8 Expert Tips To Scale A WordPress Website For High Traffic
WordPress is the most preferred CMS, but that doesn’t mean it is scalable or ready to handle a sudden surge in traffic and maintain 100% uptime. Possible reasons for increased traffic on WordPress websites include viral content, Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, Ad campaigns, eLearning website, Contest/Giveaways, or Discount Deals. If you fail in scaling a WordPress for high traffic, it could turn your website’s success into failure.
WordPress themes and plugins should properly in a moderate amount of traffic strain. However, sudden traffic spikes can push server resources to their breaking points.
Bottlenecking Traffic
The best way for scaling a WordPress website is to avoid ‘bottlenecks’ that cause a sudden surge in traffic. It mainly occurs as a result of overloading server resources. When scaling WordPress website for heavy traffic, make sure that request sent to your WordPress website requires the use of minimal resources and efforts to render and serve.
Another reason for bottlenecks can be your database. A tool called HyperDB is used to spread web traffic across different databases and servers. However, the drawback is that this tool has some limitations. The best way to go is to switch to a better plan from WordPress managed host.
Tips Scaling WordPress Sites When Traffic Soars
- Opt for the Hosting which offer Vertical & Horizonal Scalability Plan
- Add CDN to the Server
- Opt for a Lightweight WordPress Theme (Prefer Custom Themes)
- Put Cache & Optimization Plugin to Use
- Use Optimized Images & Prefer Lazy Loading
- Use Reliable Payment Gateways
- Use Security Plugin to Safeguard Website
- Use Backup Plugin to Secure Data
1. Opt for the Best Hosting Provider
There are different types of web hosting services offered in the market: shared hosting, dedicated hosting, VPS hosting, & Managed VPS hosting. Opt for the right hosting plan that meets must-have requirements like PHP version 7.2 or greater, HTTPS support, MySQL version 5.6 or greater MariaDB version 10.0 or greater.
When to opt for Vertical Scaling Hosting
Vertical scaling refers to hosting providers which offer tiered plans that can be upgraded easily as and when required. It might happen that sometimes your WordPress website needs more resources to handle website traffic. CPU and RAM are two important hardware resources that play a crucial role in handling traffic spikes. If you feel that storage, bandwidth and visitor quantity limit your website from controlling the traffic, you should explore other hosting plan options.
If your website attracts a lot of traffic, it requires more access to server resources; therefore, VPS hosting or a dedicated server will help you achieve this. You can get a reputed hosting like Cloudways that provides a vertical scaling feature where the plan or server size can be easily scaled with a single button click. This helps in handling and managing millions of traffic numbers on your website.
When to opt for Horizontal Scaling Hosting
Once your WordPress website traffic starts booming, you will notice that vertical scaling via hosting plans is not enough, especially if all of a sudden your website traffic is high and then the next day it gets in control. In this scenario, you should go for a hosting plan with horizontal scaling.
Horizontal scaling separates your website into various layers. By using service-oriented architecture, you can create this. By separating the front-end server, database server, proxy layer and image layer, you can quickly scale resources for important backend parts which need it.
Best WordPress Hosting Providers:- WP Engine, SiteGround, Bluehost, Hostinger, Kinsta
2. Add CDN to the Server
CDN technology when you want a blazing speed for your WordPress website. If website traffic is coming from all over the globe, it becomes necessary to have a CDN. It proves helpful in decreasing the distance between your visitor’s browser and your server. The best thing about CDN is that it offers a range of features like speed, security and resilience. As per the information shared on kinsta.com, they were able to decrease page loading time by about 43.2% which is really surprising!
Best WordPress CDN services:- Cloudflare, Bunny.net, Sucuri, KeyCDN, StackPath
3. Opt for a Lightweight WordPress Theme
If the WordPress theme you are using for your website is poorly coded or piled up with unnecessary features and code, it can harm your website. It might weigh down your website and limits its ability to handle a large amount of web traffic. Therefore, you should clean up the theme code or use a theme that addresses your page speed and scalability requirements. 7 Fastest WordPress Themes: Hello Elementor, Astra, GeneratePress, Neve, OceanWP, Customify, Twenty Twenty
Best Fastest WordPress Themes:- Astra, GeneratePress, Neve, OceanWP, Zakra
4. Put Cache & Optimization Plugin to Use
Caching content helps in reducing the number of HTTP requests between browsers and servers. To scale WordPress website, it becomes necessary to minimize HTTP requests. Using caching plugins, you can create copies of your web pages and show them to all future users without fetching live versions of all the files. With this plugin, you can increase the page loading time up to 5 times faster. Make sure that your caching plugin offers CDN integration too.
The main reason to reduce requests is to minimize and host only essential information you need on your WordPress website. An add-on for caching and optimization of files is Hummingbird which helps you serve the purpose.
Best Cache Plugins for WordPress:- WP Rocket, WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache
5. Use Optimized Images & Prefer Lazy Loading
You should remove any type of heavy video from your WordPress website; you should bring some solution to these images. For this, it is advised to prefer Lazy Loading, which is usually an excellent place to start as it will serve images to your users only when they reach those web page portions.
Using the lazy loading feature will help avoid the delay caused by the loading of images, but it will not stop server requests at all. As per Kinsta.com, images make up about 34% of a web page’s overall weight, which is why it is suggested to use optimized images in your WordPress sites.
Best WordPress Image Optimizer Plugins:- Smush Pro, EWWW Image Optimizer, Optimole, ShortPixel Image Optimizer, Imagify
6. Use Reliable Payment Gateways
It is essential to have a reliable WordPress payment plugin that is secure and well-tested. It will ensure that there will be no issues whenever customers buy your products at any given time and make payments at your website.
Best WooCommerce Payment Gateways:- Stripe, PayPal, Square, Authorize.Net, Amazon Pay
7. Use Security Plugin to Safeguard Website
It is imperative to add a security layer to your WordPress website pages to help scale WordPress for high traffic websites. Using a reliable best security plugins, you can safeguard your website and prevent threats like hacking, spam, malware, SQL injections, etc.
Some of the best WordPress security plugins like Wordfence, Sucuri Security, Defender etc., help your web page handle security threats safely. If you have the budget, then you can choose premium security plugins that comprise advanced security features.
Best WordPress Security Plugins:- Sucuri Security, WordFence, All In One WP Security & Firewall, iThemes Security, Jetpack Security
8. Use Backup Plugin to Secure Data
By using a backup plugin, you can scale WordPress for heavy traffic websites in an easy way. No matter how many careful steps you take to keep your WordPress website safe and secure, there can still be several possibilities that can crash down your website. If such a situation happens, you should find ways to address this problem and restore it quickly. Therefore, it is essential to use a backup plugin to scale your WordPress website.
Best WordPress Backup Plugins:- UpdraftPlus, BackupBuddy, BlogVault, Jetpack, Duplicator, WP Time Capsule
Over To You!
Whether you are looking for a developer to scale your WordPress website for high traffic or searching for custom WordPress development services, Samarpan Infotech will be your perfect choice. Hire our expert WordPress developers to get solutions for any WordPress-related issues.
Pro Tip:- Never compromise with WordPress website issues at any cost and any problem should be addressed immediately to avoid complications in the future.
Originally published at https://www.samarpaninfotech.com on November 24, 2021.
