Instructions to back up your WordPress site include:

1. WordPress Site and your WordPress Database
2. Automatic WordPress backup options

In addition, support is provided online at the WordPress Support Forum to help you through the process.

Site backups are essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website.

Backup Questions #

Back up your database regularly, and always before an upgrade.

How often should you back up?

That depends on how often you blog, how often you want to do this, and how you would feel if your database were lost along with a few posts. It is your decision.

Can you use this method to back up other data?

Yes. Backups are good all around.

How many backups should I keep?

The general rule of thumb is to keep at least three backups and keep them in three different places or forms, like CD/DVDs, different hard drives, a thumbdrive, web disk, your e-mail account, etc. This prevents problems if a single backup becomes corrupted or damaged.

Can backups be automated?

Yes. There are several methods of automating the backup process available, and we’ve listed some in the Automatic WordPress backup section. However, it is highly recommended that you back up those auto backups with a manual backup once in a while to guarantee that the process is working.

Is there more information on backing up WordPress available?

Yes. See Backup Resources for more information.

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Backup Documentation #

The following are general documents for helping you to back up and restore your WordPress data.

• Backing Up Your Database
• Restoring Your Database From Backup

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Backing Up Your WordPress Site #

There are two parts to backing up your WordPress site: Database and Files. You need to back up the entire site, and you need to back up your WordPress database. Below are instructions for backing up your WordPress database for various server programs. We will start with backing up the rest of your WordPress site.

Your WordPress site consists of the following:

1. WordPress Core installation
2. WordPress plugins
3. WordPress themes
4. Images and files
5. JavaScript, PHP, and other code files
6. Additional files and static web pages

All of these are used in various combinations to generate your website. The database contains your posts and a lot of data generated on your site, but it does not include the above elements that all come together to create the look and information on your site. These need to be saved.

Most hosts back up the entire server, including your site, but it takes time to request a copy of your site from their backups, and a speedy recovery is critical. You need to learn how to back up your own site files and restore them.

Here are some methods to backup your site files:
Website Host Provided Backup Software

Most website hosts provide software to back up your site. Check with your host to find out what services and programs they provide.

Create Sync With Your Site

WinSCP and other programs allow you to sync with your website to keep a mirror copy of the content on your server and hard drive updated. It saves time and makes sure you have the latest files in both places.

Copy Your Files to Your Desktop

Using FTP Clients or UNIX Shell Skills you can copy the files to a folder on your computer. Once there, you can compress them into a zip file to save space, allowing you to keep several versions.

Remember, keep at least three backups on file, just in case one is corrupted or lost, and store them in different places and on different mediums (such as CD’s, DVDs or hard drives).

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Database Backup Instructions #

Back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or a move to a new location. The following information will help you back up your WordPress database using various popular server software packages. For detailed information, contact your website host for more information.

Accessing phpMyAdmin #

See phpMyAdmin for more information on phpMyAdmin.

While familiarity with phpMyAdmin is not necessary to back up your WordPress database, these instructions should take you step-by-step through the process of finding phpMyAdmin on your server. Then you can follow the instructions below as a simple and easy backup. For more detailed instructions, see Backing Up Your Database.

• Plesk
• cPanel
• Direct Admin
• Ensim
• vDeck
• Ferozo

Plesk #

On your Websites & Domains screen, click Open button corresponding to the database you have set up during the WordPress installation. This will open phpMyAdmin interface:

If you cannot see the Open button, make sure to close the Start creating your website prompt:

Click Select Existing Database to find select your WordPress database:

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cPanel #

On your main control panel for cPanel, look for the MySQL logo and click the link to MySQL Databases. On the next page, look for phpMyAdmin link and click it to access your phpMyAdmin.

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Direct Admin #

From Your Account page, look for MySQL Management and click it to access phpMyAdmin.

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Ensim #

Look for the MySQL Admin logo and click the link. Under Configuration choose MySQL Administration Tool.

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vDeck #

From the main control panel, click Host Manager, then click Databases. In the next window, click Admin. Another window will popup taking you to the phpMyAdmin login screen.

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Ferozo #

Login to your Ferozo Control Panel by using your credentials. Once inside, go to the “Base de Datos” (“Data Base”) menu and then click on “Acceso phpMyAdmin” (“Access phpMyAdmin”). A new window will open displaying the phpMyAdmin login screen.

