Quick Summary: Beginning in 2025, professional maintenance of WordPress will require that a developer perform regular cleanup of the database, integrate Edge Delivery for faster website loading, implement strategies to manage plugin debt, and optimize images to provide interaction times on websites of less than 200 milliseconds. The impact of these actions is seen through increased search engine rankings and higher mobile conversion rates.
WordPress does not create a “fast” website when it is launched; speed becomes a “maintenance” issue. Each time a new plugin is installed; each time an image is uploaded; each time a WordPress theme is updated; and each time a database grows for a month, all chip into the performance that was present at the time of the original launch.
By 2026, WordPress will be used by over 40% of the Internet and Google will use its Core Web Vitals standards against each of them. If a slow-loading site; a sluggish response to click activity; or an unpredictable layout causes your site to be ranked below a competitor’s site that is faster, responsive and has a consistent layout, then the stakes are simple. Faster sites will rank higher, have greater conversion rates and retain more traffic than their slower counterparts.
The following is everything you need to know about keeping a fast WordPress site running, including what are the latest technical changes with regards to WordPress 6.x as well as what are some real world practices on how to maintain Core Web Vitals green on your site month-in-month-out.
How WordPress 6.x+ Differs in Maintenance
WordPress as we know it today, has come a long way over the last few versions. Today’s version of wordpress comes with the block editor (Gutenberg) as its new default content experience, and with that came numerous performance enhancements to improve how wordpress operates; however, those enhancements do not replace an ongoing commitment to maintaining your website.
What WordPress 6.x handles better: wordpress now natively supports lazy load image rendering and lazy load iframe rendering. Additionally, Gutenberg’s generation of clean html code will often exceed what legacy page builder solutions have offered. Finally, since wordpress 5.8, the company has included webp support and with this has been seen growth towards supporting avif. Lastly, the performance lab plugin created by the core performance team has continued to bring experimental ideas closer to being ready for production usage.
What still requires manual care. wordpress is unable to automatically optimize your database. In addition, wordpress is unable to automatically evaluate which of your installed plugins may be redundant and can therefore be uninstalled. Furthermore, wordpress does not provide assistance with setting up a cache layer nor configuring your content delivery network (CDN). Ultimately, wordpress is also unable to assist you in ensuring your web host is providing you with the most current PHP version available. All of these activities are considered “maintenance” and represent where true speed increases occur.
There is a tremendous disparity between how well a default installation of wordpress performs versus how well a professionally optimized installation of wordpress performs. As an example, a fresh installation of wordpress on average decent quality hosting may result in an overall PageSpeed Insights score of 70-80. Conversely, when you maintain and properly optimize a wordpress site on the exact same hosting configuration, that same site would receive a page speed score of 90-100. This is not because there was something wrong with the platform; it is due to the level of effort put forth by the user in performing the necessary maintenance.
Key Elements of WordPress Maintenance
Optimizing speed is not an isolated process; it’s part of a larger set of processes used to keep your entire website running well.
Update plugins and themes. Any plugin or theme that has not been updated will create both a risk to your websites performance as well as its overall security. Plugins and themes should always be updated using a staging environment first. Once they’ve been verified free from any visual and function regression, they may be rolled out into production. Clicking “update all” on live sites without testing is how many sites end up with the dreaded white screen.
Keep your database clean. Your WordPress database grows rapidly due to overhead such as post revisions, transients, orphaned meta-data, spammers comments, etc., that build each time you install and uninstall a new plugin. Regularly optimizing your database can help lower the amount of time spent querying your database by as much as 30-50% on sites that have never had their databases cleaned.
Use version control and staging. Any professional performing maintenance tasks will utilize staging environments to test new changes prior to rolling them out to your visitors. Using version control systems (like Git), provide you with the ability to roll back if things go wrong. These items are not luxuries but rather bare minimums for any site which is important to the business.
Monitor Uptime and Performance. If you don’t measure it, you can’t repair it. Monitoring your servers response times, core web vitals, and uptime will alert you whenever performance degrades, allowing you to repair issues before they impact either visitor engagement or search engine rankings.
