Are you experiencing significant or occasional slowness on your Hostgator WordPress site?
Cloudflare Enterprise, which has a TTFB of 100 ms averagely, is the quickest solution to speed up your site.
You should know that EIG brands have a long history of slow server response, and TTFB is accountable for your 40% LCP score.
Cloudflare’s premium 285 pop ups can cut server response time by 400-700% using Argo Smart Routing, APO, and Tiered Cache.
Another significant cause of the host’s slowness is a lack of resources, congested servers, and slow database queries.
You’ll need a lot of resources to unlock the rest of the speed. Rocket offers a massive 32 core processor and 128 GB of RAM , as well as Cloudflare Enterprise for free.
Now enter your web property into the PageSpeed Insight Tool, GTMetrix, and KeyCDN Performance Tool to determine how much optimization is required.
According to Google, the TTFB benchmark is 200 ms. The PSI test will fail if it rises.
Table of Contents
Fix Slow Wordpress Site on HostGator Hosting
1.Use Latest PHP
PHP is the most widely used back-end programming language. WordPress like CMSs consist of PHP.
Latest PHP carry out more security and faster performance. If you are still on old PHP. you should update it.
How to Update PHP Version in Hostgator
#1.Login to the cPanel,
#2.Navigate to the Software section.
#3.Click on MultiPHP Manager.
#4.Select the domain which you want to upgrade.
5.Choose PHP Version and apply.
2.Deploy Database on MariaDB
WordPress stores post text, plugin & theme setting, username and password to the database.
On each request WordPress has to scan & retrieve the whole database to fulfill the request.
The database is generally made of MySQL. Most web hosts are using it. But now it is outdated.
Thankfully we got MariaDB as a new player. It has more storage engines which makes it 2x faster and safer than MySQL.
Check Site Health>Info> Database in your WP Admin area
If you don’t find MariaDB, just contact your host.
3.Get A Robust Cache Plugin
When someone attempts to access your blog. A server performs PHP processing and database queries in order to generate server responses that are returned to the user’s browser.
If another user makes the same HTTP request, the server must repeat the process.
However, if we duplicate the same HTTP response, the server only needs to deliver it. Except for data delivery, the same processes do not need to be repeated. As a result, server responses can be 10 times faster and handle more traffic pressure.
All you need is a powerful cache plugin. WP Rocket is the best option available.
It is the smartest and fastest because it has a feature that automatically gets rid of CSS.
It improves performance by creating and caching static HTML files. The entire world is well aware that it is the best way to cache and speed up web pages without putting additional strain on the origin server.
This is the reason. It is the most lovable among pros.
Some Incredible Speed-Boosting Features of WP Rocket
#All JS except essential JS is automatically delayed.It improves FCP and LCP.
#Reduces, asyncs, and combines CSS and JS files to reduce their size, avoid render blocking and layout shifting, and generate fewer HTTP requests.
#After flushing the cache, it can deliver cache versions even when the first request is created. It’s known as the preload cache.
#Especially for mobile devices, preload cache to ensure faster loading in desktop mode.
#Amazingly, optimise the heavier resources of YouTube videos. 13 HTTP requests are reduced to just two.
4.Speed Up Images
The best way to remember something for the longest time is through images. As a result, we must include images in our posts to make them more user-friendly and informative.
However, the image is larger in size than the text. When using high-quality images, it can take much longer to load than Javascript, making web pages 2–3 times slower.
Before uploading, you should optimise and resize them. Adobe Photoshop is a useful tool for this.
And for online optimization, try Shortpixel Adaptive Images, Shortpixel Image Optimizer or Flying Image Plugin.
5.Install Premium Lightweight Theme
Themes are similar to our clothing. Wear well, look well, and make a good first impression last longer. Many bloggers prefer themes that are well-designed and visually appealing.
But these themes are heavier because they have a lot of JSs and CSS codes for things like box shadow, border, buttons, widget box, navigation shadow, and so on.
The situation worsens if themes are available for free. Free theme projects are frequently completed by newly learned developers who want to put their skills to the test and include them in their CV to impress their future boss.
As a result, most codes are cluttered and do not receive security and speed updates. It eventually became a hangout for hackers and a bullock cart for visitors.
As a result, you should consider purchasing a premium lightweight theme. Even with a modern design, it will provide more safety, speed, and SEO friendliness.
GeneratePress theme is the best for producing high-quality results. Because it is already core web vitals optimised and is only 935 kB, it can load like an alien’s UFO.
And many modern inbuilt design templates give privilege to deploy eye catching designs in a click.
Why Choose Generatepress Theme
#It has a leaf weight, just 935 KB.
#Codes are well organized, already minified and stored in separate blocks. So only related block code file loads, not all.
#It uses the system font that doesn’t create any HTTP request and gets rid of multitude heavy google font requests.
