It can never be fun when you are trying to manage a WordPress or Wix site, as your target must be to have a site that has a fast-loading WordPress admin dashboard. For many WordPress site owners, a WordPress slow admin has become quite a common issue, including the old version of PHP, resource-heavy plugins, poor quality web hosting, not having a cache plugin, etc.
It cannot be very pleasant for you, especially if you are in a productive mood and have to work on a big list. When you have a WordPress admin slow, it may completely stop responding. You can still speed up your admin panel by using the right ways, and this is helpful in bringing your WordPress site on par.
If your WordPress site is properly optimized, it can surely be lightning fast, and for a fast WordPress site, you need to have the right plugin. PageSpeedy.io is a lightweight and simple caching plugin for WordPress. It is a comprehensive all-in-one optimization plugin and happens to do its job very well. You will find the plugin to be very simple to set up, as you have to install and activate it, and it will be working just fine for you.
Reasons for slow WordPress admin Slow
If you think that your WordPress admin dashboard is taking more than a few seconds to open, then it is an alarm that something is definitely wrong. There is no doubt that the size of your website and the response time can play a big role, but there are many other things that can affect the loading speed of your admin dashboard. A bloated database, a faulty plugin, an old PHP version, and cheap hosting are some of the possible reasons.
You have the option to fix the majority of issues, whereas you may need additional help for the ones that you cannot set yourself. There are always a few usual culprits that make your WordPress slow, but a number of ways can surely be helpful in fixing these issues.
How can we speed up WordPress Slow Admin?
The following are the steps that can be taken in order to improve your WordPress admin loading speed.
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Steps to Overcome WP Admin Slow:
Choose a better host
Choosing a better host is more of a piece of advice than being a common fix. There is quite a bit of chance that you may have some speed obstacles when you are using cheap shared hosting. It wouldn’t be a surprise for you that a service that will cost less would not be of high quality. Although this doesn’t mean that it will not be serving some purpose, having a better host is still preferable.
When you have a more reliable and expensive host, it will surely result in a faster and more efficient website. The same is true to speed up the WordPress backend. Therefore, to get rid of a slow admin panel, the best way is to go for the WordPress hosting providers that are better managed, including WP Engine, Kinsta, or Liquid Web. This may also mean that you need to pay more, and if you are not able to afford quality hosting, then the only way to move forward is the speed optimization methods.
Check your Internet in case of WordPress dashboard slow
If you are still confused regarding why is your WordPress admin slow, your internet may be one of the biggest of the reasons. The speed can surely decrease if you are sharing your internet connection or using Wi-Fi. If you like to rule out connectivity-related issues, then you need to open any other website. When the website is opened and the speed issue still persists, then you either have to upgrade your internet plan or go for a better connection.
Other than that, if you cannot properly access the internet, you should understand that you are having a problem with the connection. There are occasions when the obstacle can be settled by solely resetting your router. If there isn’t a speed or a connection issue, and you still have a WP admin slow, you need to contact the internet provider because these are the issues you cannot fix by yourself in the majority of the cases.
Speed up WordPress Backend by Removing any unused or outdated plugins
There are chances that you may accumulate redundant plugins with time, as it has become quite common. People tend to update and upgrade, but they never give importance to the stuff that is outdated or unnecessary. It is quite unfortunate that these can have negative repercussions for your website because having a lot of plugins has become a common reason for security issues as well as a slow WordPress site speed.
The main idea should be to get rid of any unnecessary plugins, and this means anything you rarely use or don’t use at all. Consider it spring cleaning, like something in your wardrobe that you haven’t used for years, and you wouldn’t be hesitating to get rid of it.
It would be best if you also tried to make sure to look for the plugins that the developers do not support. Although you will find the plugins to be still functional, if they happen to break down, you will not fix them, so you will have a WordPress backend slow. The most suitable selection for you is to go for the plugins that appear with adequate support.
It is important to delete the plugins that are out of date or the ones you are not using. There are other plugins that are not supported by the developers or the ones that have functionality that may not be that much necessary for the WordPress site. When you have fewer plugins, it becomes easy for you to troubleshoot any of the performance issues when they arrive.
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Update the PHP version and Speed Up WordPress Admin
Just like other software, your PHP version can matter a lot, as it is responsible for affecting the speed and security. There are numerous WordPress users who still run the older PHP versions, but if you want to speed up WordPress admin, you have to upgrade.
You will find a number of hosting providers that make things quite easy by offering you this option in the control panels. These providers can give you a tutorial on exactly how to do that. If this is not the case for you, then it is better for you to contact the providers and ask them directly.
