14 guides covering Core Web Vitals, caching layers, database performance, server response time, and page builder trade-offs. Plus one authority report.
Start Here
Most performance advice treats symptoms. This explains the actual causes — and why the real problem is almost always the hosting.
8 min readCPU, RAM, PHP workers, disk I/O, database — how each bottleneck manifests and why they compound under load.
7 min readTTFB is the metric everything else rests on. A poor TTFB can't be fixed by frontend optimisation.
Core Web Vitals
Stricter thresholds in 2026: LCP under 2.0s (down from 2.5s), INP under 150ms. What this means for UK WordPress sites.
Hosting primarily affects LCP through TTFB. Here's the exact relationship and what a hosting upgrade actually changes.
INP replaced FID in March 2024. 65% of UK WordPress sites fail. Hosting affects INP more than most people realise.
UK-hosted servers reduce latency by 40-60% for British visitors. The practical steps that move the needle.
Caching
Object caching, page caching, CDN caching — how each layer works, what it solves, and how they interact.
The settings that actually matter, the ones that break sites, and the WooCommerce-specific configuration most guides skip.
Without caching, every visitor triggers PHP and database queries. With it, load times drop 50-80%. Here's how.
Database & Scale
Post revisions, expired transients, autoloaded options bloat — how database growth degrades performance and what to do about it.
The real causes of high CPU — brute force, admin-ajax flooding, WP-Cron, missing object cache — with the diagnostic commands and fix for each.
Three types of spikes: anticipated, organic, and hostile. Each requires a different response.
Traffic spikes break most WordPress sites. The architecture decisions that determine whether yours survives.
Tools & Platforms
Elementor, Bricks, Divi, Gutenberg — the performance trade-offs that affect your rankings and conversions.
Licensing, feature differences, performance parity, and when each is the right choice for WordPress.
Architecture, PHP handling, caching integration, benchmark numbers, and the scenarios where each webserver is the better choice.
A practical comparison of the two CDN choices most WordPress sites end up evaluating — architecture, pricing, cache behaviour, and WooCommerce compatibility.
Is Elementor 4's overhead now small enough to be offset by intelligent caching and a fast TTFB?
Infrastructure that makes performance possible
LiteSpeed Enterprise, Redis object caching, NVMe Gen 5, and sub-200ms TTFB — from £25/mo.