how can I speed up my site?

I do not work for GeoDirectory but I believe in the community and ran across your post and thought I might offer a suggestion. As I am NOT an employee, I have no idea what version you are using. I presume by you are using version 2.

Your site does not seem slow to me via a lower tier residential cable internet line (not an enterprise level connection) as of the time of this post.

1. By defacto, read the GeoDirectory documentation on Performance
https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs-v2/faq/performance/

2. Using WHOIS information, I see you use DreamHost. As per the Directory documentation, it is unclear if version still has an issue with Managed WordPress Hosting because they provide their own Caching system which GeoDirectory can not communicate with. This leads to caching things that should not be cached and or in ways that are problematic for data integrity for the user.

Wordpress optimized servers/server instances are ideal. Additionally, dedicated resources, and your own server instance means you can tweak any settings you want that could optimize your site as it grows. As a hosting provider myself, and having hosted/word on sites from dozens of hosts I can tell you this is a major advantage.

Therefore, if you are staying with Dream Host, which is totally reasonable to do, but know if you ever have concerns to not feel trapped as there is dozens of quality hosts, then I have a recommendation. I would suggest you go with the VPS Business plan or higher. This would give the server enough resources to handle the operating system and provide enough to servive the resource intensive WordPress Directory site.

Directory sites are extremely hungry sites for RAM and Compute especially. VPS can be upgraded in usually seconds/minutes to include more resources as you scale. You will also want only SSD drives to process and access the amount of Data. At the very least SSD cache if you use traditional drives in the server (Dream Host I believe is all SSD).

3. Speaking of assigning resources, MANY MANY WordPress installation have not set their

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );

the 256 is the Megabytes assigned to the memory for this wordpress install. I recommend to give this value 80-90% of the maximum ram you are allowed for your hosting account or if you go with VPS to assign it at least 256MB (512MB possibly if you go with 2GB+ RAM VPS plan).

You may also need to set memory_limit and some other key settings in php.ini and user.ini to increase the memory limit assigned to your server user (the WP_Memory_Limit in my optinion should be only 80-90% of the number you put in the .ini files for memory_limit.

4. Ensure all plugins are up to date AND compatible with each other and they have no known conflicts.

5. I see you do not image optimize or uniform size your images you may want to do that. There are image optimization plugins.

6. Ensure you have a backup plugin such as UpdraftPlus and take a manual backup of your site with database and content at least weekly. Delete or download backups older than 3 months if there has been no reported issues with bugs or information problems. You should have a staging website to test upgrades on before they go live. The backup doesnt help performance other than saving a ton of time if your site has an issue but I mention it because everyone ASSUMES their hosts backups will be enough or saved for long enough before a problem is noticed. Hosts backup their entire server into a snapshot usually. It is expensive and time consuming to restore those backups in some cases and in rare cases they may charge you to do it.

7. Use one of the supported Caching plugins that GeoDirectory was designed to work with as listed on https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/server-requirements/

8. Use only absolutely necessary plugins written by trusted developers with large followings. If any of your plugins have less than 1000 active installations or less than 4 stars then you probably shouldnt be using that plugin. Many popular plugins on wordpress.org have many more than that GeoDirectory has 10,000+ active installations and it is a niche plugin. Keep that in mind. Let other people including developers validate quality for you by following number of installations and quality of feedback.

9. Install a security plugin like WordFence AND configure it. After, about a month I believe it learns the sites traffic habits and can better spot spammer, hacker and other malicious traffic more efficiently. WordFence can prevent server resources from being used by Bots and People trying to do malicious things on your website that detract from your legitimate traffic’s experience. This may be towards the bottom of my list but it is one of my top 3 performance suggestions because it filters traffic BEFORE the server processes it. The larger your site gets, the more of an issue this will become.

10. Cloudflare as a security measure but also for their CDN – Content Distribution Network that can store your static files like images and CSS so your server does not have to store them AND those files sit one internet “hop” closer to the end user and in some cases MANY hops closer and therefore your site loads MUCH faster.

11. Post in the GeoDirectory Jobs section to have someone look at your specific needs and server configurations and settings.

12. One last note from an intellectual property and BRAND PROTECTION standpoint you should buy wamassage.network . If you do not know about new generic top-level domain names, ngTLD’s they are growing in popularity because they are making domains shorter (think bit.ly etc). I apologize in advance if it violates rules or offends anyone but the .network ngTLD is not available to register everywhere and NameCheap.com has .network on sale for $3.88 plus the 0.18 ICANN fee at least for the first year. As of this post, it is still available.
As you are part of the GeoDirectory family, here is a link to make it easy for you to acquire https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results.aspx?domain=wamassage.network

*** This is NOT an affiliate URL , I am NOT affiliated with NameCheap , I will make ZERO from this referral other than a good feeling. I just wish someone would tell me if I was in your position which is why I am spending the time on this forum post.

If you acquire the domain your host can HELP YOU setup domain alias (the address bar will still show wamassage.network but shares it content from wamassagenetwork.com) or domain redirection (forwards to wamassagenetwork.com)

I hope these suggestions have help you or someone reading. Wish you all the best luck in your new directory site!

You are welcome Guust. Thank you for sharing the article as well. Also great to add one more thing to the success tool belt!

GD does not turn out simple static WP pages, so it needs more grunt if you get more listings: https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/server-requirements/#intro
The main thing to look for is the RAM.

Thanks

Hi Julie,

Thanks for your reply. I would recommend a minimum of 2 Gb RAM and the latest PHP version 7.3 . As explained here https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs-v2/faq/performance/#cache , you can’t use GD Booster on GDv2. Try other cache plugins like “WP Super Cache” and see if it helps.