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Simple Backup with phpMyAdmin #

The following is a very simple version of Backing Up Your Database. Once you have discovered how to access your site’s phpMyAdmin, follow these simple instructions.

1. Click on Databases in your phpMyAdmin panel. (It may not be necessary to do this, depending on your version of phpMyAdmin)

2. You may have several databases. Click the one that holds your WordPress data, the database you created when you installed WordPress. (In older versions this may be done through a pull-down menu.)
3. Below is a picture of the default tables in the Structure view tab. You may have more tables — this would happen if you have any statistics plugins or anti-spam plugins.

4. Click Export.
   There are two methods to export, Quick and Custom; if you choose Custom, follow these steps:

5. Select all the tables.
6. In the Output section check Save output to a file and select None for Compression. (If your database is very large use a compression method)
7. Select SQL from the Format drop-down menu.
8. Check “Add DROP TABLE”: this can be useful for over-writing an existing database.
9. Check “IF NOT EXISTS”: this prevents errors during restores if the tables are already there.
10. Click Go. The data will now be saved into your computer.

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Automatic Backups #

Various plugins exist to take automatic scheduled backups of your WordPress database. This helps to manage your backup collection easily. You can find automatic backup plugins in the Plugin Browser on the WordPress Administration Screens or through the WordPress Plugin Directory.

• List of Backup Plugins

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Backup Resources #

• FTP Backups – How to automate backing up to an FTP server
• Incremental Backups – How to make encrypted incremental backups using duplicity
• Backing Up Your Database
• Backing Up Your WordPress Files
• Restoring Your Database From Backup
• Using phpMyAdmin with WordPress

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Backup Tools #

• Using phpMyAdmin
• FTP Clients
• Using FileZilla

The post WordPress Backups first appeared on CODIBU.

phpMyAdmin is a program used to manipulate databases remotely through a web interface. A good hosting package will have this included. For information on backing up your WordPress database, see Backing Up Your Database.

Information here has been tested using phpMyAdmin 4.0.5 running on Unix.

The following instructions will replace your current database with the backup, reverting your database to the state it was in when you backed up.

Restore Process #

Using phpMyAdmin, follow the steps below to restore a MySQL/MariaDB database.

1. Login to phpMyAdmin.
2. Click “Databases” and select the database that you will be importing your data into.
3. You will then see either a list of tables already inside that database or a screen that says no tables exist. This depends on your setup.
4. Across the top of the screen will be a row of tabs. Click the Import tab.
5. On the next screen will be a location of text file box, and next to that a button named Browse.
6. Click Browse. Locate the backup file stored on your computer.
7. Make sure SQL is selected in the Format drop-down menu.
8. Click the Go button.

Now grab a coffee. This bit takes a while. Eventually you will see a success screen.

If you get an error message, your best bet is to post to the WordPress support forums to get help.

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Using MySQL/MariaDB Commands #

The restore process consists of unarchiving your archived database dump, and importing it into your MySQL/MariaDB database.

Assuming your backup is a .bz2 file, created using instructions similar to those given for Backing up your database using MySQL/MariaDB commands, the following steps will guide you through restoring your database:

1. Unzip your .bz2 file:

user@linux:~/files/blog> bzip2 -d blog.bak.sql.bz2

Note: If your database backup was a .tar.gz file called blog.bak.sql.tar.gz, then

tar -zxvf blog.bak.sql.tar.gz

is the command that should be used instead of the above.

1. Put the backed-up SQL back into MySQL/MariaDB:

user@linux:~/files/blog> mysql -h mysqlhostserver -u mysqlusername -p databasename < blog.bak.sql

Enter password: (enter your mysql password) 
user@linux:~/files/blog>

The post Restoring Your Database From Backup first appeared on CODIBU.

Moving to a New Server #

If you are moving WordPress from one server to another, begin by backing up your WordPress directory, images, plugins, and other files on your site as well as the database. See WordPress Backups and Backing Up Your Database.

Keeping Your Domain Name and URLs #

Moving your domain without changing the Home and Site URLs of your WordPress site is very simple, and in most cases can be done by moving the files.

• If database and URL remain the same, you can move by just copying your files and database.
• If database name or user changes, edit wp-config.php to have the correct values.
• If you want to test before you switch, you must temporarily change “siteurl” and “home” in the database table “wp_options” (through phpMyAdmin or similar).
• If you had any kind of rewrites (permalinks) setup you must disable .htaccess and reconfigure permalinks when it goes live.

