The largest CMS and blogging platform on the planet is WordPress! Everyone who utilizes WordPress for their website knows its benefits and possibilities online. This simple guide dwelves into how much Website traffic can WordPress handle.
There should be a significant spike in visitors to your WordPress website at any given time. Scaling high WordPress traffic necessitates CMS-wide configuration and optimization.
Fortunately, after reading this post, it won’t have to be that difficult.
How Is Website Traffic Managed by WordPress?
Content on a WordPress website is kept in a database. WordPress retrieves the material from a page on your website and creates the page on the user’s screen.
WordPress must repeat this process for each user as your traffic volume increases. WordPress is merely coded as software and requires hardware to function. Your WordPress hosting provider is the source of this hardware.
The software for managing website traffic is installed on a computer known as a server (Apache and Nginx are usually the most common server software). This device maintains a constant internet connection to guarantee that your website is always accessible.
WordPress can handle more requests more quickly on a faster web hosting server.
WordPress can’t create those pages as rapidly on a slower web hosting server.
The WordPress Codex suggests dividing WordPress into layers for websites with a lot of traffic, with each layer managing a distinct feature of the program:
- Front-end servers Apache2 or NGINX are used to manage the site’s administration and render pages.
- Table-based data management is made simple using the MySQL/MariaDB database server.
- The Varnish/NGINX HTTP proxy layer processes user requests at the outset.
- Store and serve all media files on a content delivery network (CDN) or image server to relieve your website’s burden.
How Much Real Website Traffic Is WordPress Able to Manage?
WordPress can manage almost infinite website traffic, depending upon your caching configuration and hosting platform.
Your hosting platform only limits how much traffic your WordPress website can take.
That goes beyond WordPress, as well. All websites must rely on the hosting provider to handle increased traffic, regardless of the website builder they are employing.
Based on the volume of traffic you are getting, you can increase the resources in your hosting package to handle more website traffic.
Having stated that, let’s examine some actual figures. We’ll examine the hosting packages and the maximum traffic your WordPress website can handle on each platform.
How Much Website Traffic Can WordPress Manage On Shared Hosting?
How much traffic on shared hosting can WordPress manage? Shared hosting is the most basic kind of hosting and is appropriate for websites with little traffic.
As the name implies, websites hosted on shared hosts share server resources, which lowers expenses. The drawback of shared hosting is that it struggles to handle sudden increases in traffic because of resource sharing.
How Much Traffic Can Shared WordPress Hosting Handle?
A quality shared hosting provider can easily manage website traffic ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 monthly visits.
To improve things, though, you’ll need to optimize WordPress performance. Some providers automatically optimize and accelerate WordPress to help you manage additional traffic.
The complexity of your website and the resources it needs may still cause your experience to vary from the estimates above. Still, for the vast majority of small company websites, the numbers above are accurate.
How Much Website Traffic Can Manage WordPress Hosting Handle?
How much website traffic can you manage to host for WordPress handle? Managed WordPress hosting is a step from the shared hosting we saw above. Website delivery times are reduced with WordPress-specific tweaks provided by managed hosts.
In addition, they maintain site security, handle backups, offer staging areas, and provide first-rate customer assistance. Although it costs more, managed hosting is an excellent option for clients who want the technical parts of hosting a website managed for them.
How Much Website Traffic Can Cloud Hosting WordPress Handle?
You share server resources with other clients using managed or shared WordPress hosting.
You may count on resources on a cloud hosting platform with multiple servers. Even if one of your servers goes down, your website will still be accessible on other servers.
Larger companies, busier eCommerce sites, and other commercial clients might benefit from cloud hosting because of its redundancy, guaranteed resources, and enterprise-grade availability.
WordPress can smoothly manage millions of pageviews monthly with the right cloud hosting platform.
What Is Required In WordPress To Manage High Visitor Volumes?
Enterprise hosting is the short answer. This is when platforms such as Google Cloud or Amazon Web Services require Enterprise Custom Cloud Hosting.
These businesses offer cloud servers you may register for and use to set up your unique hosting setup.
You can add as many geographical locations, memory, storage, and CPU resources as possible.
Pay-as-you-go charges will be applied to your account for the resources you have used. Therefore, you will want your staff of server administrators to make the most of these resources.
AWS or Google Cloud’s enterprise custom-built cloud hosting can handle astronomically high traffic levels. They can be set up to manage billions of pageviews monthly or even millions of hits daily.
Read also: Google Cloud Platform Vs Amazon Web Service: Who’s The Winner? A 2024 Comparison
Expert Scaling Tips For WordPress Endeavor
Choose A Reliable Hosting Provider
The significance of selecting a trustworthy WordPress hosting company for expanding a website cannot be emphasized enough. Your web hosting company is your website’s foundation, and it significantly influences how well it can manage heavy website traffic.
The key to selecting the ideal host is to find a company that provides the following:
- Adequate bandwidth and storage capacity
- Reliable support
- Total Security
- High rates of uptime
For websites with a lot of website traffic, it is recommended that they select a managed or dedicated hosting package from a reliable provider. These strategies set aside sufficient server resources to manage growing visitor volumes without compromising page load times.
Use a CDN
A CDN, or content delivery network, loads static material (images, JS, and CSS) from a global network of servers. This saves time since content can be loaded from a server that is physically closer to the user. CDN-optimized servers are also better suited for delivering static content.
