How to Improve Performance of WP Site on a Cheap Host

In today's WordPress hack I’m going to show you how to improve the performance of your website even if it’s on the cheapest hosting plan ever.

As Marianne Manthey said in our webinar on web design essentials, you don’t necessarily need a super expensive hosting plan at the beginning of your online journey. But cheap hosting tends to have a lot of restrictions and limits. To fight it back you need to open the root folder of your website and find wp-config.php file. Add the following code to the bottom of the file:

ini_set('post_max_size','800M');
 
ini_set('file_uploads','On');
 
ini_set('upload_max_filesize','800M');
 
ini_set('max_input_time','600');
 
ini_set('max_execution_time','600');
 
ini_set('safe_mode','off');
 
ini_set('max_input_vars','3000');
 
define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M');
 
/ That's all, you can stop editing! Happy blogging. /

This code lets you:

• upload larger files (like themes archives) through your admin panel,
• increases the time it can load without skipping,
• turns off the safe mode and increases the memory limit.

In most cases, this code does the trick and your site will work much better after that.

If it doesn’t help go ahead and check the permissions on your files and folders. Files should have 644 and folders 755 permission in order for your WordPress site to work correctly.

That should help if you have problems uploading files through your admin panel or can’t display them on the front end.

Now that even the cheapest hosting account will be able to deal with premium WordPress products, go check out our WordPress themes collection.