Speed Optimization Beyond Caching
The idea that installing caching software is all there is to speeding up a website is about five years old. And while it’s true, back then most websites were still using outdated coding techniques and out of date versions of popular CMS platforms. However, we’ve moved far beyond those days and caching software is no longer enough to optimize performance.
CDN and edge delivery. A Content Delivery Network delivers your web content based upon the user’s physical proximity to the network node. In other words, when you have a CDN set-up on your website, the user will receive a copy of your site from their local CDN node, which is closer to them than if they had to access it directly from your server. Most modern CDNs such as CloudFlare and Fastly are now providing “edge computing” which allows users to run server-side code at the point where data is being received and processed. As an example for WordPress, a properly configured CDN combined with edge computing would provide TTFB (Time To First Byte) times in sub-200ms regardless of the user’s geographic location.
Database tuning. There are two main areas that should be looked at regarding database tuning in addition to basic clean up. They include slow query optimizations and creating indexes for custom tables created from plugins such as WooCommerce and larger form plugins. Lastly, setting up persistent object caching using Redis or Memcached will greatly increase the response times for database calls. With an optimized database, most queries will be returned within a few milliseconds; however, without maintenance on the database those same queries may take hundreds of milliseconds.
Server-side rendering and PHP optimization. Running the latest stable version of PHP (PHP 8.3 or higher) is the fastest and easiest way to optimize the performance of your WordPress site. PHP 8.3 is approximately 15-25% faster than PHP 7.4 when used as a workload for WordPress sites. In conjunction with properly configured OPcache settings and correct PHP worker distribution, your server will handle significantly more concurrent visitors with much lower latency.
Image pipeline automation. Manual image optimization is impossible to scale as it requires too much time and resources. Using a professional automated image pipeline can create a number of different formats (WebP, AVIF etc.) from your uploaded images, generate responsive srcset images in multiple sizes, strip unnecessary data/metadata from each image and finally deliver those images via a CDN. By automating your image pipeline you could potentially cut the amount of total weight delivered per webpage by 40-60% depending on how heavy your images are.
Core Web Vitals in 2026
Core Web Vitals are the 3 metrics that will help you determine if your website meets Google’s Page Experience Standards. All 3 are also ranking factors.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — under 200 ms. INP has replaced First Input Delay (FID), and is a measure of how long it takes for your site to respond to any type of user interaction such as clicking, tapping, or typing on a keyboard. While FID could only be used to measure the very first interaction that occurred with a website; INP measures the longest delay that occurs throughout the entire page session. Therefore, while there may be some room to make mistakes when trying to pass the INP test; there is less room compared to other tests. The biggest problems related to heavy JavaScript code, too many third party scripts loaded by websites, and having an overabundance of DOM elements within your HTML document structure. For a deeper dive, read our guide to passing the INP test.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — under 2.5 seconds. LCP determines how quickly the largest element visible on the page (typically a header image or heading) has finished loading into view. Some common causes of a poor LCP include server response times, render-blocking resources, and low-quality images. One of the most common reasons why WordPress users have a slow LCP is because they use low-cost hosting providers, and therefore the Time-To-First Byte (TTFB) is often longer than recommended.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — under 0.1. CLS evaluates visual stability — How much does the page layout move as the page loads? Common offenders include large images loaded onto pages where either no width or height attribute was included, dynamic ads being added into the page content, and web font styles that cause text reflow. CLS is one of the easiest Core Web Vital performance metrics to fix and is perhaps the least forgiving to fail.
The threshold of meeting all three needs to be an on-going process. What works today could fail next month because of a new plugin that creates render blocking javascript or a new ad script has created layout shifts.
Security and Plugin Debt
Performance and security are interrelated. The more plugins you install unnecessarily, the greater your site’s potential for a) slowdowns and b) opportunities for attackers to use those same plugins as entry points into your site.
