resources.
8. Avoid redirects unless they are critical to the function of your blog…again, they take time and resources.
9. Be selective when using iFrames…see above.
10. Be selective when using widgets, especially ones that have to go out and look for Tweets, FB Posts, etc…see above.
11. Get rid of the custom “404 Not Found” page.  It is just one more thing the server has to process.
12. Use Feedburner or similar service to manage your RSS feeds.  If a function is handled on another server, it isn’t using your resources.
13. Use Google Search for site search.  It is free, and again, if it is handled on another server, it isn’t using your resources.
14. Remove post versions http://www.mydigitallife.info/how-to-delete-existing-wordpress-post-revisions-storedsaved/
15. Don’t post via email or using copy/paste from Word.  It adds excess formatting that has to be decoded by the server.
16. If you are going to present related posts to your readers, use the Efficient-Related-Posts plugin as it uses fewer resources than other similar plugins.
17. Turn off all email notifications.  If you are running a busy blog, you are probably in your Dashboard all day long.  There is no reason for the server to send you an email when you get a comment, if you are there to see it!
18. Click out of the Edit Post or Edit Page screen (go back to your Dashboard) when you are not editing.  WP saves a draft every so often and uses resources to do so.
19. Schedule backups for your slowest traffic period.

** Advanced – Do not follow the suggestions below unless you know what you are doing and/or are following detailed instructions. If not done correctly, the items below can permanently disable your blog.


20. Backup database in MyPhpAdmin.
21. Optimize and repair database in MyPhpAdmin.
22. Review the wp-options table in MyPhpAdmin and delete duplicate entries. 
23. Remove tables that were created for plugins you are no longer using.
24. Hard code your title, blog description and other essentials in your header.php file.

It is possible that after you address all the suggestions above to optimize your WordPress blog, you will still either be limited or shut down by your hosting provider.  In that case, contact Beth for all your WordPress optimization needs.