Most often hosting providers can’t perform the way they promised. And that can fall your WordPress site apart even under moderate load. To avoid this, you can go for load testing your WordPress website.
Load testing is a way to know your hosting infrastructure’s capability and how well your site can perform under pressure. It provides essential insights to site owners to be aware of the issues before losing potential customers and existing clients. That’s the reason, it’s always good practice to run a load test on your WordPress website frequently.
In this guide, we will introduce you to load testing and show you how to load test your WordPress website.
What is WordPress Load Test?
Load testing is a type of performance test that runs to monitor your website’s ability to handle the load in a certain period of time and shifting behaviors in real-time. It’s a fundamental part of the development to ensure that all aspects of a website are working properly. Loading test not only sees how your website performs under pressure but also tests your server limit, predicts the cost of growing your site, and identifies other bottlenecks that can affect your site performance.
There are a few types of open-source load testing tools. Most of them simulate multiple user agents visiting your site all at once so that you can see if your site is ready to handle them. The test report let you know how your site’s loading times and general performance are affected by that certain number of visitors. If your server hold firm and maintain similar page loading times even as the number of users increases that means your website is well optimized. But if that’s not the case then you need to work on your site optimization.
How to Load Test WordPress Website?
As we mentioned earlier, there are many tools available online to load test your WordPress website. However, most of them are either too complicated or paid tools. That’s the reason for today’s guide we are going to use the Loader.io load testing tool. It’s free and has a very user-friendly interface. Moreover, it supports up to 10,000 users in the free plan.
Step-1 #Sign up & Verify Your Domain:
To run a load test the first step is to sign up for Loader.io and then verify your domain. After signing up, you can verify your domain in two ways, i) via DNS ( For paid plan) & ii) through a text file.
As you are going to use the free plan, you just need to download the Loader.io file and upload it to the root of your WordPress directory. Once the file is uploaded, click on the “Verify” button. Now you are ready to run a load test.
Step-2# Configure a Load Test:
For load testing, you will need to name your test, select test type, the number of clients, and testing duration. You can add the test name as you want.
For test type, they will provide you multiple options like clients per test, clients per second, and maintain client load. We recommend selecting “Maintain Client Load”. It will test with zero clients and gradually increases the number so that you can detect the exact breaking point.
The most challenging part of load testing is deciding the number of clients you should use. Using too many clients can break even a dedicated server. On the other hand, using less number of clients will not be able to create enough pressure on your site. For that reason, start with 1,000 requests over a period of one minute.
That might seem like a large number. However, 15-20 users per second are realistic for a regular website or online store.
Step-3# Analyze Test Result:
Once the test is complete, you will get your site’s loading test report like this:
As you can see, the report provided four different components: Response Time, Response Counts, Bandwidth, and redirects. The main two components that represent your site performance are Response Time and Response Counts.
Response Time will indicate how much time your site took to load during the test with 1,000 users. The less response time means the better performance. Generally, the average response time should not be more than two seconds. If it’s higher than that, it indicates the load time your visitors are experiencing is very high. And as we all know, higher response time leads to higher bounce rates and lost profits.
Response Counts is the most important component to understand how well your site can perform under pressure. As you can see response count result has shown in four matrixes.
- Success – the number of requests that were successfully responded.
- 400/500 – the number of unsuccessful requests. The reason behind this error has not been specified by Loader.io.
- Timeout – the number of unsuccessful requests from where the system hasn’t received any data back. Timeout means that your website has gone unresponsive and your current hosting provider is not capable of handling the spike in traffic.
- Network – the number of unsuccessful requests because of network-related errors.
Any other counts rather than success mean your website failed to handle this number of visitors. For this test, our result is a success. That means, our site is ready to handle the pressure.
What if Your WordPress Load Test Result is Poor?
Load test gives you a clear idea about how your website will behave under high traffic. If the report indicates that your site is not performing well, you need to take steps to optimize it.
- Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Optimize your WordPress database
- Use a caching plugin
- Remove unused plugins and themes
- Detect and resolve any code bottlenecks
- Optimize your images and video files
If you face poor results after following the above-mentioned step, you need to migrate to a high-availability hosting provider. Consult with your hosting provider, they will help you to make better decisions to select the best hosting plan for your needs. A high-availability hosting service would improve your website’s performance and your visitors’ user experience.
Conclusion:
As your website grows, your site traffic increases. So it’s important to keep your site ready to handle that traffic. If your site couldn’t able to handle it, you’ll waste lots of potential customers. As we covered, running a load test is pretty easy if you have access to the right tools.
