WordPress is great and I sing its praises all day long but that being said, it needs some help right out of the box in order to perform to its full potential. One big culprit of a slow WordPress site can be the built-in WP Cron (wp-cron.php file). WordPress cron can run a lot and put a heavy load on your hosting server. The best solution is to disable WP Cron and run it manually at regular intervals. The frequency depends on how busy your site is and how often the content changes. I personally run it once per day in the wee hours. You just add the line below to your wp-config.php file…

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

and then run a cron job via whatever means you prefer. Cpanel interfaces and most hosting providers have GUI interfaces to setup cron jobs. Mine simply runs this line…

curl https://nashvilleinter.wpengine.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron