High CPU usage has been a perennial problem for many WordPress site owners. These problems increase further if the site is hosted on a server with lesser resources. Having said that, even websites with great hosting plans can face a CPU usage issue. The reason why this is an area of concern is that a lagging CPU has a huge impact on the performance of the website, search engine rankings, and the overall user experience. Today, we will explore ways in which you can minimize CPU usage in WordPress.

1.     Do you have plugins that you don’t use anymore?

Any WordPress site owner knows the power plugins can bring to his site and usually uses several plugins for a wide range of purposes. When a site owner is looking for a specific functionality, he installs and tries out several plugins. This continues until the right plugin is discovered. But, what happens to the ones that are not required? More often than not, they simply stay there unused and unnoticed.

These plugins can overload your CPU. Therefore, by uninstalling the plugins that you don’t use anymore, you can minimize your CPU usage. Just remember to uninstall it correctly to keep your site functioning optimally.

2.              A plugin that can minimize CPU usage

Talking about plugins, WP Disable is a plugin that enables you to disable WP settings which consume unnecessary CPU cycles. It offers features including disabling emojis, pingbacks and trackbacks, gravatars, remove query strings, close comments automatically after 28 days, and compulsory pagination after 20 posts, etc. It also allows you to monitor the CPU usage of your site and make necessary changes.

3.              Image Optimization

Images that are not optimized can cause many problems for your site. Unoptimized images usually have metadata or the information about the image (date of creation, the device used, etc.). When you upload an image, the metadata is uploaded too. In most cases, this information is not required by your site and can be safely removed. An optimized image with no metadata is lighter on the CPU and minimizes its load. You can use any image optimization plugin for the same.

4.              Web Crawls

Many site owners are not aware that on a daily basis several crawlers visit their website. For your site to be visible to the search engine traffic, it is important that the search engine crawls your site. Unfortunately, these are not the only crawlers. There are many spam crawlers who scrap your data for some other use. Crawlers, usually, require high CPU usage. Therefore, you need to keep a tab on the crawlers that visit your website and block the spam ones. Further, you can limit the number of times search engine crawlers can visit your website to minimize the load on the CPU and optimize your site’s performance.

5.              Database Optimization

WordPress stores all information in its database. A cluttered database can cause the CPU to load and result in slower processing of queries. Keep your WP-database optimized and free of all clutter. There are many plugins which can help you do the same.

Good WordPress Hosting providers offer web hosting plans which include automatic WP-database optimization, automatic updates of the themes, plugins and WP core, and automatic backups along with a host of other features to help you keep your WordPress lean and fast.

Before we finish, remember that there can be many technical reasons behind over-utilization of your CPU. It is always prudent to talk to a technical expert if you have exhausted these ways to minimize the usage. This will help you to get detailed understanding and you can get to the root of the problem to solve it quickly.