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Changing Your Domain Name and URLs #

Moving a website and changing your domain name or URLs (i.e. from http://example.com/site to http://example.com, or http://example.com to http://example.net) requires the following steps – in sequence.

1. Download your existing site files.
2. Export your database – go in to MySQL and export the database.
3. Move the backed up files and database into a new folder – somewhere safe – this is your site backup.
4. Log in to the site you want to move and go to Settings > General, then change the URLs. (ie from http://example.com/ to http://example.net ) – save the settings and expect to see a 404 page.
5. Download your site files again.
6. Export the database again.
7. Edit wp-config.php with the new server’s MySQL database name, user and password.
8. Upload the files.
9. Import the database on the new server.

When your domain name or URLs change there are additional concerns. The files and database can be moved, however references to the old domain name or location will remain in the database, and that can cause issues with links or theme display.

If you do a search and replace on your entire database to change the URLs, you can cause issues with data serialization, due to the fact that some themes and widgets store values with the length of your URL marked. When this changes, things break. To avoid that serialization issue, you have three options:

1. Use the Velvet Blues Update URLs or Better Search Replace plugins if you can access your Dashboard.
2. Use WP-CLI’s search-replace if your hosting provider (or you) have installed WP-CLI.
3. Use the Search and Replace for WordPress Databases Script to safely change all instances on your old domain or path to your new one. (** only use this option if you are comfortable with database administration ** )

Note: Only perform a search and replace on the wp_posts table.
Note: Search and Replace from Interconnectit is a 3rd party script

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Moving Directories On Your Existing Server #

Moving the WordPress files from one location on your server to another – i.e. changing its URL – requires some special care. If you want to move WordPress to its own folder, but have it run from the root of your domain, please read Giving WordPress Its Own Directory for detailed instructions.

Here are the step-by-step instructions to move your WordPress site to a new location on the same server:

1. Create the new location using one of these two options:
   1. If you will be moving your WordPress core files to a new directory, create the new directory.If you want to move WordPress to your root directory, make sure all index.php, .htaccess, and other files that might be copied over are backed up and/or moved, and that the root directory is ready for the new WordPress files.
2. Log in to your site.
3. Go to the Administration > Settings > General screen.
4. In the box for WordPress Address (URL): change the address to the new location of your main WordPress core files.
5. In the box for Site Address (URL): change the address to the new location, which should match the WordPress (your public site) address.
6. Click Save Changes.
7. (Do not try to open/view your site now!)
8. Move your WordPress core files to the new location. This includes the files found within the original directory, such as http://example.com/wordpress, and all the sub-directories, to the new location.
9. Now, try to open your site by going to yourdomain.com/wp-admin. Note, you may need to go to yourdomain.com/wp-login.php
10. If you are using Permalinks, go to the Administration > Settings > Permalinks panel and update your Permalink structure to your .htaccess, file, which should be in the same directory as the main index.php file.
11. Existing image/media links uploaded media will refer to the old folder and must be updated with the new location. You can do this with the Better Search Replace or Velvet Blues Update URLs plugins, WP-CLI’s search-replace if your hosting provider (or you) have installed WP-CLI, manually in your SQL database, or by using the 3rd party database updating tool Search and Replace Databases Script * Note: this script is best used by experienced developers.
12. In some cases your permissions may have changed, depending on your ISP. Watch for any files with “0000” permissions and change them back to “0644”.
13. If your theme supports menus, links to your home page may still have the old subdirectory embedded in them. Go to Appearance > Menus and update them.
14. Sometimes you would need to restart your server, otherwise your server may give out an error. (happens in MAMP software (Mac)).

It is important that you set the URI locations BEFORE you move the files.

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If You Forget to Change the Locations #

If you accidentally moved the files before you changed the URIs: you have two options.

1. Suppose the files were originally in /path/to/old/ and you moved them to /path/to/new before changing the URIs. The way to fix this would be to make /path/to/old/ a symlink (for Windows users, “symlink” is equivalent to “shortcut”) to /path/to/new/, i.e.
   ln -s /path/to/new /path/to/old
   and then follow the steps above as normal. Afterwards, delete the symlink if you want.
2. If you forget to change the WordPress Address and Blog Address, you will be unable to change it using the wordpress interface. However, you can fix it if you have access to the database. Go to the database of your site and find the wp_options table. This table stores all the options that you can set in the interface. The WordPress Address and Blog Address are stored as siteurl and home (the option_name field). All you have to do is change the option_value field to the correct URL for the records with option_name=’siteurl‘ or option_name=’home‘.

