WordPress Admin Slow? 6 Tips to Fix It

Do you experience slowness while using the WordPress Admin Dashboard?

Let me tell you, WordPress is an excellent Content Management System. However, it also has a lot of problems.

Sometimes the WordPress admin dashboard gets slow. It prevents you from managing your website. And, it will be the kind of situation that you will hate. I know that very well.

Fortunately, you do not always have to put up with the slow-running WordPress admin dashboard.

We have a lot of options for speeding up your WordPress admin dashboard. These include updating your PHP and increasing your memory limit.

Your WordPress admin dashboard will run faster than before if you follow my instructions. This will help you administer your WordPress website even quicker and more efficiently.

This article will show you six quick fixes to the slow WordPress admin panel.

I will try to explain these techniques to troubleshoot the slowness and successfully resolve it. Come on, let’s make your WordPress admin panel run faster.

Please note that I haven’t listed these methods in any particular order. If you are still experiencing slow WordPress admin performance, you should try all of them.

1 – Update Your PHP Version

PHP is the programming language used to build WordPress and many other applications. PHP is an open-source language, and it runs on your web server.

You can imagine PHP as the scripting language used to run the WordPress website and display its pages normally.

PHP is, however, a constantly changing language. Updating the language can speed up your website and improve its performance.

You may experience a slow admin panel on your site if you’re running an outdated version of PHP. So I always recommend you stay up to date with your PHP version to get the maximum performance and security enhancements.

Before updating your PHP version, I suggest you check and know the current PHP version your website is using.

You can quickly find out what PHP version your WordPress website is running on. To find this out, log into your WordPress dashboard.

Now let’s go to the Tools menu and click on the Site Health sub-menu.

You can see the Info tab next to the Status tab on the site health page. Click on the Info tab and scroll down to see the Server section.

Now click on the Server, and it will expand the details underneath. There you can see your current PHP version active on your WordPress site.

Okay, now you know the current PHP version installed on your website. We need to update the PHP version if a newer version is available.

So how do we know if there is any latest PHP version available?

Click on this PHP download link, and you will see the latest stable version listed there.

If any newer version of PHP is available, you can quickly go ahead and upgrade your current PHP version.

Suppose your website is hosted on Rovity’s Cloud Network. In that case, upgrading or switching the PHP version is as easy as just toggling a button.

So now we are going to upgrade our PHP version. But before that, you need to make sure that your WordPress core, installed themes, and plugins are all up to date.

Otherwise, there is a higher chance that you will encounter the incompatibility issue. I’m sure that you don’t want to see that happen.

Now you need to log into your DirectAdmin control panel.

Click on the Select PHP version icon under the Extra Features section.

Here you can see the current PHP version.

Click on the drop-down menu and choose the next available PHP version.

Once you select your preferred PHP version from the drop-down menu, you can see a new link called Set as Current.

Simply clicking on that will update your PHP version.

That’s it; you are now using the latest available PHP version.

2 – Increase Your WordPress Memory Limit

PHP limits the amount of memory your WordPress site can use.

This PHP memory limit determines the amount of memory any PHP function can run to process your website.

Suppose this PHP memory limit got set to too low. Then your website will struggle to complete its essential functionalities. And indeed, your WordPress admin panel will be slower.

PHP’s standard memory limit is 32 MB. However, if you have many plugins and run multiple processes, this memory limit would be insufficient. An example use case is running any e-commerce website.

Fortunately, you can quickly increase your PHP memory limit. There are a couple of ways, and I’m going to show you the easiest method.

I hope you still remember where we changed the PHP version.

Now go back there, and you can see the Options tab there. Click on it.

Now scroll down a bit, and you will see memory_limit with a drop-down menu next to it.

Now click on that drop-down menu, and choose the next preferred value as your memory limit for your PHP.

Rovity’s system will save the changes automatically as soon as you click on the selected value. You don’t need to click on any other button to make the changes saved.

3 – Remove Bloated WordPress Plugins

Unfortunately, the WordPress core itself is not a well-optimized CMS.
The performance will drastically decrease when you install bloated plugins on top of WordPress.

For example, suppose you use any analytics plugin that is not well optimized at the code level. In that case, there is a higher chance that that single plugin itself will cause you to slow down your admin panel.

So if you have so many WordPress plugins installed, pinpointing which plugin is causing the error will take enough time. It will be a time-consuming job to find it out.

So the best strategy is to limit the number of plugins.

