WP-admin is sluggish, sometimes 10 seconds per page.
Slow admin usually comes from a bloated database, a misbehaving plugin, or dashboard widgets calling external APIs. Front-end caching doesn't help here.
support/web-en-cms/wp-admin-traagsteps: 6
Try this first
- Open Tools > Site Health. WordPress often tells you literally what's wrong: old PHP, low memory, a bad plugin.
- Test in incognito with a fresh user. Only an admin issue or everyone? Narrows the search.
- Database cleanup: purge revisions, old transients and autoloaded options with WP-Optimize or Advanced Database Cleaner. A 1GB+ DB should ring alarms.
- Identify slow plugins with Query Monitor. It shows per page which plugin costs time, which queries are slow and which hooks burn cycles.
- Disable dashboard widgets that fetch external data (RSS, news, productivity gauges). They wait on external APIs.
- Bump WP_MEMORY_LIMIT to 256M or 512M in wp-config.php. The 64M default is too tight for modern sites.
When to bring us in
Admin still slow after cleanup and plugin audit? It sits in PHP, MySQL config or the host. Ask the host for PHP OPcache, MySQL tuning or an upgrade to managed WP.
See also
- WordPress, plugins and theme have gone 6+ months without updatesOut-of-date WP is the number-one entry for malware. Don't just hit 'update all', back up first.
- Theme update broke the layout or threw a fatal errorThemes overwrite custom CSS on update unless you use a child theme.
- WordPress shows a blank screen after a plugin install or updateWSOD (white screen of death) is usually one crashing plugin. You isolate it.
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