Note: Sometimes, the WordPress Address and Blog Address are stored in WordPress Transients. Search and replace scripts can have trouble modifying those to the new address and some plugins might therefore refer to the old address because of them. Transients are temporary (cached) values stored in the wp_options database table that can be recreated on-demand when removed. It’s therefore safe to delete them from the migrated database copy and let them be recreated. This database query (again, have a backup!) clears all transients:

DELETE FROM `wp_options` WHERE option_name LIKE '%_transient_%'

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If You Have Accidentally Changed your WordPress Site URL #

Suppose you accidentally changed the URIs where you cannot move the files (but can still access the login page, through a redirection or something).

wp-login.php can be used to (re-)set the URIs. Find this line:

require( dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-load.php' );

and insert the following lines below:

//FIXME: do comment/remove these hack lines. (once the database is updated)
update_option('siteurl', 'http://your.domain.name/the/path' );
update_option('home', 'http://your.domain.name/the/path' );

You’re done. Test your site to make sure that it works right. If the change involves a new address for your site, make sure you let people know the new address, and consider adding some redirection instructions in your .htaccess file to guide visitors to the new location.

Changing The Site URL also provides the details of this process.

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Managing Your Old Site #

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Shutting It Down #

1. Download a copy of the main wordpress files from your OLD site to your hard drive and edit wp-config.php to suit the new server.
2. Go back to your OLD site and go to Administration > Settings > General screen and change the URL (both of them) to that of your new site.
3. Login on your server, go to phpMyAdmin, export as file, and save your database (but keep the old one just in case). Now, upload this new database and the copy of the wordpress core files with the edited wp-config.php to your new server. That’s it!

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Keeping it Running #

Caution: Make sure you have a backup of your old site’s WordPress database before proceeding!

Part A – Activating Your New Site

1. Download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your OLD site’s installation.
2. Download your database.
3. Go back to your OLD site and go to options and change the url (both of them) to that of your new site.
4. Again, download your entire WordPress installation to your hard drive. Name the folder appropriately to indicate that this is your NEW site’s installation.
5. Download your database once again (but keep the old one). Upload this database to your new server. It will be easiest if you use the same database name and you create a user with the same login credentials on your new server as on your old server.
6. If you used a different database name and/or user (see previous step), edit wp-config.php in your NEW site’s installation folder appropriately.
7. Upload the NEW site’s installation folder to your new site. Presto, your NEW site should be working!

Part B – Restoring Your Old Site

1. On the original server, delete your OLD site’s database (remember, you should have a copy on your local computer that you made at the very beginning).
2. Upload your OLD site’s installation folder to your original server, overwriting the files that are currently there (you may also delete the installation folder on the server and simply re-upload the OLD site’s files).
3. Upload your OLD site’s database from your local computer to the server. That should do it!

Another procedure for making copies of posts, comments, pages, categories and custom field (post status, data, permalinks, ping status, etc.) easy to follow:

1. Install a new WordPress site
2. Go on old site Admin panel. Here, in Manage > Export select “all” in menu Restrict Author.
3. Click on Download Export File
4. In new site go on Manage > Import, choose WordPress item.
5. In the page that will be shown, select the file just exported. Click on Upload file and Import
6. It will appear a page. In Assign Authors, assign the author to users that already exist or create new ones.
7. Click on Submit
8. At the end, click on Have fun

Note: using this method, if there are some articles in the new site (like Hello World, Info Page, etc.), these will not be erased. Articles are only added. Using the former procedure, the articles in new site will be deleted.

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Moving WordPress Multisite #

Multisite is somewhat more complicated to move, as the database itself has multiple references to the server name as well as the folder locations. If you’re simply moving to a new server with the same domain name, you can copy the files and database over, exactly as you would a traditional install.

If, instead, you are changing domains, then the best way to move Multisite is to move the files, edit the .htaccess and wp-config.php (if the folder name containing Multisite changed), and then manually edit the database. Search for all instances of your domain name, and change them as needed. This step cannot yet be easily automated. It’s safe to search/replace any of the wp_x_posts tables, however do not attempt blanket search/replace without the Search and Replace for WordPress Databases script (aka the interconnectit script).