A content delivery network (CDN) can mitigate this issue by redundantly storing static assets, such as photos, among numerous servers worldwide. Users won’t have to repeatedly download content from the server, which might cause significant delays, and can access it locally from your website.
Read also: 10 Powerful CDN Providers of 2023: Accelerate and Enhance Your WordPress Website
Optimize Your Images
Large images can seriously slow down a website and take up your bandwidth if you have a large user base. As a result, you ought to optimize your photos for faster transmission.
To preserve your users’ bandwidth and minimize the size of your photos, install a plugin like Optimole. In addition to serving images in next-generation formats and compressing them, Optimole has lazy loading built in, which loads images only when the user scrolls down to them.
Use a Caching Plugin
Visitors’ browsers store various elements of your WordPress website, such as scripts and content, when they open it. A significant amount of this content doesn’t need to be requested repeatedly to display because it is static or consistent throughout the website.
We refer to this as caching. These kinds of content can be cached, drastically lowering the number of HTTP requests browsers and servers must make.
If you wish to scale and manage a large volume of WordPress website traffic, you must minimize HTTP requests.
Several approaches exist to minimize HTTP requests; many take the form of caching plugins like WP Rocket, while others are technical.
Optimize Your Code
Verifying that your code is error-free is the first step towards improving it. Testing and debugging your code frequently is critical because even minor coding errors can cause severe performance problems.
Making sure that your code is causing no bloat is the second stage. This entails removing any features or extra code that isn’t being used, which can improve user experience and result in faster load times.
An excellent illustration of this would be a custom theme with an excessive number of features that add needless overhead and are unrelated to the objectives of your website.
The last step in optimizing your code is keeping everything current. This means updating your plugins and themes to the most recent versions and eliminating any you aren’t using. This guarantees you use the most optimal and effective code while keeping your website safe.
Read also: 5 Best Code Optimization Plugins for WordPress in 2024
Expand Your Network
Most of the time, an Ethernet adapter is used by your hosting company to link your server to their internal network. Most of the time, adapters have set maximum speeds (10 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s, or 1 Gb/s). File transfers from your server can’t happen more quickly than this network connection can handle.
Your server is most likely linked to equipment in the network provider’s facility. These gadgets may also impose restrictions on the maximum speeds that your server is capable of. They are in place because your network provider needs to share the bandwidth it has to divide among numerous servers at its location.
Certain network providers permit you to temporarily exceed data limits when there is an exceptionally high demand for the material on your website. Their gear should be set up to recognize when this needs to be completed. However, be ready to spend more for that choice. You must speak with your service provider to determine if you can access that option.
Use The Latest PHP Version
The WordPress content management system is powered by PHP, a server-side programming language updated frequently to include new features and security patches. By updating to the most recent version, you can ensure your website functions correctly and is secure against known vulnerabilities.
The ways to verify your PHP version are as follows:
- Access your website’s wp-admin page.
- Select Tools > PHP Engine > Adjust.
- Pick the most recent PHP version that is supported.
Upgrading to the most recent PHP version can help you take advantage of new features and functions that can increase your website’s functionality and improve website performance and security. Additionally, as PHP develops further, earlier versions will eventually lose support and become security risks, which leads us to our next point.
Improve Your Site Security
As your website grows, it is more susceptible to security breaches. Malware, data leaks, and cyberattacks may wreak havoc on your web servers and cost you money and customer confidence.
Selecting a managed WordPress hosting service that includes strong security measures in its plans is one method to increase the security of your website.
You can install security plugins like Sucuri or JetPack to strengthen your site’s security further. These plugins provide capabilities like firewall defense, virus scanning, and brute force attack prevention to help keep your website safe from online attacks.
In the unlikely event that your website is compromised, it’s critical to have a swift recovery strategy in place. Swiftly restoring your site to a previous version may entail periodically backing up your website and keeping backups offsite.
By adopting proactive measures to safeguard your website, you may reduce the likelihood of security lapses and ensure the safety and security of your client’s data.
Read also: 7 Best WordPress Security Plugins to Keep Your Site Safe
Conclusion: How Much Website Traffic Can WordPress Handle?
WordPress is a robust platform capable of handling significant amounts of website traffic when properly optimized and scaled by implementing expert scaling tips such as caching, content delivery networks (CDNs), optimizing images and databases, using efficient themes and plugins, and leveraging cloud-based hosting solutions.
WordPress websites can accommodate varying website traffic levels without compromising performance or user experience.
It’s essential for website owners to continuously monitor and adjust their scaling strategies as website traffic patterns evolve to ensure optimal performance and scalability.
FAQs: How Much Website Traffic Can WordPress Handle?
How important is website optimization for handling website traffic spikes?
Website optimization plays a crucial role in handling website traffic spikes efficiently. Optimized websites load faster, consume fewer server resources, and can better handle sudden increases in website traffic without experiencing downtime or performance issues.
What role do hosting solutions play in scaling WordPress websites?
Hosting solutions significantly impact the scalability of WordPress websites. High-performance hosting providers offer scalable infrastructure, optimized server configurations, and caching and CDN integration support, ensuring websites can handle increasing traffic demands effectively.
Monitoring and adjusting scaling strategies are vital to ensure optimal website performance as traffic patterns evolve. Regular monitoring helps identify potential bottlenecks or performance issues, allowing website owners to make necessary adjustments and optimizations to accommodate growing traffic levels.
