Wordpress Site Running Extremely Slow on Dedicated Server

Question

I have a wordpress site (link here) which runs the WooCommerce and WooZone Amazon Affiliates plugins.

I have been working to optimise this site and get it running as quick as possible. Unfortunately, despite my efforts, it seems that every page takes at least 7 plus seconds to load.

I have utilised several plugins to help increase the response time such as W3 Total Cache, WP Smush and WP Sweep. I have also optimised the database which is now roughly 80Mb in size.

When studying the site performance using the Pingdom Speed Test site (as well as others) I have found that the site scores quite highly on the performance grade. Another thing I also notice is that the majority of the lag time seems to come from waiting for a response from the server. The site is hosted on a dedicated GoDaddy server. This is not on a managed package and I am not very familiar with server maintenance so I am wondering if there is something I can do to speed up the site at the server end.

I think I have explored every avenue apart from the server and from my research it does seem to be the server which is slowing the site down. I am paying a huge amount for this dedicated server so it is really important that I make the best use of it.

Any help or suggestions would be greatfully received.

Answer 1

For the Wordpress side of things, to manually audit a Wordpress's sites speed on a server, to accurately identify the lagging culprit, I would

---

1) See if a basic php script is slow

make a test.php file with

<?php for ($i = 1; $i != 300; $i++) { echo "{$i}<br />"; } ?>

If that page takes a while and isn't near instant, andor pingdom returns server response delays, your servers configured poorly andor your host is bad.

If not, continue

---

2) See if the database is slow

Do a basic php mysql test to your Wordpress database, https://www.w3schools.com/php/php_mysql_connect.asp do something like read the table names

If that page isn't instant, your mysql database is slow and needs some attention. If not, continue

---

3) See if its the third party Wordpress plugins/themes are slow.

Disable all plugins and change theme to twenty-x theme. Load a page that has little no no inline images or videos. If site is still slow, it's for sure the dedicated server, if its fast, then its a plugin or a theme slowing you down.

Add plugins back one-by-one, checking the load times until the sluggishness starts again. That'll pinpoint the culprit. and lastly the theme.

(Additionally https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/ and https://github.com/Rarst/laps seem to be cool ways to see query and load times within Wordpress)

---

Now, if it is just the dedicated server being slow, it's (arguably) a lot of work maintaining, refining, optimizing, and securing. There's hundreds of small things you can do to increase speed of your servers stack and have it running smoothly, along with setting up things to monitor resource stats and create notifications, etc. But being dedicated virtual, all that responsibility lands on you (and possibly you're plesk/cpanel). Imho, its a lot of work and takes a lot of time.

The alternative to having to be part-time server admin, would be instead using somthing like GoDaddy has "Pro Wordpress hosting" https://godaddy.com/hosting/pro-wordpress-hosting - I normally don't support GD, but they've made the pricing really affordable, and they've setup the servers to be optimized for Wordpress developers (and they do all the server work - giving you more time to focus on just Wordpress). These environments are better than shared, and not as tedious as DV. Bluehost https://www.bluehost.com/products/wordpress-hosting and basically all the top dogs all have it as well.