#many pre-made professional looking templates.
6.Make loading of Ads Code Lazier
Every blogger blogs for money. You have Adsense ads enabled on your blog. It loads a large number of resources, resulting in 15–25 HTTP requests.
It has an effect on both FCP and LCP. Even full-page loading time increases dramatically. As a result, lazy loading is preferable. It will be extremely beneficial to give your blog a green FCP+LCP score.
How to Lazy Load Adsense Ads
#1.Install Perfmatters Plugin
#2.Go to Assets > Delay Javascript Box
#3.Add “adsbygoogle.js”
#4.Set Delay Timeout to 5 seconds and save changes.
7.Locally Host Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a necessary component of any blog. It allows for detailed marketing traffic analysis.
But it is served by Google’s public CDN, which has just a 2-hour browser cache period. So, every two hours, the browser cache policy instructs the browser to download fresh GA resources from Google CDN rather than the local disc (browser cache).
This is why you see an error in the PSI Tool.
“Leverage Browser Caching”
Then, the solution is to just host GA Code on the origin server to leverage their browser caching and avoid extra external requests.
How To Locally Host Google Analytics
#1.Go to Analytics in Permatters Plugin.
#2.Enable Local Analytics
#3.Enter Tracking ID
#4.Tracking Code Position – Footer
#5.Script Type- Minimal
#6.Save changes
8.Localize Google Font
Google font is a great bottle neck choker.
Why?
#A website saves CSS cache of fonts.googleapis.com to the visitor’s browser for only 24 hours.
The cache policy is set by Google CDN. So after every 24 hours, the visitor’s browser needs to download it. There will be extra load on the website.
#Of course, you must love Google Font? So you might use multiple designed fonts. But you should be aware it adds several extra HTTP requests also.
#Cache partitioning has come into force for Google Chrome in Oct 2020 and Firefox in Jan 2021 for security purposes.
No cache passing!
Now a browser can’t use downloaded font CSS of site A for site B. Even though both sites are using the same font family.
These three factors are terrible for speed.
So want full control and set your own browser cache period? You need to host it locally.
How to Host Google Font on Your Origin Server
#1.Click on Fonts in the Perfmatters plugin.
#2.Enable Display Swap
#3.Enable Local Google Fonts
#4.Save changes.
9.Serve Critical CSS
Only the CSS codes from above the content section are included in critical CSS. We can refer to it as a summary of the main stylesheet.
Because there is less code, the page loads quickly at the start, turning LCP green.
How to Create Critical CSS
#1.Go to File Optimization and enable Optimize CSS delivery in WP Rocket
#2.Save changes.
10.Defer Non-Critical CSS
To achieve maximum speed, you must defer non-critical CSS when generating critical CSS. All CSS codes, with the exception of LCP CSS, are non-critical CSS.
You just need to turn on Optimize Delivery in WP Rocket, which you already have done, and it will delay.
11.Lazy load Youtube Video
In general, a single Youtube video adds 13 HTTP requests to your blog.
- 9 JS requests
- 1 CSS request
- 2 Image requests
- 1 HTML request
So you can imagine, How these requests slow down blog speed.
How to Optimize YouTube Video
Enable iFrames & Video and YouTube Preview Thumbnails.
After the optimization, magically the HTTP request will be just one for Youtube video.
First option will speed up other sorts of videos along with Youtube videos.
If you host your own video, don’t waste money on costly bandwidth and put extra heavy pressure on the server. Use third party services like Wistia, Vimeo or Pressplay.
Just like that, you should also have a third service for audio and podcast. Try Anchor or Libsyn.
It will relieve much burden on servers and allow them to achieve maximum speed.
12.Remove Unused CSS
Contact Form 7 and Revolution Slider plugin are so popular. But do you know? These plugins load their resources on all pages, even though you have added them to a specific page only.
The resources are unused for all pages, except the page where these are used. Actually, the resources impact rest pages speed uselessly.
How To Remove Unused CSS
Method-1 [Best for Beginners]
#1.Go to File Optimization> Remove Unused CSS in WP Rocket.
#2.Tick on Remove Unused CSS.
Now intelligent WP Rocket will optimize CSS code, remove unused CSS code and combine all CSS files to one.
So you can see just one CSS as used.min.css. It amazingly eliminates multiple CSS requests.
Sounds Good!
Method – 2 (Will optimize Contact Form 7)
#1.Go to Assets in Perfmatters plugin
#2.Enable Script Manager
#3.Now visit contact us page
#4.Click on Script Manager on the admin bar
#5.Scroll down to the Contact Form 7 section (need to disable /wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/css/style.css)
#6.Location: check Everywhere
#7.Exceptions, Location: check Current URL
Just like that, you can disable JS (/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/includes/js/index.js) for the rest of the pages, besides the contact us page.
