I just got a new job and inherited the organization’s website. It’s a mess. It takes about 9 seconds to load, making changes through the admin dashboard takes a while, and I need to trim this dinosaur down.
From the Site Health > Info > Directories & Sizes:
– WordPress directory size: 20.5 GB
– Uploads directory size: 11.7 GB
– Total installation size: 32.36 GB
I’ve tried trashing old posts and pages without making a dent. The 1700+ large media uploads over the years is obviously a problem, I’m just nervous about cleaning all of that and breaking the site. I’ve tried converting all of the images to webp through webp express but I don’t think it worked.
It seems the size of the website is getting in the way of trying to trim the fat. Everywhere I’ve researched, I’ve never seen anything close to the size of this website. I’m learning WordPress through these trials and tribulations. What would you do first to make the site run faster? Thanks in advance for any and all advice!
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What is saved on the disk and loading performance are not directly related.
Implementing webp might of left the old media for retro compatibility reasons (not all browser do webp…).
Best way in such a case would be to start fresh: agree on a scope for the site, what should be kept and what should disappear, make a new fresh modern design, with a modern fresh backbone and secure your job for a while.
… It will give you also time to go in depth with some topics…
Alternatively, if you know coding and want to speed up the site. Perhaps, port the frontend to Astro and Image to optimize. Nothing more and nothing less, this can help proper maintenance over the next few years that you won’t even need caching or other optimizer too. Everything is just fast.