Optimize the WordPress database
It would help if you always made it a priority to keep your WordPress database clean because it not only makes things easier for you but can also have a huge effect on the performance. Although things are made quite simple with the help of the plugins, and you will find various plugins offering it, but most people recommend using PageSpeedy or WP Rocket.
Both of the plugins are great and have the ability to clean and optimize the database, and they can surely become quite useful with things like post revisions, unnecessary comments as well as transients. Even if database cleaning is not able to fix the issues when you have a WordPress admin slow, yet it is still considered a great habit that offers you a lot of advantages.
Control the WordPress heartbeat
Heartbeat API or admin-ajax.php is known to be a protocol used by WordPress for revision control, autosaving as well as different processes alike. You will find this particular ability to be superb for your workflow, but there are times when it becomes responsible for a WordPress slow. The main reason is that a huge number of PHP calls are sent by it, and this can surely lead to higher use of the CPU.
It is worth recording that when you hold a budget hosting plan, it doesn’t possess a prominent CPU. If you like changing the behavior of the Heartbeat, a tool named Heartbeat Control Plugin needs to be installed as well as activated. It is quite easy to use the plugin, and you need to go to the settings and change the frequency of the PHP calls with Modify Heartbeat option.
You have to disable the Heartbeat API if things aren’t working the way you want. In the next step, you are able to choose a location where the rule can be applied by you. It is important for you to go for the right combination as you will see multiple rules. This should be helping you quite a bit if you have a WordPress slow admin.
Always be careful with any updates
It has been seen that a slowdown tends to happen right when you update your WordPress, a theme, or a plugin. Many people ask, how can it be possible, and how does it make the WordPress admin slow. The answer is relatively simple; there are times when you can have a conflict with one thing when you update the other.
When you have such a case, you may not have any other option except waiting for any patch to come through or try to go for an alternative. Until then, you can still go for the older version, but it is always recommended that you use a test site or the local host when you want to make any change to the WordPress or have an update. Therefore, if any problem occurs, the user experience will not be affected, and you won’t break the website.
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Increase the memory limit of WordPress
When you like to speed up the WordPress backend as the PHP limit on your WordPress may be set to too low, this may be causing the admin dashboard to be slow. Although the system default is 32MB, you always have the option of increasing it. The recommended PHP memory limit with WooCommerce is 64MB, and when the default memory limit is reached by WordPress, for a single site, it will try to increase the memory to 40MB, and for the multisite, it will go for 64MB.
Many experts recommend trying for a 128 PHP memory limit because this way, you will be able to have an extra room, and therefore, your overall performance will be boosted. If you have a resource-intensive site, then this could be the only reason why the PHP memory limit is not big enough for you.
The PHP memory limit can be increased in a manual way if it is allowed by your host. If the host doesn’t allow you to increase PHP manually, then you can ask the support if they are able to do it for you. You also have to find out the main reason what is using so much of the memory before increasing the memory limit in WordPress. When you throw more resources at a problem, then, in the long run, these could be costing you a lot more.
Change a Theme
You may find it quite weird, but a WordPress theme does have additional functionalities, and this can cause a WordPress admin slow. There are times when some features are added by the developers into the functions.php files. This way, part of your theme can start to behave like a plugin of sorts.
If you want to test and fix the issue, it will be best for you to go back to the default WordPress 2017 theme. Other than that, you can also go for the one that can easily be found on the fastest of the WordPress themes list. This is something important that you should be doing in order to improve the overall speed of your WordPress site.
Disable the unnecessary dashboard widgets
There are a lot of Widgets that may come with your WordPress dashboard, and you may not even be using or looking at those. If the problem still persists, the first thing you have to do is to log into WordPress, as turning them off can surely have a huge impact. This is the right time when the widgets are processed.
Other than that, you will find your dashboard to be looking a lot cleaner, and this will be less distracting for you. It is important to go to the Display Options for the dashboard panel if you like to remove any WordPress admin panel widgets. You can leave the essentials by unchecking the gadgets that you don’t require, and in the end, you can have a clean-looking dashboard. It will certainly be very helpful with your WP admin slow, as this will work things out for you.
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Summary
You and your team must be wondering why is your WordPress admin slow because it can become a big hassle, and not much work can be done with a slow dashboard. It could be quite frustrating to deal with a website that is performing in a poor way as you deserve to have success. Therefore, when you have a WordPress dashboard slow, it becomes very difficult to create or publish the content in a timely way. You need to have a unique approach to fix this, and some of the tips are using the latest PHP version and having quality hosting. In the end, the speed rating of your website can be checked by using GTmetrix and Google Page Speed in order to see how your pages are loading.
Also Read: WordPress Clean Database