The 20-plugin threshold. There isn’t “magic number” related to how many active plugins would constitute bloat or redundancy. However, we frequently audit sites (often including large enterprise sites) that have between 30-40 active plugins; and most of the time we can remove enough to get the count down to 12-15 without having lost any functionality. This is usually accomplished through elimination of duplicate functions within multiple plugins, removal of redundant or extraneous plugins, removal of plugins that are simply no longer needed because their original function has been replaced by a feature built into the current theme. Additionally, we often find plugins that were installed at some point for a “quick fix,” and then never removed after the initial issue was resolved.
Plugin debt accumulates silently. Each plugin loads in its own set of CSS files, JavaScript files and/or runs in its own set of database queries – generally on all pages of your website, regardless if you even use that plugin’s function on that specific page.
Auditing and reducing. A true plugin audit will look at each currently enabled plugin and ask the following: Do I still need this? Is there an option for something less resource-intensive? Could I accomplish this using coding as opposed to a plugin? Are the scripts associated with this plugin able to be limited to just those pages they are being used upon? The ultimate goal is not to completely eliminate plugins from your site but rather to ensure each plugin is earning its keep.
For a complete security perspective, see our WordPress security and troubleshooting guide.
WordPress Care Plans Compared
Most Maintenance Plans will not treat Speed as equally important. When looking at Maintenance Plans you want to see these items included in the Plan:
Basic plans include Backups and Updates. While important they do not provide Performance Optimization. If speed is an issue in your business (it should be) then a Basic Plan will not be sufficient.
Standard plans will have Security Scanning, Uptime Monitoring, Monthly Reporting. Depending on the provider some Standard Plans may also contain limited Performance Monitoring. A standard plan would be good for most small to medium sized businesses that have average web traffic.
Comprehensive plans will include all items listed above with an added layer of **active performance optimization — including database tuning, image compression, caching configurations, core web vitals monitoring & priority support. This tier provides the ROI (Return On Investment) for both e-commerce sites and high traffic business models.
Here at Deutrix Care we have created three tiers of maintenance plans, which include a Standard Tier, a Plus Tier and a Premium Tier. In addition to the standard tier options the Plus and Premium Tiers include dedicated speed optimizations that are included as part of the ongoing maintenance process. Not as a one-off project that will degrade over time, but rather as ongoing care and attention to your site’s speed.
What to look for in any provider. Does the vendor perform updates on staging? Are they monitoring Core Web Vitals or do they only monitor for uptime? Is there clear and transparent reporting from the vendor? Are there clearly defined response times in place for emergencies? These are some of the key non-negotiables when it comes to finding a quality WordPress Support Company. If you would like to see a complete comparison framework for selecting a WordPress Support Company click here: choosing a WordPress support company.
Ready to get your site fast — and keep it fast? Explore Deutrix Care speed optimization plans →
Want to know where you stand? Get a free speed audit →
Need a full site redesign or rebuild? Explore development services at deutrix.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
.Database cleaning is something you do every month. Continuously (automate) image optimizing. Monitor your site’s performance for Core Web Vitals weekly. Review your plugins quarterly. Check your hosting/server configuration annually. Sites that stay fast are those that make maintaining their speed a habit rather than a response to a problem.
Most business sites aim to have at least a 90+ on both their mobile and desktop performance (scores). Simple sites can achieve a “perfect” 100; however, achieving a 100 on sites with analytics, forms, third-party integrations, and dynamic content will be rare. Instead of focusing solely on reaching a perfect score, focus on ensuring that your site has successfully passed all of the thresholds within Core Web Vitals.
Hosting is a major factor in website speed. Even an optimally configured wordpress website on low cost shared hosting will experience poor TTFB (time to first byte), limited php worker processes, and degradation under heavy loads. The greatest potential speed improvements for most websites are managed wordpress hosting which includes server level cache, http / 3, and enough horsepower.
To some extent yes. The majority of website owners can implement basic optimizations with caching plugins, optimizing their images and upgrading PHP. More advanced optimization (database, Critical CSS Generation, Deferring JS, CDNs, etc.) will likely need an expert or special tools. We have a blog post “Improving PageSpeed for WordPress in 5 Steps” that outlines all DIY-optimizations.
