Optimizing WordPress Website Performance on your VPS

Jun 07, 2025

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Optimizing WordPress Website Performance on your VPS

Let’s face it, WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the marketplace today. In fact, it actually is the leader when it comes to CMS based websites with an estimated 69% of the marketplace using WordPress. If you haven’t built a website before, lets just say that building a website is always a fun endeavour. It has a lot of ins and outs that you need to follow in order to get it just “right”. Site speed is a common bug bear for most people after they have got their new website built. Unfortunately it is usually the “good ol’ web hosting provider” who cops it when the website goes live and the site takes quite a few seconds to load fast. Fact of the matter is, the website more than likely needs to be optimized. We have put together a series of tips and tricks you can do to get your WordPress optimized for performance.

Before we begin though, we are going to assume that you have already got a few things configured and that you have a VPS through yours truly, us! If you haven’t, do not worry, there is still a list of things you can do or ask your hosting provider to help setup for you that will help get your WordPress site loading quicker than ever.

Get your Suite of Tools Ready!

Before going down this rabbit hole of optimizing your website, you really need to have a few tools handy. These tools will help you get through the following process. Keep in mind, we are going to make quite a few assumptions along the way. One of them is going to be that you are a Windows PC user. Without further ado, here is the list of tools you will need:

• The latest version of a decent web browser like Chrome or Firefox. Edge will work but we are going to work off the assumption you are using either one or in an ideal world, BOTH for testing your new website.
• WinSCP and PuTTy – you will need this to be able to upload, delete, move and copy files around quickly. You may also need them to edit key files outside of your website directly on the VPS itself.
• Graphic Design Program like Affinity Designer or Photoshop. If you have neither, check out Affinity Designer. Very user friendly and cheap as chips in the scheme of things.
• A text editor like notepad or notepad++
• A bit of patience to complete your optimization tasks
• A basic understanding of file types, file formats and status codes

Lets start with Diagnosing the problem area’s

Often when a new website is built, it just is not optimized at all. Starting off, open your favourite web browser in Incognito mode / Private Browser Window. Right click in the middle of the window and go to Inspect, then click on the “Network” tab in the window that pops up. Then navigate to your website. You should see the website popup across the top, but across the bottom of the screen you should now see a lot of information pop up, that looks very similar to the image below.

Chrome DevTools Network panel showing resource load times and HTTP statuses for a web page.

This panel is filled with helpful information. The first to take note of is the strip across the bottom. It has total requests, data transferred, how many resources used, total time to finish loading the page (keeps going even after page has loaded), DOMContentLoaded time and initial page load time. This gives us a good indication of what is going on. While it is not the be all and end all, it gives a lot of helpful information. Firstly, the second and 3rd colum with data transfered and resource size. The larger these 2 numbers are, ultimately the slower the site will be to load. This all should be fairly reasonable to understand. Quite often, you will find that if your site is UNOPTIMIZED that these 2 values will be 10MB or higher. In some cases we have seen 40-50MB in size and the load time has shown 30s or more.

There is 3 columns you need to look at in order to work out where the problems lie. The first is the “Size” Column. Simply click on the “Size” column twice and it will show you the largest files to the smallest. If you have a look at the size, it will tell you how big the file is. On the very left it will show you the filename. This is important. You need to know what files are big and identify whether they can be compressed or optimized in anyway. We want to do it to things we know for sure are going to be an issue. If an image for example is over 1MB in size, these days, it is safe to say it is unoptimized. Files with filename.png and filename.jpg can usually be optimized further and shrunk down in size. Some other files can be ones ending in .js, .mov, .mp4, .mpeg, .css just to name a few.

Status is Important

While you may think status in day to day life is not important. The opposite should be said about status of pages and referenced items in your sites code. If you are seeing a status code of 301, 302, 404 or 50x, then chances are, they are going to be hindering your websites loading speeds. This is because the wrong status code can mean the browser is left looking for the specified piece of information for an extended period of time. Let’s even say 5-10 seconds. This is not ideal for anyone visiting your site. The good thing is that the guess work behind it is removed because you can filter it in highest to lowest order, just like the size and time columns. It will also tell you what file is the culprit here.