Do you have any questions regarding the load test for your WordPress site? Let us know in the comments section below! Also, if you have already load-tested your WordPress site and got some valuable insight, don’t forget to share with us in the comment section.
Hope this guide helped you to load test your WordPress site. To get more helpful articles stay tuned to our Blog page.
Most often hosting providers can’t perform the way they promised. And that can fall your WordPress site apart even under moderate load. To avoid this, you can go for load testing your WordPress website.
Load testing is a way to know your hosting infrastructure’s capability and how well your site can perform under pressure. It provides essential insights to site owners to be aware of the issues before losing potential customers and existing clients. That’s the reason, it’s always good practice to run a load test on your WordPress website frequently.
In this guide, we will introduce you to load testing and show you how to load test your WordPress website.
What is WordPress Load Test?
Load testing is a type of performance test that runs to monitor your website’s ability to handle the load in a certain period of time and shifting behaviors in real-time. It’s a fundamental part of the development to ensure that all aspects of a website are working properly. Loading test not only sees how your website performs under pressure but also tests your server limit, predicts the cost of growing your site, and identifies other bottlenecks that can affect your site performance.
There are a few types of open-source load testing tools. Most of them simulate multiple user agents visiting your site all at once so that you can see if your site is ready to handle them. The test report let you know how your site’s loading times and general performance are affected by that certain number of visitors. If your server hold firm and maintain similar page loading times even as the number of users increases that means your website is well optimized. But if that’s not the case then you need to work on your site optimization.
How to Load Test WordPress Website?
As we mentioned earlier, there are many tools available online to load test your WordPress website. However, most of them are either too complicated or paid tools. That’s the reason for today’s guide we are going to use the Loader.io load testing tool. It’s free and has a very user-friendly interface. Moreover, it supports up to 10,000 users in the free plan.
Step-1 #Sign up & Verify Your Domain:
To run a load test the first step is to sign up for Loader.io and then verify your domain. After signing up, you can verify your domain in two ways, i) via DNS ( For paid plan) & ii) through a text file.
As you are going to use the free plan, you just need to download the Loader.io file and upload it to the root of your WordPress directory. Once the file is uploaded, click on the “Verify” button. Now you are ready to run a load test.
Step-2# Configure a Load Test:
For load testing, you will need to name your test, select test type, the number of clients, and testing duration. You can add the test name as you want.
For test type, they will provide you multiple options like clients per test, clients per second, and maintain client load. We recommend selecting “Maintain Client Load”. It will test with zero clients and gradually increases the number so that you can detect the exact breaking point.
The most challenging part of load testing is deciding the number of clients you should use. Using too many clients can break even a dedicated server. On the other hand, using less number of clients will not be able to create enough pressure on your site. For that reason, start with 1,000 requests over a period of one minute.
That might seem like a large number. However, 15-20 users per second are realistic for a regular website or online store.
Step-3# Analyze Test Result:
Once the test is complete, you will get your site’s loading test report like this:
As you can see, the report provided four different components: Response Time, Response Counts, Bandwidth, and redirects. The main two components that represent your site performance are Response Time and Response Counts.
Response Time will indicate how much time your site took to load during the test with 1,000 users. The less response time means the better performance. Generally, the average response time should not be more than two seconds. If it’s higher than that, it indicates the load time your visitors are experiencing is very high. And as we all know, higher response time leads to higher bounce rates and lost profits.
Response Counts is the most important component to understand how well your site can perform under pressure. As you can see response count result has shown in four matrixes.
Any other counts rather than success mean your website failed to handle this number of visitors. For this test, our result is a success. That means, our site is ready to handle the pressure.
What if Your WordPress Load Test Result is Poor?
Load test gives you a clear idea about how your website will behave under high traffic. If the report indicates that your site is not performing well, you need to take steps to optimize it.
If you face poor results after following the above-mentioned step, you need to migrate to a high-availability hosting provider. Consult with your hosting provider, they will help you to make better decisions to select the best hosting plan for your needs. A high-availability hosting service would improve your website’s performance and your visitors’ user experience.
Conclusion:
As your website grows, your site traffic increases. So it’s important to keep your site ready to handle that traffic. If your site couldn’t able to handle it, you’ll waste lots of potential customers. As we covered, running a load test is pretty easy if you have access to the right tools.
Do you have any questions regarding the load test for your WordPress site? Let us know in the comments section below! Also, if you have already load-tested your WordPress site and got some valuable insight, don’t forget to share with us in the comment section.
Hope this guide helped you to load test your WordPress site. To get more helpful articles stay tuned to our Blog page.
Sidratul Sohrat
I am Sidratul Sohrat, a dedicated content writer with a fervent passion for creating engaging and informative content related to technology, business, and marketing.