If you’re moving Multisite from one folder to another, you will need to make sure you edit the wp_blogs entries to change the folder name correctly. You should manually review both wp_site and wp_blogs regardless, to ensure all sites were changed correctly.

Also, manually review all the wp_x_options tables and look for three fields and edit them as needed:

• home
• siteurl
• fileupload_url

If you are moving from subdomains to subfolders, or vice-versa, remember to adjust the .htaccess file and the value for SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL in your wp-config.php file accordingly.

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Related Links #

• How to move WordPress site to another server with zero downtime
• Moving a blog from wordpress.com to self-hosted blog
• Moving WordPress to a new domain or server
• Italian version of this article – Versione italiana dell’articolo
• How to move a WordPress Blog or Website
• Search and Replace for WordPress Databases
• Online WordPress Serialized PHP Search and Replace
• Cloning a live WordPress site to a local Mac test environment
• PHP script to replace site url in WordPress database dump, even with WPML
• The Duplicator plugin helps administrators move a site from one location to another
• Technical tutorial on moving your WordPress blog to Bitnami’s AWS configuration

The post Moving WordPress first appeared on CODIBU.

If you need a quick fix now, go straight to the Caching section, you’ll get the biggest benefit for the smallest hassle there. If you want to get started on a more thorough optimization process immediately, go to How Do You Improve Performance in WordPress.

A broad overview of the topic of performance is included below in What Affects Performance and How Do You Measure Performance. Many of the techniques discussed here also apply to WordPress Multisite (MU).

Performance factors #

Several factors can affect the performance of your WordPress blog (or website). Those factors include, but are not limited to, the hosting environment, WordPress configuration, software versions, number of graphics and their sizes.

Most of these performance degrading factors are addressed here in this article.

Hosting #

The optimization techniques available to you will depend on your hosting setup.

Shared Hosting #

This is the most common type of hosting. Your site will be hosted on a server along with many others. The hosting company manage the web server for you, so you have very little control over server settings and so on.

The areas most relevant to this type of hosting are: Caching, WordPress Performance and Content Offloading

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Virtual Hosting and Dedicated Servers #

In this hosting scenario you have control over your own server. The server might be a dedicated piece of hardware or one of many virtual servers sharing the same physical hardware.

The key thing is, you have control over the server settings. In addition to the areas above (caching and WordPress performance, the key areas of interest here are: Server Optimization and Content Offloading

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Number of Servers #

When dealing with very high traffic situations it may be necessary to employ multiple servers. If you’re at this level, you should already have employed all of the applicable techniques listed above.

The WordPress database can be easily moved to a different server and only requires a small change to the config file. Likewise images and other static files can be moved to alternative servers (see content offloading).

Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancer can help spread traffic across multiple web servers but requires a higher level of expertise. If you’re employing multiple database servers, the HyperDB class provides a drop-in replacement for the standard WPDB class, and can handle multiple database servers in both replicated and partitioned structures.

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Hardware Performance #

Your hardware capability will have a huge impact on your site performance. The number of processors, the processor speed, the amount of available memory and disk space as well as the disk storage medium are important factors. Hosting providers generally offer higher performance for a higher price.

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Geographical distance #

The distance between your server and your website visitors also has an impact on performance. A Content Delivery Network or CDN can mirror static files (like images) across various geographic regions so that all your site visitors have optimal performance.

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Server Load #

The amount of traffic on your server and how it’s configured to handle the load will have a huge impact as well. For example, if you don’t use a caching solution, performance will slow to a halt as additional page requests come in and stack up, often crashing your web or database server.

If configured properly, most hosting solutions can handle very high traffic amounts. Offloading traffic to other servers can also reduce server load.

Abusive traffic such as login Brute Force attacks, image hotlinking (other sites linking to your image files from high traffic pages) or DoS attacks can also increase server load. Identifying and blocking these attacks is very important.

Software version & performance

Making sure you are using the latest software is also important, as software upgrades often fix bugs and enhance performance. Making sure you’re running the latest version of Linux (or Windows), Apache, MySQL/MariaDB and PHP is very important.

WORDPRESS CONFIGURATION

Your theme will have a huge impact on the performance of your site. A fast, lightweight theme will perform much more efficiently than a heavy graphic-laden inefficient one.

The number of plugins and their performance will also have a huge impact on your site’s performance. Deactivating and deleting unnecessary plugins is a very important way to improve performance.

Keeping up with WordPress upgrades is also important.

