How to Speed Up WordPress on Shared Hosting in 5 Easy Steps

By SiteHarbour Team· ·6 min read

To speed up WordPress on shared hosting, do five things in this order: make a backup, update PHP in cPanel, turn on the LiteSpeed Cache plugin, shrink your images, and remove plugins you no longer use. Together these fix the most common causes of a slow site. None of them needs coding, and each takes a few minutes.

The steps are written for cPanel hosting on LiteSpeed servers, which is what SiteHarbour shared hosting uses. If your site is still slow afterwards, our guide on why your WordPress site is slow shows how to find the exact cause.

Step 1: Make a backup first

Every change below is safe, but a backup lets you undo anything in minutes. In cPanel, open Backup Wizard, choose Back Up, then Full Backup (or Home Directory and MySQL Databases separately), and download the files to your computer.

Warning. Do not skip the backup. A new PHP version or plugin can occasionally clash with an old theme. With a backup that is a five-minute fix, and without one it can mean a lost site.

Step 2: Update your PHP version

PHP is the engine that builds every WordPress page. Newer versions run the same code faster, and old versions stop receiving security fixes. This is often the biggest single speed gain, and it costs nothing.

  1. Log in to cPanel and open MultiPHP Manager under Software. If you see Select PHP Version instead, use that. The idea is the same.
  2. Tick the box next to your domain.
  3. In the PHP Version drop-down, pick the newest version your theme and plugins support. In most cases that is the latest 8.x release in the list.
  4. Click Apply.

Now open your website and your /wp-admin login in a new tab. If either shows an error, go back to cPanel, choose the previous PHP version and click Apply. The error is almost always an outdated plugin or theme, so update or replace it before you try again.

Step 3: Turn on LiteSpeed Cache

Without a cache, WordPress rebuilds every page for every visitor. A cache saves the finished page and serves that copy instead, which is much faster. Our servers run LiteSpeed, so the free LiteSpeed Cache plugin can work with the server directly.

  1. In WordPress, go to Plugins, then Add New.
  2. Search for LiteSpeed Cache by LiteSpeed Technology, then click Install Now and Activate.
  3. Open LiteSpeed Cache, then Cache, and check that Enable Cache is set to ON. That is normally the default, and for most sites it is all you need.

Tip. Use only one caching plugin. If you already have another one (WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache and similar), deactivate it before you activate LiteSpeed Cache, or the two will conflict.

Leave the other settings alone for now. Switching on advanced options you do not understand is the most common way a cache plugin breaks a layout. If something looks wrong later, use Purge All in the plugin menu at the top of your dashboard to clear the saved pages.

Step 4: Shrink your images

Large photos are the usual reason a page is heavy. A single phone photo can be several megabytes, while an image in a blog post only needs about 100 to 200 KB.

  • New images: resize and compress them before you upload. A free browser tool such as Squoosh (squoosh.app) does both. A width of about 1600 pixels is plenty for a full-width image.
  • Images already on your site: use an image optimization plugin. LiteSpeed Cache includes one that works through QUIC.cloud and has a free allowance. Check the current limit on its settings page.

Step 5: Remove plugins and themes you do not use

Every active plugin can add code that runs on each page load. Unused ones add risk and clutter without helping you.

  1. Go to Plugins, then Installed Plugins.
  2. For each plugin, ask whether you still use it. If not, click Deactivate, then Delete.
  3. Go to Appearance, then Themes, and delete themes you do not use. Keep your active theme and one default WordPress theme as a fallback.

Sliders, social feeds, related-posts widgets and page-builder add-ons tend to cost the most, so review those first.

How to check that it worked

Test the same page before and after your changes at PageSpeed Insights, so the results are comparable.

Tip. Test twice. The first visit after clearing the cache is always slower, because the page has to be built and saved. The second test shows the cached speed your visitors get.

Common mistakes to avoid

  • Changing everything at once. If you update PHP, install a cache and compress images in one sitting and something breaks, you cannot tell which change caused it. Make one change, check your site, then move on to the next.
  • Testing while logged in. WordPress treats you differently from a visitor, and caching is often switched off for logged-in users. Open your site in a private or incognito window to see what visitors really get.
  • Installing two cache plugins. They fight over the same job and can leave you with a broken layout or stale pages. Keep one.
  • Uploading full-size photos. A 5 MB image resized by the browser is still a 5 MB download. Resize before you upload.
  • Keeping plugins “just in case”. If you have not used a plugin in months, it is costing you speed and adding a security risk for no benefit.

How often to repeat these checks

Speed is not a one-time job, because sites slowly pick up new plugins, bigger images and more content. A short monthly routine is enough: update WordPress, your theme and your plugins, check in MultiPHP Manager that you are still on a current PHP version, delete anything you no longer use, and run one PageSpeed test on your home page and one on a blog post. If the scores drop, you will know it is something recent and can look at what changed.

Still slow?

If the site is still slow after these five steps, the cause is usually specific, such as one heavy plugin, a large database or a traffic spike. Follow the checks in Why Is My WordPress Site Slow? to find it. If your site has outgrown its plan, you can compare options on our shared hosting page.

Frequently asked questions

Is LiteSpeed Cache really free?

Yes, the plugin is free. Some optional features, such as image optimization, use the QUIC.cloud service, which has its own free allowance and paid tiers. The basic page cache needs neither.

Will updating PHP break my site?

Usually not, but an old plugin or theme can fail on a newer version. That is why Step 1 is a backup. If you see an error, switch back to the previous version in MultiPHP Manager and update the plugin that caused it.

Do I need to know how to code?

No. Every step uses cPanel or the WordPress dashboard.

How much faster will my site be?

It depends on what was slowing it down. Test before and after on the same page. A cached page on a current PHP version is typically much faster than an uncached one on an old version.

Can I do this without a plugin?

Partly. Updating PHP and removing unused plugins need no plugin at all, and a separate guide covers the rest using cPanel tools only.

The short version: back up, update PHP in cPanel, enable LiteSpeed Cache, compress your images, delete plugins you do not use, then test the same page before and after.

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