Now the Contact Form 7 resource will load only on the contact us page.
Method-3 (Developer Level)
Some css files of theme and plugins are needed for all pages. But only some codes are used. Then we have to remove unused code lines.
Easy solution is to use a better alternative which uses less code. Although if you want to keep older. Let’s optimize it.
#1.Scan homepage and a most resourceful page (most designed post) at purifycss.online.
#2.Copy the used code and paste in its file location.
13.Remove Unused JS
Unload unused JS by Perfmatters plugin as talked above. But some JS files are needed at initial load. Then delay them by WP Rocket.
Enable Delay JavaScript execution, it will delay JS and LCP will improve.
14.Stop Useless WP Features
You don’t use Window Live Writer to write and publish posts to your blog, do you?
No
But its resource loads on your blog.
Window has completely shut down the project in Jan 2017, but the alcoholic WordPress is still loading.
It is not one, there are 13 others which lessen speed and safety.
How To Disable WordPress Useless Features
#1.Go to Options in Perfmatters plugin.
#2.Disable useless features, follow both images.
15.Replace Heavy Plugins
Must check, You may use heavy plugins.
Install WP Hive extension in your Chrome.
Now search your installed plugins at wordpress.org/plugins
If you see red cross on “Minimal impact on memory usage”.
It means it is a heavy plugin and deplete server performance. You should find its lightweight alternative.
My favorites-
:: Be cautious about outdated and deactivated plugins, update or delete them. These make site not only nonperformancent but also vulnerable.
16.Stop Clouflare’s Useless Feature
Cloudflare is the World’s largest internet company which powers and secures billions of websites.
It is the third most popular server software after Nginx and Apache.
But some features of Cloudflare have more loss than profit. Because they inject heavy JS to your blog.
These are-
#1.Bot Fight Mode- Wordfence is better. It secures without adding JS.
#2.Email Address Obfuscation – Wordfence handles it.
#3.Rocket Loader – It causes slowness with render-blocking issues. Better to lazy load JS.
#4.Web Analytics in Browser Insights – Google Analytics is fully capable of gaining whole traffic data. I don’t think we need another one and add some codes.
17.Control Heartbeat Frequency
In 2013, WordPress had introduced Heartbeat API which helps browsers to connect with the server for data transfer. Prominently it is used for back-end services like auto-drafting and showing plugin notifications.
Some plugins like The Event Calendar plugin load it on the front end. You can see admin-ajax.php in the waterfall.
But it’s not a good sign for speed. You should avoid it.
Although WordPress auto-calls Heartbeat API per 15-50 seconds at the back end side. Bunch of auto-calls in a short period cause high CPU usage.
So you should control it.
18.Minimize Spam Bot Traffic
Bots create almost 50% web traffic and are accountable for burning 50% costly bandwidth as well as security theft.
Deloy Wordfence plugin, activate firewall and cut 40%-50% addition on your hosting bill.
19.Fix Invalid SSL
Check your SSL? If it is a invalid or self-signed SSL certificate, it will take much time and won’t secure your website.
Install it again or you can use Cloudflare’s Full SSL.
20.Fasten Up WP-Admin Dashboard
I saw my many beginner clients added Google Analytics widget, top keyword report or speed reports on WP-admin. It increases page weight. Of course the page slows down.
And if you post many times in a day. It can affect the whole blog speed. So free your wp-admin from these weighty widgets and visit official websites for traffic reports.
21.Go For Pure Cloud Hosting
Are you still using shared hosting?
In comparison to shared hosting, websites on cloud hosting showed a 250% increase in SERP.
Furthermore, Hostgator, the king of shared hosting, is one of the top five popular web hosting firms that can be easily hacked.
Frequent cyber-attack news exposes their inadequate security measures.
Low resources, obsolete database management, and a torrent of negative social media user experiences also outshine them.
Do you, on the other hand, desire to boost your site’s speed, security, and SEO ranking?
Choose Rocket, a managed cloud WordPress hosting provider that provides Cloudflare Enterprise CDN, which delivers TTFB through their premium 285 pop ups around the world in an average of 100 ms, as we discovered in our testing.
The unique host contains a 32 core CPU, 128 GB of RAM, and NVMe storage, as well as a one-click speed optimization setting.
It saves a significant amount of time and money that would otherwise be lost on speed optimization. You don’t need a speed specialist because you can do everything from their dashboard.
Since the host has some of Cloudflare’s amazing features, such as Mirage & Polish to optimize images, Cloudflare WAF to protect the entire environment, dynamic full page to serve the latest web version faster, fastest DNS service 
and early hints to notify search engine bots about new posts and save resources from unnecessary crawling, you don’t need to purchase expensive plugins for image optimization, security, and caching.
Now it’s time to test the host for $1 yourself.