SIZE OF GRAPHICS

Making sure the images in your posts are optimized for the web can save time, bandwidth and increase your search engine ranking.

Performance testing tools

• Webpagetest is a tool for testing real life website performance from different locations, browsers and connection speeds.
• Google PageSpeed Insights is way to measure your WordPress site’s performance and receive clear, specific feedback on how to make improvements.
• The built-in browser developer tools (ie. Firefox or Chrome) all have performance measurement tools.

How to improve performance in WordPress

OPTIMIZING YOUR WORDPRESS WEBSITE

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Minimizing Plugins #

The first and easiest way to improve WordPress performance is by looking at the plugins. Deactivate and delete any unnecessary plugins. Try selectively disabling plugins to measure server performance.

Is one of your plugins significantly affecting your site’s performance? Look at the plugin documentation or ask for support in the appropriate plugin support forum.

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Optimizing content #

• Image Files
  • Are there any unnecessary images? (e.g. Can you replace some of the images with text?)
  • Make sure all image files are optimized. Choose the correct format (JPG/PNG/GIF) and compression for each image.

• Total File Number/Size
  • Can you reduce the number of files needed to display the average page on your site?
  • When still using HTTP1, it’s recommended to combine multiple files in a single optimized file.
  • Minify CSS and JavaScript files.

You can also offload content to optimize your theme.

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Upgrade Hardware #

Paying more for higher service levels at your hosting provider can be very effective. Increasing memory (RAM) or switching to a host with Solid State Drives (SSD) e.g. Digital Ocean can make a big difference. Increased number of processors and processor speed will also help. Where possible, try to separate services with different functions – like HTTP and MySQL – on multiple servers or VPS-es.

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Optimize Software #

Make sure you are running the latest operating system version e.g. Linux, Windows Server and the latest web server e.g. Apache or IIS, database e.g. MySQL server and PHP.

Perhaps you are unable to perform the tasks, and follow up on the tips, below. Just ask your hosting provider to do them for you. A good hosting provider will upgrade or move your account to an upgraded server, to match the recommendations. If needed you can switch to a managed WordPress hosting solution.

DNS: Don’t run a DNS on your WordPress server. Use a commercial service for DNS such as Amazon’s Route 53 or your domain registrar’s free offering. Using a service such as Amazon can also make switching between backup servers during maintenance or emergencies much easier. It also provides a degree of fault tolerance. If you host your DNS on external servers this will reduce the load on your primary web server. It’s a simple change, but it will offload some traffic and cpu load.

Web Server: Your web server can be configured to increase performance. There are a range of techniques from web server caching to setting cache headers to reduce load per visitor. Search for your specific web server optimizations (for example, search for “apache optimization” for more info). Some web servers have higher speed versions you can pay for such as Apache Litespeed. There are also a number of ways to tune Apache for higher performance based on your particular hosting and site configuration, e.g. Memcache.

PHP: There are various PHP accelerators available which can dramatically improve performance of your PHP files. This will apply to all PHP files, not just your WordPress installation. Search for PHP optimization for more information, f.e. APC or OPcache. The W3 Total Cache plugin, described below, offers integrated support for Memcache, APC and other Opcode caching.

MySQL/MariaDB: MySQL or MariaDB optimization is a black art in itself. A few simple changes to the query cache settings can have a dramatic effect on WordPress performance because WordPress repeats a lot of queries on every request. Nowadays, with InnoDB being the default storage engine for MySQL, you have to make sure to use that. InnoDB can be optimized and fine-tuned, search for “mysql optimization”, “mysql innodb performance” or “innodb optimization” or for more information and examples. Search for “mysql convert myisam to innodb” for information on how to convert older MyISAM tables to InnoDB.

A great example of how WordPress has been optimized was presented by Iliya Polihronov at WordCamp San Francisco 2012. Iliya does, among other things, server optimization for WordPress.com.

Don’t run a mail server on your WordPress server. For your contact form, use something like Contact Form 7 with free Mailgun.

CACHING

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Caching Plugins #

Plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache can be easily installed and will cache your WordPress posts and pages as static files. These static files are then served to users, reducing the processing load on the server. This can improve performance several hundred times over for fairly static pages.

When combined with a system level page cache such as Varnish, this can be quite powerful. If your posts/pages have a lot of dynamic content configuring caching can be more complex.

