Performance insights
See what makes a website slow over the last 7 days — its slowest pages, slow PHP with the plugin behind it — and what to do about it.
Performance insights shows what makes one of your websites slow, from what the server records anyway: how long each page took to answer, what PHP was doing in requests that ran longer than 3 seconds, and your slowest database queries. It covers the last 7 days and is read every hour, so nothing needs to be switched on and visitors notice nothing.
Where: Control Panel › Websites › Speed test › Performance insights tab
Choose the website in the picker at the top.
The figures
| Figure | What it means |
|---|---|
| Requests to PHP | requests that waited for PHP (or Apache, or a Node.js app). Images, styles, scripts and pages served from the page cache are left out: they don't run your code |
| Median | half of those requests were answered within this time |
| 95% within | 95 of every 100 requests were answered within this time; the slowest 5 are what visitors complain about |
| 1 second or more | how many requests took a second or longer |
| PHP over 3 seconds | how many PHP requests were still running after 3 seconds |
The times are rounded up to steps (50 ms, 100 ms, 200 ms … 1 s, 1.5 s, 2 s …) and never shown above the slowest request.
Suggestions
The panel looks at the figures and suggests what to do, with a link to the screen that does it:
- Switch on the page cache when requests took a second or more and the page cache is off: visitors who are not logged in then get their pages without running PHP. See Speed test.
- A newer PHP version when the website runs a PHP version older than 8.2. Try it on a staging copy first, then change it in PHP settings.
- OPcache when many slow PHP requests were loading PHP files. OPcache is set for the whole server: ask your hosting provider.
- A plugin or theme when one WordPress plugin or theme is in many of the slow PHP requests (at least 3, and at least a third of them). Check its settings, update it, or try the website without it on a staging copy.
- Slow database queries when your MySQL databases had slow queries. Open Database tools to see them and ask why a query is slow.
Slowest pages
The pages that took the most time in total (the number of requests times their time), up to 20. Other pages adds
up the less visited pages of busy hours. For each page: Requests, Median, 95% within, Slowest and how
many took 1 second or more. The address is shown without its query string (?…).
Slow PHP
When a request is still running after 3 seconds, PHP writes down what it is doing at that moment. The table groups those moments by the Function running, its File (inside the website's folder) and the WordPress Plugin or theme it was called from. Some examples of what it means:
| Function | Usually means |
|---|---|
curl_exec(), file_get_contents() |
the page waits for another website (an API, a feed, a licence check) |
mysqli_query(), PDO->execute() |
the page waits for the database: see Database tools |
require_once(), include() |
PHP is loading files: OPcache may be too small |
sleep(), usleep() |
the code waits on purpose |
Note: the figures start from the hour after the website was first read. Websites whose plan doesn't include Visitor statistics show slow PHP and suggestions, but no page times.