Help you optimize a VPS for WordPress site

The choice of VPS hosting for your WordPress site means you take things like security and performance seriously. But how do you make sure you get the most out of your investment in a virtual private server (VPS)? Because you don’t max out on memory or storage, of course, so you have to optimize your site’s functionality.

Here’s what you can do:

Choose VPS for WordPress site that has the right amount of bandwidth and storage 

The first thing you must ensure with your VPS is that you have opted for the right amount of bandwidth and storage. Now, what is the right amount? Right is subjective. It totally depends on the kind of website you are having and the variables associated with that. Some of these variables include traffic, website speed, size, data handled onsite, among others.

To give an idea about the right amount of bandwidth you need, consider analyzing the data for bandwidth data of the past year for your site. You will get an idea of the pattern. There will be times where the bandwidth will be exceeded, and at other times it will be utilized very little. Observe these peaks. Now take a note of the average bandwidth consumed. With these three points, you can quickly see how your bandwidth needs vary. It would help if you opted for the bandwidth that can optimally run your site without crashing. Also, don’t opt for a costlier (and therefore with too much bandwidth) plan either. Strike a balance between cost and space so that you find what’s just right for you.

Storage is another case. While past analysis is helpful for bandwidth, storage needs anticipation of the future. How much storage are you going to need in the next 6 months, 12 months, and a year and a half? What content are you planning to put on your website? What are your plans with your website? A practical plan will give you an idea about the storage need you will have shortly. Again, the storage required should not be too huge and too moderate. Leave space for expansion but not too much, not too little. Avoid extremes, and you should be fine.

Here are some of our VPS plans. You’ll find a reliable solution from our plans.

Use Servers Optimized for Performance

Another consideration to keep in mind with a VPS plan is to find one that already implements performance-saving measures on its servers. So, you’ll want to look for:

• Linux
• SSD
• NGINX
• MySQL 5.6 or higher
• PHP 7 or higher

Start with a strong WordPress VPS optimization base, so your WordPress site has the best chance to succeed.

Keep WordPress Updated

WordPress periodically releases updates for WordPress core. This includes many fixes and security features. Make sure you keep WordPress updated on your site. This will definitely help you to keep your VPS optimized for your WordPress website.

Also, make sure all the plugins and themes you use are updated. Security issues with older versions of plugins can hamper the optimal functioning of your website.

Running your site with the latest PHP and MySQL can bring a performance boost not offered by earlier versions.

Expand your memory

Your website runs on processes that take up memory. Sometimes your site activity is slow and there is enough memory to keep things running smoothly. Other times, your site activity is heavy and you’ll need more memory.

If you feel like you need more memory than what you have right now, here is a cool hack to change the memory allocation in WordPress.

Locate and open the wp-config.php file.

Then, find the line that says: /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */.

Enter the following line directly above this line (if it doesn’t already exist):

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘[enter the memory limit]’);

In the part where it says “enter the memory limit,” add either 128M, 256M, or 512M as needed. (Note: Double-check that you do NOT raise the limit above what memory is available on the server). For example, if the server has only 2GB of RAM, then setting this to 512 would be detrimental because only 4 website sessions would be possible at a time. It’s better to optimize your plugins to keep from using so much memory.)

This smart hack will boost your memory limit and optimize your VPS for WordPress.

Look into server-targeted caching

The last time your browser started running slowly or loading pages wonky, you probably headed over to your browser settings and cleared your cache.

Just like you can clear your browser cache, there are server-targeted caching engines. These engines work to clear up your server when things get slow. There are three popular server-targeted caching engines to check out for your VPS: Memcached, OPcache, Varnish Cache.

Limit bot indexing

Search bots do a great job of indexing your site to return your relevant content in the search results. You don’t want to discourage search bots from crawling your site entirely.

However, if you start to see that search bots are interfering with how well your server performs, you can control the crawl rate through Google Search Console (for Google) and Bing Webmaster Tools (for Bing). Specific instructions can be found for Google here and Bing here.

This little hack should improve your server performance if your site is bogged down by search bot crawlers.

Conclusion

Picking a VPS web hosting option for your WordPress site is an excellent choice. A VPS will offer more privacy, additional security, and dedicated resources. Essentially, you get several of the benefits of a dedicated server, without the added costs.

While a VPS plan will automatically open the door to improved performance, there are still things you can do to optimize your VPS for WordPress.

Let’s take a closer look at what you can do to get the most bang for your buck from a VPS hosting plan for your WordPress site and how to optimize it to work more efficiently.