W3 TOTAL CACHE

W3 Total Cache (W3TC) is the latest generation in WordPress performance plugins, combining the research of web development authorities to provide an optimal user experience for WordPress sites. These detailed guides walk you through

W3TC is unique in its ability to optimize server side and client side performance, adding functionality otherwise unavailable natively:

• Page Caching: W3TC helps to decrease response time by creating static HTML versions of pages, allowing web servers to serve them without invoking PHP. It automatically updates the cache when comments are made or pages are edited.
• Minification: Removes unnecessary characters from HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, then respectively combines them before applying HTTP compression on the cached files.
• Database Caching: Database queries (objects) are also cached, allowing many sites to reduce the time needed to generate new pages. This is especially useful for sites that receive a lot of comments.
• Headers: W3TC manages the headers (entity tag, cache-control, expires) which control the caching of files in web browsers, reducing server load and improving the user’s perceived performance.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Using a CDN allows you to Offloading resources from your hosting account. W3TC moves the requests for images, CSS, JavaScript and other static files to a network of high performance servers. The server closest to the visitor is automatically used to download the files, providing the fastest downloads possible.

W3TC can be used to optimize WordPress in both single- and multi-server environments through either shared or dedicated hosting.

WP SUPER CACHE

WP Super Cache is a static page caching plugin for WordPress. It generates HTML files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts, helping you to make significant speed gains on your WordPress blog.

Using WP Super Cache allows your server to serve cached HTML pages at the same speed it serves regular graphic files. Consider WP Super Cache if your site is struggling to cope with its daily number of visitors, or if it appears on Digg.com, Slashdot.org or any other popular site.

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Server-side Caching #

Web server caching‘ is more complex but is used in very high traffic sites. A wide range of options are available, beyond the scope of this article. The simplest solutions start with the server caching locally while more complex and involved systems may use multiple caching servers (also known as reverse proxy servers) “in front” of web servers where the WordPress application is actually running. Adding an opcode cache like Alternative PHP Cache (APC) to your server will improve PHP’s performance by many times.

Varnish Cache works in concert with W3 Total Cache to store pre-built pages in memory and serve them quickly without requiring execution of the Apache, PHP, WordPress stack.

As described within, using a plugin for comments such as Disqus instead of native WordPress comments can assist Varnish by not requiring your readers to login to WordPress and increasing the number of page views that Varnish can serve out of the cache.

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Browser Caching #

Browser caching can help to reduce server load by reducing the number of requests per page. For example, by setting the correct file headers on files that don’t change (static files like images, CSS, JavaScript etc) browsers will then cache these files on the user’s computer. This technique allows the browser to check to see if files have changed, instead of simply requesting them. The result is your web server can answer many more 304 responses, confirming that a file is unchanged, instead of 200 responses, which require the file to be sent.

Look into HTTP Cache-Control (specifically max-age) and Expires headers, as well as Entity Tags for more information.

W3 Total Cache integrates support for browser caching and ETags.

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Further Reading #

• W3 Total Cache Plugin (by Dougal Campbell)
• Holy Shmoly!: WP Super Cache
• Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site – Expires / Cache-Control Header and ETags (by Yahoo! Developer Network)
• WebSiteOptimization.com: Use Server Cache Control to Improve Performance

CONTENT OFFLOADING

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Use a content Delivery Network (CDN) #

Using a CDN can greatly reduce the load on your website. Offloading the searching and delivery of images, javascript, css and theme files to a CDN is not only faster but takes great load off your WordPress server’s own app stack. A CDN is most effective if used in conjunction with a WordPress caching plugin such as W3TC, described above.

CloudFlare is a popular Content Delivery Network, which also offers Internet Security services. Plans start from free, but additional features are available for extra costs. CloudFlare is a fixed-cost CDN, meaning they charge by features instead of usage. CloudFlare allows you to route your sites traffic through their network before coming back to your origin host.

Amazon Cloudfront uses the Amazon S3 service to provide Content Delivery Network (CDN) functionality for your static files. A CDN is a service which caches your static files on numerous web servers around the world. Providing faster download performance for your users no matter where they are. It’s recommended that you use Cloudfront in tandem with S3 and not only S3 alone; the costs are not significantly different.

MaxCDN is a pay-per-usage Content Delivery Network (CDN) similar to Amazon Cloudfront. Among the differences are support for Video-on-demand as well as “mirroring” (no uploading required) of files, although you can upload them if you prefer.

Another alternative CDN provider is KeyCDN. They provide step-by-step WordPress integration guides on their support page.

