// blog / speed and core web vitals
Slow WordPress sites, measured before fixed
Finding what makes a WordPress site slow and fixing the metric that's actually failing. Every post is a job I do myself, written in the order I do it, and it's always the answer first.
What these posts cover
A slow WordPress site rarely has one cause. It's usually a heavy theme, a page builder, a stack of plugins, a hero image that loads late or a cache serving the wrong copy, and each of those fails a different Core Web Vitals metric. Guessing is how sites end up with three caching plugins and the same score they started with.
The posts here start with measurement: which metric fails, on which template, and whether it fails for real visitors or only in a lab test. Then they work through the fix for that one metric, Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint or Cumulative Layout Shift, plus the two jobs that trip people up most: clearing every cache layer properly, and putting Cloudflare in front of WordPress without hurting search. Any rule that comes from Google links to where Google says it.
When you'd rather have one person find and fix it, that's the WordPress speed work I do, or Core Web Vitals fixes when a metric's already failing in Search Console.
All six posts, newest first
Each one opens with the short answer, so you'll know in a few lines whether it's the one you need.
How I clear every cache layer when WordPress changes don't show up
To clear cache in WordPress when your changes don't show, I purge every layer from the inside out: the page builder's CSS files, the caching plugin, the host's server cache, the CDN such as Cloudflare, then the browser. After that, I prove what's live by requesting the page over HTTP, not by trusting my own screen.
September 28, 2026Read the post →How I find out why a WordPress site is so slow before fixing anything
Why is my WordPress site so slow? Usually one layer is to blame: the server's response, the weight of the front end, or the admin and its database. I find which one before touching anything, because each layer has its own fix, and that's why another cache plugin so often changes nothing.
September 28, 2026Read the post →How I find what's slowing Interaction to Next Paint
Interaction to Next Paint measures how long a page takes to show a visible response after a tap, click or key press, and web.dev counts 200 milliseconds or less as good. I don't start with a lab score. I find the slow interaction in field data, then trace it in DevTools to the script blocking the main thread.
September 28, 2026Read the post →How I fix a slow Largest Contentful Paint
I fix a slow Largest Contentful Paint by finding the LCP element first, because the fix depends on what it is: usually a hero image, a heading or a background image. Then I split its time into four parts and fix the biggest one, which on WordPress is often a lazy loaded hero, a late image or a slow server.
September 28, 2026Read the post →How I set up Cloudflare on a WordPress site without hurting SEO
Cloudflare doesn't hurt SEO on its own: its nameservers, shared IPs and caching don't count against a site, and a faster site helps. What can hurt is three kinds of setting: bot rules that challenge Googlebot, cache rules that serve the wrong HTML, and redirect rules that fight WordPress. I test each one over HTTP.
September 28, 2026Read the post →How I track down and fix Cumulative Layout Shift
Cumulative Layout Shift scores how much visible content jumps around unexpectedly on a page, and 0.1 or less is good. I find the element that moves in DevTools before I change anything. On WordPress it's usually images and embeds without dimensions, web fonts swapping, cookie banners, or ad and embed slots that load late.
September 28, 2026Read the post →When you'd rather not do it yourself
The posts show the method. If you'd rather one person did the whole job, here's the service it belongs to, and it's scoped in writing on Upwork before anything starts.
Failing a Core Web Vital? I'll find which template causes it.
Book a call on Upwork
Want this done on your own site?
Book a call on Upwork, send the URL and read-only Search Console access, and you'll get a written scope for the search side before any work starts. There's one person on the whole job, and it's all done remotely.
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