Image Optimization is typically on your hit list first!

Why is it that images are always the first thing people hit when optimizing a website? The reason is really simple. They are the easiest to optimize. It is just understanding how to optimize them and why it is important to. The most common issue with unoptimized images is the fact that most of them are either PNG or JPG images. They can be generally unoptimized in 3 different ways. The first is that the image size on the screen is not the same as the original image size. This will add load time. The great news is that these days (at time of writing at least), unless a user has a 4k screen (and surprisingly enough many still don’t), the largest image size you would ever likely need is no more than say 3000px wide. The next image issue is file size. Most still have many things in them that are unoptimized. This can include meta data, image quality and even the right file format can make the world of difference. Finally the last way an image is not optimized is it is not compressed during its saving process. Below is an example of 1 image that has to go through the optimization process.

File Types can save MEGABYTES

While some people will argue, file size doesn’t matter, neither does file types these days. That is not true, each of those factors are important. First off, most browsers today will support 3 newer file formats. SVG, WEBp and AVIF are the extensions and they are both very cool in the way that they work. Typically sites in the past have been built using png or jpg as the main image formats by most graphic designers and website designers. However these newer kids on the block are game changers. For the purpose of this article though, we will show you how to optimize each of them as best as possible while keeping search engines and users happy.

As you will have just seen with the optimization, depending on the image, the file extension and the compression methods or options available, the optimization can take a relatively large image in both filesize and physical size and make them significantly smaller with little to no noticable difference for the end consumer. Doing this across an entire site with the correct combination can lead up to an 80% decrease in overall image filesize and more importantly, lead to significantly quicker load times.

These image optimizations have been done through a combination of using Affinity Designer and 3rd party compression tool websites like https://www.compressor.io. They are both great at enabling users with little to no design knowledge or skills to be able to optimize the image file size without losing detail and costing an arm or a leg to get it done.

You can use similar styled tools for the likes of video optimization and audio compression etc. Although, you will likely have to spend a bit of time doing a search to find the right tool that will work well for the majority of the time.

Compression is a great friend

When it comes to keeping site load speeds as low as possible, it is important that you have your data compression underway. This is one things that will not only save you bandwidth, it will also help you shave seconds off of your load time. People will make comments like “have you got GZip compression enabled” and it is a great comment. The frustrating thing is, not every web server has it enabled by default and more importantly, some do not use GZip compression as the compression tool. There is a basically 2 main options when it comes to compression, GZip and Brotli. Here is a brief overview of both options for you, starting with GZip.

GZip – Tried, Tested and Proven:

• It is the most widely supported across browsers, proxies and web servers
• Compresses fast and gives a pretty good ratio
• Default on Apache, Nginx, IIS, Cloudflare etc
• Ideal application is for backwards compatibiltiy, dynamic content and environments with low CPU Resources available.

Brotli – The Newer Kid On The Block:

• Newer (by Google) with better compression ratio than GZip
• Supported by all modern browsers
• Extremely effective for text-based files (eg js, css, html, php, aspx etc)
• Slower compression but decompresses fast
• Best when pre-compressed and served statically
• Ideal application is in High Performance Hosting environments like CDNs or ones utilising NVMe base storage

Knowing which one to use can be tricky as they both have pro’s and con’s. The cool thing though is you do not have to choose. You can use BOTH, with Brotli being the preferred choice where possible. In the best practice setup of running both, you would have Brotli (br) set as the preferred content encoding method. You then would set GZip as the fallback option. To do this you would let the server negotiate based on client support (aka the Accept-Encoding header). In WHM/cPanel you can enable both modules by installing them through EasyApache.

