WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems and also one of the most reliable. However, like any software platform, WordPress has its share of problems. Constant updates and bug fixes help keep the CMS running smoothly. But every site experiences outages or crashes from time to time. These problems are not necessarily problems in and of themselves, but they can cause problems if they become persistent. If you find that your WordPress site is constantly crashing or giving errors, read on to find out why this is happening and how you can fix it.
Determine if your site is crashing or slowing down.
If you find that your site is down, you need to determine the cause before doing anything else. There are many reasons why your site might crash. Here are some of the more common ones: – The error log is full. If your site is experiencing a lot of errors, the error log will quickly fill up. If you haven’t followed this log, it may be full, causing the site to crash. You should log into the control panel and clear the log as soon as possible. – Your hosting company is overloading their system. If your site crashes frequently and you don’t know why, chances are your host is in trouble. This is usually caused by a significant increase in traffic. If your site receives a lot of traffic, the hosting system may not be able to handle it, causing it to crash.
The cause of the problem could be WordPress updates.
WordPress is constantly updating its software and adding new features to the platform. This helps keep WordPress secure and also keeps it compatible with new software and technologies. However, while updates are designed to run smoothly, sometimes they can cause problems. More often than not, after an upgrade, you may find that your site is crashing. You may see a 404 error or the site may not load at all. If you’re experiencing a sudden spike in website issues after an update, it’s likely the problem is with the update itself. Your site may be down due to an update.
Too many plugins are to blame.
Plugins are a great way to add extra functionality to your WordPress site. They can help you add new features and take your site to the next level. Some of the most popular WordPress plugins include JetPack, Yoast SEO, and Google Analytics. However, if you have too many plugins installed, your site may crash because of them. This can happen for various reasons. The most common is the incompatibility of the plugin with the latest version of WordPress. If your site is experiencing an error, you should check the WordPress repository to see if there are any known issues with your plugins. If there are any, you should contact the developer and ask them to update the plugin. If there are no known issues, you may need to uninstall the plugin.
- Solution 1 – Try to selectively disable unused plugins.
- Solution 2. Try disabling all plugins one by one and find the plugin that is causing the problem.
Hosting issues are to blame.
If you’re not sure if the problem is with plugins or with WordPress itself, it might be worth checking with your hosting provider. Many hosting companies offer WordPress hosting. However, sometimes they provide hosting that is not compatible with WordPress. This can lead to various issues, including crashes. Before choosing a host, make sure it is compatible with WordPress.
Your WordPress installation is corrupted.
Sometimes the problem isn’t a WordPress update or an incompatibility with your site. Sometimes the problem is that your WordPress installation is corrupted. Luckily, this can be fixed using a few different methods.
- Solution 1: First, you need to make sure that you have the latest version of WordPress installed on your website. Next, you need to make sure that you are logged in as an administrator and that you have cleared your files. It’s possible that your installation is corrupted if your site crashes and you can’t access your dashboard.
This is due to incorrect settings.
If your site crashes, it’s important to make sure your settings are correct. The most common reason for a site to fail is a misconfiguration. Malicious hackers also sometimes target WordPress sites and try to change their configuration, causing the site to crash. You can avoid this by making sure all WordPress settings are correct.
You are using the wrong WordPress theme.
A WordPress theme is one of the most important aspects of your website. It defines how your site looks, how people interact with it, and how it functions. However, you must be sure that you are using a theme that is compatible with your version of WordPress. If you are using an older version of WordPress, using a newer theme may cause your site to crash. Likewise, if you are using a theme that is not compatible with your version of WordPress, it may crash your site.
- Solution 1: Check the compatibility of the theme with the current version of WordPress and update it if the version is incorrect.
- Solution 2: Try switching to a different WordPress theme and test your site with it.
Your site is media heavy.
If you visit a site that has a lot of images but still loads incredibly fast, it probably has a Content Delivery Network (CDN) in place. The CDN takes website static files such as CSS, images, and JavaScript and serves them on servers as close to the user’s physical location as possible. Large websites use CDNs to make sure their visitors from all over the world have the fastest experience possible, for example a user in Vancouver should have the same experience as a user in London. Today there are CDNs that are specific to WordPress, as well as a few that run on various other platforms.
- Solution. Connect CDN for your WordPress site. The WordPress directory is full of plugins and ready-made solutions (even free ones) for implementing a connection to a CDN.
Wrong caching.
Caching in general is when applications store data in memory for faster processing or access. Similarly, by enabling caching, you can preload parts of your website for faster access. You can take advantage of different caching modes, but they generally fall into two categories; client-side cache or server-side cache.
Client-side caching (usually browser caching) helps you determine which elements of your site are stored in a visitor’s web browser. It also allows you to specify how long to keep these elements, so that if your site is updated, the browser can update the cache with the updated elements. Browser caching works with static elements such as CSS, JS, and images.
Server side caching is any caching method implemented on your web server. These may include OPcode Caching, Page Caching, Database Caching, and so on. Each of these methods deals with different WordPress elements and using them can help improve our work. site performance.