No, I am not saying that you shouldn’t install plugins. However, I am saying that limiting the number of plugins that you install is a good idea, and you should cherry-pick the plugins based on their performance.

Now let me tell you a one-liner that makes your WordPress website’s performance a reality. I’m saying this based on the industry’s best performance practices.

Whether it’s a plugin or the theme you use, the more it contacts external servers, the slower your website will be.

Whether it’s the front end or the back end, you limit your website by relying on external services as much as you can. You try this, and your performance will dramatically improve.

One of the solid examples is to stop using Google fonts directly and host the fonts locally. You will see instant page speed improvements.

Okay, I said you need to cherry-pick the best plugin based on the performance. Now, I’m going to explain that with an example.

This example will give you a new perspective on the plugin you use for your WordPress websites.

Usually, we all love to get services from big brands, whether it’s a plugin, theme, or hosting. But at least sometimes we should not depend on big brands, and instead, there will be a better alternative that will work out of the box.

Akismet is a popular plugin to combat spam comments. But to prevent spam comments, using this plugin is a terrible idea. This plugin is heavy, and I can tell you a better alternative.

Akismet often keeps spam comments for your review inside your WordPress admin, which is like a semi-automated method.

Now I am recommending you use the Forget Spam Comment plugin. It is a better, tiny, and intelligent alternative to Akismet.

There is no need to set up something manually when using this plugin. You won’t see any spam comments that are waiting for your approval. This plugin works out of the box.

You install it, and I’m sure that you will never see a spam comment on your WordPress site again.

So now disable such heavy plugins on your admin panel and see if you can load the admin dashboard without the slowness.

4 – Limit the WordPress Heartbeat API

The WordPress Heartbeat API allows your browser to communicate with your web server without making a page reload.

I’m sure that you have noticed WordPress will automatically save your work. For example, when you draft a blog post or design a page, WordPress will autosave them. WordPress Heartbeat API is doing that. It has to do many other functions as well.

Sometimes the WordPress Heartbeat API will also slow down your admin panel.

Due to the nature of its responsibilities, it causes to increase the CPU usage. And too many requests that this API generates will also slow down your hosting server.

We can disable this API altogether or limit API usage as a solution.

I recommend you limit the usage instead of disabling it entirely. If we disable this API, its good-to-have features like AutoSave will stop working.

Consider a situation where the auto-save feature is unavailable, and you forgot to save. You will lose your work.

Do you want that to happen? I bet you don’t.

Suppose you are already using performance optimization and caching plugins like WP Rocket.

Then that plugin will have native support to limit heartbeat API. So you can use that plugin to control the heartbeat API hit per minute.

5 – Optimize Your WordPress Database

Your WordPress database holds so much critical data along with some leftover data that is unwanted. I can tell you some examples of usage of these unused data, such as post revisions, spam comments, orphaned options, and transients.

Over time, this database will become large and bloated due to the unwanted information it holds. And unfortunately, this excess data will slow down the admin panel and affect the performance of your WordPress website.

So as a next step, I recommend you look at your database and if needed, let’s clear it.

Performance optimization plugins like WP Rocket have built-in database cleaning modules. So you can use that.

There are some stand-alone and dedicated database cleaning plugins to use that too.

I recommend you backup your WordPress website before cleaning up the database. Because once you have done the database cleanup process, there is no way to undo it from the plugin interface.

6 – Change Your Hosting Provider

Suppose you tried all of the above methods, and none of them helped you fix the slow WordPress admin dashboard. In that case, I recommend you change the web hosting service provider you use.

No matter where you host your website, there is a chance that your current setup may not meet the requirements.

Modern web hosting service providers like Rovity are brilliant enough to flawlessly manage your WordPress admin dashboard. However, if you still experience the slow admin panel, you can consider migrating to Rovity’s premium cloud hosting.

As you can see in the example above, we have all the tools to let you manage your WordPress website and make sure that it runs faster and is optimized.

We can even offer you a staging server where you can compare your current host with our servers side by side. For this, you don’t need to migrate your production website to Rovity.

This will help you pinpoint the best suitable hosting requirement for your website.

I hope you will find my above suggestions to make your WordPress admin dashboard load faster than before.

If you have found any other method that will work, please share that in the comment section below.

Are you looking for shared hosting services that dramatically improve the loading speed of your WordPress website? Then please give a try to Rovity’s cloud-based hosting servers.

I am sure that you will love Rovity’s high-quality premium services.