Choosing the right PHP Handler: LSAPI vs PHP-FPM – The Newer, lightweight and nimble vs Sluggish, Middle Aged and Easily Stressed

Ok, that heading is a little over the top but it is somewhat true. LSAPI which in full is LiteSpeed Server API as a PHP Handler is generally speaking much better than PHP-FPM. PHP-FPM is FastCGI Process Manager) and has been the go to option for lots of hosting panels and hosting solutions over the years. LSAPI though is purpose-built for LiteSpeed (and for that matter OpenLiteSpeed) web servers. It handles requests more efficiently than PHP-FPM, which does in turn, result in faster response times and reduced server loads. WordPress sites with moderate to high traffic also benefit from LSAPI’s ability to scale concurrent PHP Processes without creating bottlenecks. LSAPI manages and resuses PHP worker processes without the manual tuning, memory leaks and crashes which often comes from PHP-FPM not being fined tuned well before its used.

LSAPI also is great for the use of WordPress installations that use persistent caching plugins like LiteSpeed Cache as a result of its built in Opcode Cache Management. Something that PHP-FPM lacks out of the box. When you put all of this in to perspective, very quickly LSAPI becomes the clear PHP Handler of choice for WordPress website owners. To keep this simple and on point, ultimately, if you are serious about improving your WordPress websites performance, LSAPI is the clear winner. Ultimately it has better resource utilization, stability under high load and seamless integration with many of WordPress’s caching plugins.

Cash is King Offline – Cache is King Online

We have all heard the saying “Cash is King” in the past. It was very true for a lot of reasons. Online, the saying of “Cache is King” is probably equally as true and beneficial for websites. Especially WordPress websites that need performance. There are plenty of caching options and methods available, but which one is worth its weight in gold? We are going to look at both Nginx and Redis as they seem to be the go to options/methods used on WordPress websites by different high traffic site owners. Both have their place and both can be ideal, caching is one of the most powerful ways to get that performance you need to reduce load times and server strain. There is a bit of confusion by users as to which is best and why.

NGINX

Nginx is the king of page caching with WordPress site optimization. Nginx can cache full HTML pages generated by WordPress and server them directly from disk or memory. Doing this allows the server to completely bypass the need to use PHP and MySQL completely for repeat visitors. You may have heard of Rever Proxy Caching or Static Page Caching. This is exactly what Nginx is doing. A few style of sites that this works well for includes:

• Websites with high volumes of traffic that dont necessarily change their content frequently
• Anonymous visitors or content that doesn’t vary by user. Blogs, news sites, landing pages, static business websites should come to mind when you are thinking about this type of site.

A few things that lead to it being great is the fact that it is extremely quick at loading cached pages, it reduces load on PHP and MySQL and works well before WordPress will fire up. A couple of area’s it does not cope well with is:

• Dynamic content is not its friend. For example personalised dashboards, shopping carts and member area’s on websites. It will do it, but not brilliantly.
• Careful disposal and deletion of caching during content updates. It can have a few issues in processing it efficiently.

REDIS

The go to for Object Caching is none other than REDIS. It does carry out database related queries and WordPress internal objects in memory very well. An example list of database related queries and objects it handles well includes:

• Query results
• Options
• Menus
• Repeated database queries

To put this in to perspective, it works well with sites that have user logins built in to them. For example, WooCommerce based sites or ones with membership area’s. The other great use is in sites with lots of database interactions and dynamic content. Basically if it requires lots of different questions being asked, then this is the go to tool. It reduces MySQL load significantly, speeds up backend and logged in user experience. It also works well with WordPress Transients, WooCommerce sessions and admin requests.

There are a few drawbacks though, just like Nginx, it has its weakpoints. This includes the following:

• Doesn’t eliminate PHP or WordPress processing tasks
• Requires server memory (RAM) dedicated to it in order to run properly

Comparison of Nginx page caching vs Redis object caching in WordPress performance optimization.

