WordPress is an amazing platform that gives people the opportunity to build a custom website without an in-house developer. Although the process is simple, there are a lot of things to consider, especially in the long run.
Websites don’t magically stay at peak performance. It isn’t like you’ll build a site and only add content for the rest of the website’s life. Sites need to be managed, constantly optimized, and cleaned just to maintain their performance. Over time, the website has picked up weight from old plugins that run in the background, leftover themes, and database clutter, all making it load slower and slower.
Optimizing your site, especially after a while or multiple people working on it, is a total nightmare. You don’t know what’s used and what’s just waste, you don’t know what to delete without causing a critical error, and you don’t know where to begin. In those cases, a clean WordPress reset is the best way to go. It will give your site a fresh start at the starting gate, without all that weight.
Why Websites Get Slower Over Time
Websites are just like racehorses; their performance drops, but fortunately, websites have a reset button, and horses don’t. Every plugin you install, every theme you swap, and every experiment you try leaves small traces. Yes, most of them are harmless and won’t affect your website, but bigger chunks can slow down your site, or even worse, create a conflict between plugins and themes.
If you start noticing pages loading slower, images taking longer to appear, and simple things like posting a new blog post taking ages in the backend editor, it’s time for a change.
Visitors notice this, and Google also notices. So, your visitors are unsatisfied, and Google deranks your site from the SERPs.
It’s like running in the Breeders’ Cup, but instead of a light jockey controlling the horse, we have Dwayne The Rock Johnson. No matter how fast the horse is, it will finish the race last due to the added weight. The Breeders’ Cup is just around the corner, and if you are looking for some tips, jockey-horse syncs, and guides, check out this link: twinspires.com/breeders-cup/betting/
So, what do you do with a slow site? Well, the first choice is to find out what’s causing your website to be slow. There are plenty of online checkers that will give you that information, like PageSpeed Insights from Google.
After finding that out, your first job should be to erase the problems one by one. If that’s impossible, and your system is already a mess, sometimes hitting the refresh button on your entire site is the only choice.
This will wipe away the clutter, remove any unnecessary files, and give you a clean slate.
The Joy of Starting Fresh
Have you ever cleaned your house and found the space to be more enjoyable than before? Well, we cannot deny that there is something oddly satisfying about starting fresh. Your site feels the same after a race; the old revisions are gone, and scripts aren’t dragging everything down.
Suddenly, pages load faster, animations run smoother, and the backend finally works smoothly.
This also gives you a chance to rethink your website structure. Maybe your old site had pages you rarely used, confusing menus, or outdated plugins. Starting fresh allows you to redesign the experience and streamline everything.
The process is hard and nerve-racking, especially on a website with frequent daily visitors, but sometimes you need to go through the hard things just to make things better.
Timing Your Reset
Remember, not every site that loads slowly needs a reset. Sometimes plugin tweaks and conflicts can be sorted out without a database reset. But if you tried everything and the website still feels cluttered, buggy, and slow, it is probably time for a reset.
A reset also makes sense before a relaunch or rebrand. You are basically building a new website, so why not get rid of all the unnecessary weight?
How to Do It Properly
Resetting your website might sound scary, but if you approach it carefully, the process is painless. First, always back up your entire site, since things can go wrong.
Next, you need to find out whether you can fix the problem without resetting your entire database. This is often the best and painless solution. But if your database is long gone, the next thing is to choose a reliable reset plugin, like WP Reset. This is a plugin that lets you selectively remove content, plugins, or themes, while keeping the core files intact.
Take your time to plan the process and find a way to optimize your website just to prevent future resets. That’s basically it. You shouldn’t worry about the rest too much. If done properly, users won’t even see your website going into maintenance mode.