To advance functions to your WordPress website, you need to install WordPress plugins. The more you need advanced features, the more plugins you need to install. There is a common query, do plugins slow down WordPress? It’s true that when you install too many plugins on your website, your site tends to become slow.
The real challenge is how to find which plugin is slowing WordPress down. Otherwise, your site will suffer, and so will your website performance.
What is the solution? Well, don’t worry. We have prepared a guide where we will show you the steps to find out the plugins that are slowing down your WordPress website.
Here we go.
How to Find Which Plugin is Slowing WordPress Down
So, we will go over the steps to find out which plugins are slowing down your website,
Step 1: First, Run a Speed Test
You will find several free online speed testing tools you can use for this step. However, when you do your first speed test, you must note which tool you use. Moreover, many of these testers should give the same results; you don’t want to run the risk of speed tests being inconsistently handled or providing you with different data points each time.
For this example, When you are going to use Pingdom, it can assist you as a WordPress performance test plugin.
After running your website through the tool, you will receive a full results page. While there were suggestions on problem areas listed, You want to focus on the load time.
As you can see, your site isn’t very fast. In fact, if we’re going off what the Kissmetrics Loading Time infographic says, you can reasonably expect at least 40% of visitors to drop off of your website because if it takes more than three seconds to load then you are in trouble.
When you do this for your site, take a screenshot of the results or write them down somewhere. That way, you can chart your site’s progress as you work to remove slow plugins and other obstacles preventing your site from loading quickly.
Step 2: Create a Copy of Your Site in a Staging Environment
Well, the following test probably won’t harm your site, so don’t conduct this test on the live site while visitors are potentially walking through it.
Because this testing involves deactivating plugins, that way you could potentially introduce security issues or break certain features that depend on those plugins to work. So be sure to do this test in a staging environment.
If you don’t have a staging site already, you need to set up a staging site that mirrors your current website. You need to do everything from the configuration to the plugins that have to be identical. Next, you can also run your test on the staging site, identify the problem plugin, and take action on the live site.
Step 3: Make the List of the Slowest WordPress Plugins
So, before you go into details of the plugins on your WordPress install, we suggest you quickly review the list of the slowest WordPress plugins.
If or when your WordPress site currently uses any of these, you may have found the guilty party. However, that is a long shot. Because that’s not always going to be the case as there could be others affecting performance or a plugin conflict mucking things up. So, before you pull the trigger and delete the culprit plugin entirely, you need to test it out.
Step 4: Deactivate All Your Plugins
In the Plugins menu in WordPress, bulk-deactivate all plugins.
Open up your WordPress site. Usually, you need to do this on a new device or browser so you don’t have to worry about a cached page skewing test results. If the loading issue is fixed, then it’s definitely one of these plugins. This can be a legit solution for how to find out which plugins are slowing down your WordPress site.
Step 5: Install Your Plugins One-by-One Again
This step is crucial. This is where you will identify which plugin or plugins are slowing down your WordPress site. You need to go one by one through your list, reactivating one at a time.
If your list includes any known slowest plugins, then start with that one. Otherwise, you must start at the top of your plugins list.
Then when the first plugin is again installed, go and open your staging website. What’s your tale of the loading time? Is it still as fast or close enough as your website was without any plugins activated? If so, then this plugin is fine to keep.
Deactivate the plugin once more. You need to repeat the test with the next plugin on the list.
Also, make sure you only have one plugin at a time active at any given time. When you have discovered which one is creating slower loading times on your WordPress site, it’s time to take action on the live site.
Step 6: Delete the Slowest Plugin
As you conducted this test in your staging site, you don’t need to bother with reactivating your plugins there. Instead, just go to your live WordPress site and delete that slow plugin.
You need to confirm the deletion and then check your live website to ensure performance has improved.
Step 7: Quickly Find a Faster Plugin Replacement
You will often not need a replacement for the plugin you’ve deleted. Especially if it’s something, your client went and installed on their own on the site.
However, if the feature or functionality and the plugin are essential to your WordPress site, you will need a faster replacement.
Step 8: Confirm That Loading Speed Has Improved
Finally, go and open your speed testing tools once more. Then re-run your now-updated website through them. However, load times and performance scores should have significantly improved with a new plugin installed since you last checked.
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Conclusion
As we said, testing for slow WordPress plugins doesn’t take too long. It will take maybe half an hour or an hour of your time. You need to research some replacement plugins, and you’ll quickly have your WordPress site running at top speed again!
This is how to find which plugin is slowing WordPress down. If you follow the instructions carefully, you won’t have any problem finding the solution and improving your website’s performance.