22.Stop Auto Background Processing
Setting up automatic background processing, such as auto-backup, is a wise and time-saving task. However, if these types of processes are used in large numbers, they will result in a loss rather than a profit.
So don’t be overly dependent. They continue to engage your server. Only the most critical tasks should be deployed in pilot mode.
23.Clean up Database
WordPress saves not only posts, plugin settings, and passwords to the database but also spam comments, auto-drafts, post revisions, the transients database, and so on. As a result, the space fills up, affecting database performance.
Now we have to keep it clean on a regular basis. Go to the Database tab of the WP Rocket plugin and free it from trash.
24.Use Premium DNS
To access your website without DNS, you must enter your server’s IP address. The domain name will not work.
DNS maintains a record of your domain’s server IP address.
While you type your domain name, the browser connects to DNS to determine the server’s IP, then connects to the server, receives data, and displays the website.
Each host provides general DNS service with each hosting package.The majority of them
For the service, use free software and overcrowded servers.
So, if you want to start with the best possible performance, use Premium DNS at your host.It will be faster and more powerful.
However, if you want to save money, consider using Cloudflare DNS. It’s free, but it’s one of the world’s fastest DNS servers.
Keep the grey cloud icon if you only want to use Cloudflare DNS.
25.Enable Full Page Caching
If you are running a global blog, you turn on full page cache on Cloudflare. It works 10x better than ordinary CDN. TTFB would be fastened all over the world and you can save 80-90% bandwidth.
Just set the two page rules to enjoy the awesome feature.
26.Deploy Closet Server
Choosing a distant server is the most common rookie error. I, too, made the stupid error. If your server is not on the mainland, double-check its location. Change it. You will notice an immediate improvement.
If your audience is global, however, simply deploy Cloudflare’s full-page cache and relax.
27.Free Up Unnecessary Backups
Keeping backups on hand on a regular basis is a good habit. However, keep backup numbers and occupied spaces in mind. If there are too many, delete them all except for some fresh backups.
Alternatively, use the UpdraftPlus plugin and backup to Google Drive or Dropbox.
28.Do Website Compression
You can make your website up to 26% lighter by Brotli compression. It was developed by Google. You should find the option in your hosting panel and enable.
But if you are on Cloudflare, enable it in the Speed tab.
29.Avoid Heavy Page Builders
Popular Elementor page builder requires 256MB RAM to run smoothly. But you know how tiny size of RAM shared host offers.
Generally 256MB and 500MB RAM on entry and medium level hosting plans. As a beginner, we often choose these.
And also other plugins, WordPress core and database also need RAM to perform their task.
As a result bloggers often see “PHP Memory Limit Exhausted”.
On the second side, how much does Elementor inject code to our blog? Too much…
So replace it with lightweight page builders like Gutenber or Oxygen.
But won’t recommend shared hosting, go for cloud VPS.
30.Avoid Useless WP-Include Resources
When you install WordPress, you see the WordPress logo as a favicon. Do you know, from where does the logo load?
From WP Include Folder.
https://domain.com/wp-includes/images/w-logo-blue-white-bg.png
Unfortunately you can’t optimize it.
You have to upload your own favicon.
There are some resource which WordPress also load from WP-Includes
/wp-includes/js/hoverintent-js.min.js – adjust dropdown’s trigger on user’s hoverintent.
/wp-includes/js/dist/vendor/regenerator-runtime.min.js -convert modern JS in old version to run on old versions of browser.
/wp-includes/js/dist/vendor/wp-polyfill.min.js – ensure JS compatibility with older versions of browsers.
Disable hoverintent.js if you don’t use the dropdown menu. Rest JSs should also be stopped, modern browsers don’t need these. Use the Perfmatters plugin.
FAQ
Why is my HostGator website slow?
There are several reasons why your HostGator website may be slow, including:
- Insufficient server resources: If your website is using up too much CPU or RAM on the server, it may cause slow loading times.
- Large image files: Large image files can take a long time to load, which can slow down your website. Make sure to optimize your images for web use.
- Too many plugins or scripts: Too many plugins or scripts can cause conflicts and slow down your website. Remove any unnecessary plugins and scripts.
How can I improve the speed of my HostGator website?
There are several steps you can take to improve the speed of your HostGator website, including:
- Optimize your images: Reduce the file size of your images by compressing them using a tool like TinyPNG.
- Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin can help to speed up your website by caching static files and reducing server load.
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): A CDN can improve website speed by caching content on servers closer to your visitors.
Check Also:
He is a professional WordPress speed optimizer and web hosting enthusiast with 3 years of experience in optimizing over 100 websites. As a speed optimization expert on Fiverr.com, he has honed his skills in the field and has since shared his strategies with over 1 lakh users annually via his blog, YouTube and social media platforms.