So you are probably asking “which one should I go with?”. It is a very good question. In the ideal world, for a busy e-commerce website with a blog for example, you would probably want to run both. If it was a membership driven site, without a doubt, you would choose REDIS. If however it is a simple brochure styled site with a small blog, then running NGINX would be your go to. If you were to do a general “this option is best 98% of the time”, chances are Nginx is going to be a great idea. If you have a VPS (which lets face it, our customers do), then Nginx is a great start and if you can afford the extra money, get that extra RAM required and go with Redis as well. It will make a difference.

Caching Plugins – Whats best in WordPress

Just as you saw with other Caching scenario’s, there is no single product that reins supreme over another in every single aspect. This is why it becomes a personal preference and also dependant on the style of site you have. There are a few “Go To” options in the WordPress directory. Some of the free options with PRO/Paid upgrade options are great. This includes the likes of Hummingbird, WP Fastest Cache & W3 Total Cache to name a few. WP Rocket and WP Optimize are also noteworthy contenders that should make your list. Once again, they have their place and ideal situations. While some have overlaps, we won’t specifically go in to the details of a single one but do some trial and error testing. You will see some great results.

Know your Options in WP Admin

If you are a novice WordPress site owner, this following section may not be the best option for you to follow through with but there is a few settings in here that you can adjust that will help improve performance of your WordPress installation. First of all login to your wp-admin dashboard, then visit https://www.yourwebsite.com.au/wp-admin/options.php. On this page you want to update the following settings:

• default_pingback_flag: change value from 1 to 0. Reduces unnecessary requests and comment spam activity.
• rss_use_excerpt: change value to 1. Reduces load from feed scrapers and keeps resource usage low.
• can_compress_scripts: change value to 1. Tells WordPress whether it can try to compress JavaScript using zlib before sending it to the browser — primarily in the admin dashboard.

Get your wp-config.php tweaked

The wp-config.php is one file that is often under utilized when it comes to optimizing your WordPress installation. The following are options you can implement in to your wp-config.php file in order to get some performance increases. Some will be small changes, some will be significant in the outcome. Adding the lines in to wp-config.php file which you can do via File Manager in cPanel or via WinSCP is the easiest way to do this. Here they are:

• Limit Revisions – Limit the number of revisions your site can store. It will prevent database bloating over time.
  

  define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, 5);

• Disable/Limit Autosave Interval – Reduces server load when editing posts.add_filter(‘autosave_interval’, function() { return 300; }); // 5 minutes
• Disable WP Cron (Replace with system cron) – Lets your VPS system cron manage tasks on a more reliable schedule.
  

  define(‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’, true);

• Object Cache Enablement – Enables object caching, essential for full-page and object cache tools like Redis or LiteSpeed Cache.
  

  define(‘WP_CACHE’, true);

How do you know if you have been successful in Optimizing WordPress Website Performance on your VPS?

After completing the significant list of suggested changes mentioned in this article, you need to test and measure your websites performance. The proof will be in the pudding. Some websites will achieve better results than others, there is no doubt about this. The answer to the question have you been successful in optimizing your WordPress website performance on your VPS is quite easy. If your load time when you test the page has dropped by even half a second, there is an element of success but typically people can expect in an unoptimized site to see anywhere up to 80% faster page load times. While this is a significant number, it is not always achieved but in more cases than not, it does happen. Before you test, use a couple of testing tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest.org to get a few baseline numbers. Once you have completed making the changes, test on those same sites again and see what difference you have been able to make. It will also help determine if you have been successful.

If after reading this article you feel that this is an awful lot of work and you are not confident you could do it yourself. Reach out to our technical support team for assistance.

Neil has been working in the industry for approximately 25 years and joined VPSBlocks in 2024. With over years of technical expertise, Neil has been instrumental in helping businesses grow. Neil's extensive skill set encompasses server management, programming, process optimization, and internet marketing. His dedication to quality and customer satisfaction has been acknowledged by clients who have benefited from his expertise and support.

Neil