- Solution 1: Install good caching plugins. Caching is one of the most important ways to greatly improve the performance of your WordPress website. Luckily, as with everything related to WordPress, there are plugins you can use to help with this. There are many good WordPress caching plugins on the market
- Solution 2: Enable OPCache on your website. By copying the compiled opcodes of PHP scripts, OPcache allows sites to serve page content much faster. The good news is that most shared hosting providers allow their users to install the OPcache extension from their control panel. So – to use this option to load your site faster, just log into your hosting control panel and enable this feature.
Legacy PHP.
WordPress is based on PHP and the version of PHP your server is running on can also affect the performance of your site. PHP 7 has been tested to outperform PHP 5.6 almost twice as fast – that’s a 100% performance boost!
- Solution: Update Your Site’s PHP Version If you’re using an older version of PHP, it’s likely that you’ll see some pretty good speed improvements just by choosing the newer version of PHP. Most web hosting providers offer several versions of PHP that you can choose from in your web hosting control panel.
Outdated protocol.
HTTP/2 is the “New” Internet Protocol which was introduced in 2015. Unlike the previous version of HTTP 1.1, it allows multiple data requests to be made at the same time. This helps reduce the loading time of your website resources.
- Solution: Implement HTTP/2. However, despite this, some web hosts still don’t offer HTTP/2, or only offer it at more expensive rates. There are two ways to take advantage of HTTP/2; find a host that offers it, or use the Cloudflare CDN.
Large media files.
While large, crisp images or captivating videos can be a sight to behold, remember that these media files are often large. As practice shows, the larger the file size, the more time it takes to download it. This does not mean that you should completely abandon them, but at the very least, be sure to optimize your files.
- Solution: compress images. Images can be scaled down a bit, and using the correct format can help reduce the size as well. For example, a BMP file is usually larger than a GIF or JPG file. To optimize images, you can do it manually with an external service or with an image compression plugin.
Can Product Filter slow down my site?
If you are convinced that your WordPress site is not working correctly but the WordPress version is up to date, disabling other plugins one by one did not give any results, the theme is compatible with the current version of wordpress, and replacing it does not change the fact that the site is still slow and gives errors – then perhaps the problem is related to the use of our filtering plugin.
Let’s see in which cases the filtering plugin can slow down the work and what can be done about it.
- Too large product base. Although we guarantee the fastest product filtering on the market, too large a database can slow down the filtering. But we are working daily on solutions to make filtering even faster. We recommend using loader and pagination to display products.
- Product images are not optimized. As we mentioned earlier, multimedia files are often large and in addition to the fact that the filter must almost instantly find a selection of the desired products, then it also needs to display them instantly, with all the data and media. Therefore, it is worth taking media optimization very seriously.
- Recount Products Yes, recalculation allows you to automatically change the counters of filter parameters, depending on the parameters already selected, but this feature requires a lot of resources, and if you notice that filtering has started to work more slowly, then disable this option.
- You may have enabled the option “Apply Parameters From The Address Bar To Display Filter Items”, try disabling it and check if it works (options->content).
- Filtering by meta fields. Some plugins create separate meta fields for Woocommerce products. WooCommerce Product Filter fully supports filtering custom meta fields. With the help of the plugin, you can create a separate filter for any meta field and the standard woocommerce scu, weight, etc., but this can slow down the filter significantly.
- Force theme template. Ajax filtering fetches products according to the specified criteria in the filter, and then passes the resulting set of data through the WooCommerce template, which is used by default to build the store page. AJAX filtering + Force theme template works differently: when Force Theme Templates is enabled, the filter requests the entire page via AJAX (not just the product block), and when received, it looks for the same product block on the page. When it finds it, it cuts out this block and replaces the current block with products on the page with a block with filtering results. Accordingly, it takes resources and filtering can work a little slower.
- Recalculate filter. This option recalculates all filters considering third-party filters from other plugins on the page. For example, if the products on the page with the woobewoo already been pre-filtered by some third-party filter plugin, as a result of which the counters do not work correctly. But be careful, with this option enabled, the filter may work slowly if the product database is large.
- Lots of products per page. Use pagination for filter results to speed up page loading. You can set fewer products per page and products per row in Options->Set Number Of Displayed Products to load the page faster (don’t forget to duplicate this value in the general settings).
- Lots of options in filter/products. A very logical item, but we still decided to add it to the list. The more parameters added to each filter, the more taxonomies assigned to the product, the longer the filter will process.
- The filter may run slowerwhen users make each filter section a separate filter and synchronize them. In order for the filter to work faster, it is better to combine different blocks into a single filter.
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember when dealing with a problem like a broken website is not to panic. It is important to correctly diagnose the problem in order to resolve it as quickly as possible. If you follow the steps in this article, you should be able to determine the cause of your site’s failure. Armed with this knowledge, you can quickly fix the problem and get your site back up and running.