In the context of human interactions there’s a very clear distinction between an inquiry and a request, but in the digital realm there’s much less of that firm difference as it relates to web servers handling queries / requests made for a website. This is what is involved in that for laypeople who aren’t especially web-workings savvy. When you use your mouse or trackpad to click through to a website via search page results - or to move from one webpage to another once you’re in the website - there are database queries made to the server that’s operated by the web hosting provider. This starts to explain why having a good Canada-based WordPress hosting provider is a must for any small business considering all will have websites.
These database queries need to be both delivered and responded to with sufficient speediness, because if they are not handled this way then user experience declines significantly. There’s much to what’s possible there, but the primary way in which the click-through person staring at their smartphone, notebook, or desktop is going to be disillusioned is with slow page loading speeds. And we’ll also skip over a lot of what else undesirable can occur and tell you directly that VPS hosting optimized for WordPress is a surefire way to ensure this doesn’t happen for your small business website.
Which is plenty important, as web users and potential customers tend to be impatient and intolerant with this sort of stuff. If they’re looking for an online retailer or service provider and they’re directed towards you it is often the case that you only have one chance to make a good first impression on them. If your WordPress site is slow to load and then similarly slow to operate for them once they’re there then it will usually result in them moving on fairly quickly. If you’re in a business where there is plenty of of competition and plenty of other websites showing up in those same SERPs then it’s very unlikely they’ll be back.
So what we’ll do with this week’s blog entry is discuss how slow database queries kill WordPress performance, with an eye to helping out those of you who may choose to be diagnosing and repairing these issues on your own rather than choosing to go with managed WordPress web hosting. That’s the more affordable option, and if you do have enough understanding of how to audit a website and make changes to optimize it then there is good information to be had here.
Let’s get right into it, and keep in mind as well that if your site is for eCommerce and you collect sensitive data from customers then you may need to also be ensuring that you have PIPEDA-compliant hosting Canada. The plans from most web hosting providers will stay within those guidelines, but it’s good to be sure about that.
Query Overloads
We can start by saying that in large part WordPress functions as a query machine. With every instance that someone loads a page, there are many dozen database queries being sent. This is magnified considerably when there are hundreds of people hitting your site at the same time. It creates a situation where there are thousands of database operations happening every minute. This becomes problematic based on the fact that most WordPress databases are set up in a more disorderly than orderly fashion. Proper indexing is where to start with fixing this problem, and the first takeaway for you here is that when a site is indexed properly it can handle database queries in high volumes much more effectively and reliably.
It’s also helpful to understand that moving a poorly-indexed WordPress website to a faster server via a VPS hosting arrangement or something similar isn’t going to be a quick fix for the problem. The same can be said for adding more RAM to it, despite that being part of what a Canada-based WordPress hosting provider will offer when you do upgrade to a private server. There are plenty of sites with oodles of RAM available to it that are still struggling with slow responses to database queries.
And for WordPress sites it’s very rarely that Plugins are the problem too. More often it’s that the database is working way too hard for simple tasks. Proper database indexing is the only real fix here, but a partner reality is that DIY database optimization can go quite badly if you don’t know what you’re doing. VPS hosting optimized for WordPress is always an option, but if you want to have the assurance that your site is optimized in ALL ways at all times then it makes a lot of sense to pay more for managed WordPress hosting. We imagine your website is central to the ongoing success of your business.
Meta Query Issues - Standard Fixes
WordPress’s meta system gets high marks for being super flexible, but the reality is that performance can suffer if your site isn’t geared the right way to benefit from that flexibility and database query responses are a prime example of shortcomings. Every time you filter by custom fields, WordPress potentially looks through the entirety of the wp_postmeta table.
Wp_postmeta tables with literally millions of rows that require 6+ seconds for query returns are not uncommon. The fix involves strategic indexing on meta_key and meta_value, but it’s very possible to overdo it and slow down updates.
Object caching is also advisable to address slow database query responses, and this is a type of database caching that can dramatically speed up sites that are heavy with database operations. Woocommerce checkout and cart operations, order management on the backend and almost everything that happens behind the logon on a membership site are all database heavy operations that can benefit from object caching. You should also be using the highest version of WordPress’ PHP programming language that your site is built on.
Using the highest version of PHP that your site supports can dramatically speed up database related operations, and it is especially effective that way if it’s paired with page caching. This is something that’s not especially difficult and with good page caching it creates a situation where pages are optimized for accommodating database queries and delivering responses much more quickly. Long before the visitor arrives on the website and begins to make their way through it and getting to the point where they are ready to make purchases.
When the visitor hits the website the server provides the HTML file immediately so the user experiences a faster site and the load on the server is dramatically reduced. Typically it’ll take 1-4 seconds to generate a page from scratch whereas a cached page is available in a few hundred milliseconds (0.2-0.5 seconds). Many times there are specific WordPress plugins for faster database query responses and better overall website performance.
The next recommendation as part of this look at WordPress site optimization is to use a Content Delivery Network so that any content on the site doesn’t affect site speed based on the geography of the site and the required size of the pieces of content. This contributes to being much more able to handle site visitor volume and when queries are coming fast and furious during website traffic sites.
Plugin Selectivity & Database Decluttering
Unused plugins and tools can be another reason for slow WordPress database queries, and for older websites this tends to be even more common. So it’s also a good idea to go through all plugins and tools your site uses, and delete or disable those that have gone past their usefulness for your site. From a speed point of view, cutting the number of plugins should improve your site’s performance. VPS hosting optimized for WordPress can minimize the diminishing performance effects of these plugins based on greater resources exclusivity, but it’s still not something you should be looking past if you’re away that some of your plugins just aren’t needed anymore.
Getting rid of expired transients in your database is the last recommendation we’ll have here for this topic, and it’s likely the same one you’d get from any Canada-based WordPress hosting provider. Some of these transients are necessary for your site as means for storing temporary information in the WordPress database and seeing to it there’s an expiration time for each them to be deleted - something that’s very necessary for reducing server load and improving WordPress performance.
However, sometimes transients expire or disappear before their set timeframe, or - even worse - don’t have a set expiration time and end up sticking around and starting to detract from site performance. Old and expired transients can increase the site load and negatively influence its performance. It’s here that you will be wise to use some type of query monitor plugin to identify database hogs. There are plenty of good ones that allow debugging of WordPress’ slow database queries, hooks and actions, PHP errors, editor blocks, HTTP API calls, enqueued scripts and stylesheets.
Small businesses with WordPress sites that are seeing exponential growth and site traffic spikes as a result can be set up for speedier database query responses and overall better site performance by moving over to a virtual private server for their website. This is one of the most common changes that we see with customers here at 4GoodHosting, with business owners switching over from a shared hosting plan to a VPS as their business grows.
With a large part of that growth being attributable to their increased visibility via the website, and making that increased investment in their web hosting an additional expense they can happily justify. Also get in touch with us if you need to know more about PIPEDA-compliant hosting in Canada based on the nature of your eCommerce website.