KeyCDN and MaxCDN are among the most affordable CDN options available, they’re able to beat the pricing of competitors like Amazon because they are a division of a much larger CDN Providers.

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Static Content #

Any static files can be offloaded to another server. For example, any static images, JavaScript or CSS files can be moved to a different server. This is a common technique in very high performance systems (Google, Flickr, YouTube, etc) but can also be helpful for smaller sites where a single server is struggling. Also, moving this content onto different hostnames can lay the groundwork for multiple servers in the future.

Some web servers are optimized to serve static files and can do so far more efficiently than more complex web servers like Apache, for example lighttpd.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a dedicated static file hosting service on a pay-per-usage basis. With no minimum costs, it might be practical for lower traffic sites which are reaching the peak that a shared or single server can handle.

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Multiple Hostnames #

There can also be user improvements by splitting static files between multiple hostnames. Most browser will only make 2 simultaneous requests to a server, so if you page requires 16 files they will be requested 2 at a time. If you spread that between 4 host names they will be requested 8 at a time. This can reduce page loading times for the user, but it can increase server load by creating more simultaneous requests. Also, known is “pipelining” can often saturate the visitor’s internet connection if overused.

Offloading images is the easiest and simplest place to start. All images files could be evenly split between three hostnames (assets1.yoursite.com, assets2.yoursite.com, assets3.yoursite.com for example). As traffic grows, these hostnames could be moved to your own server. Note: Avoid picking a hostname at random as this will affect browser caching and result in more traffic and may also create excessive DNS lookups which do carry a performance penalty.

Likewise any static JavaScript and CSS files can be offloaded to separate hostnames or servers.

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Feeds #

Your feeds can quite easily be offloaded to an external service. Feed tracking services like Google FeedBurner will do this automatically, the Feedburner servers will handle all the feed traffic and only update the feed from your site every few minutes. This can be a big traffic saver.

Likewise you could offload your own feeds to a separate server (feeds.yoursite.com for example) and then handle your own feed stats / advertising.

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Further Reading #

• Using Amazon S3 / Cloudfront to offload images: Amazon S3 and CloudFront with WordPress,
• Reducing Your Website’s Bandwidth Usage

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Compression #

There are a number of ways to compress files and data on your server so that your pages are delivered more quickly to readers’ browsers. W3 Total Cache described above integrates support for most of the common approaches to compression.

W3 Total Cache supports Minify and Tidy to compress and combine your style sheets and javascript files. It also supports output compression such as zlib, see also Output Compression.

It’s also important to compress your media files – namely images. The WP Smushit plugin can help with this.

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Database Tuning #

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Cleaning Your Database #

The WP Optimize plugin can help you reduce extra clutter in your database.

You can also instruct WordPress to minimize the number of revisions that it saves of your posts and pages.

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Adding Servers #

While it requires additional expertise, adding servers can be a powerful way to increase performance. I highly recommend reading Architecting a Highly Scalable WordPress Site in AWS A guide for building a more expensive, highly scalable AWS implementation using Amazon’s Relational Data Store (RDS).

You can use Amazon’s Elastic Load Balancer to spread traffic across multiple web servers and you can use HyperDB or Amazon’s RDS to run more scalable or multiple database servers.

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Additional Resources #

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Further Reading #

• High Traffic Tips for WordPress
• 10 Practical Tips To Optimize WordPress hosting
• 16 Quick Tips to Improve WordPress Performance – INFOGRAPHIC
• 11 Ways to Speed Up WordPress
• On a quest for ultimate website performance
• WordPress Optimization Infographic
• 21 easy tweaks to make your WP site load faster
• How to Speed Up WordPress Website with Image Optimization
• Speeding up WordPress load from 4.23s to 1.33s (Case Study)
• 10 tips for better WordPress optimization
• How To Make Your Site Lightning Fast* By Compressing (deflate/gzip) Your HTML, Javascript, CSS, XML, etc In Apache
• Yahoo! Developer Network: Exceptional Performance

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WordCamp Performance Presentations #

• High Performance WordPress = Iliya Polihronov
• WordPress Optimization from WordCamp Israel 2013
• WordCamp 2007 Video of the Presentation on HyperDB and High Performance
• Copy of the Slides on HyperDB and High Performance
• 50 tips su Web Performance Optimization per siti ad alto traffico WordCamp Bologna (Italy) 2013

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