How Much Traffic Can WordPress Handle? (+ Expert Scaling Tips)

Are you wondering how much traffic WordPress can handle?

When equipped with the right set of tools, WordPress can handle virtually unlimited traffic. We have seen it handle billions of impressions every month.

In this article, we’ll talk about how much traffic can a WordPress website handle, and how to prepare for heavy traffic on your WordPress site.

Here is a quick list of topics we’ll cover in this article.

• How WordPress Manages Website Traffic?
• How Much Actual Traffic Can WordPress Handle?
• How Much Traffic Can WordPress Manage on Shared Hosting?
• How Much Traffic Can Managed WordPress Hosting Handle?
• How Much Traffic Can WordPress Handle on Cloud Hosting?
• Handling Billions of Monthly Requests in WordPress
• Tips on Managing Heavy Traffic on a WordPress Website

How WordPress Manages Website Traffic?

A WordPress website stores content in a database. When a user visits a page on your site, WordPress fetches that content and generates the page which then appears on the user’s screen.

As you get more traffic, WordPress has to repeat this process for every user.

As software, WordPress is just code, and it needs some hardware to run on. This hardware is provided by your WordPress hosting company.

It includes a type of computer called a server with software to handle website traffic (Apache and Nginx tend to be the most popular server software). This machine is connected to the internet 24/7 to make sure that your website is always online.

A faster web hosting server allows WordPress to process more requests faster.

A slower web hosting server limits WordPress’ ability to generate those pages quickly.

For more information, take a look at our tutorial on how WordPress really works (behind-the-scenes infographic).

How Much Actual Traffic Can WordPress Handle?

WordPress can handle virtually unlimited website traffic, depending on your hosting platform and caching setup.

The only limit on how much traffic your WordPress website can handle is your hosting platform.

And that’s not just WordPress. All websites, regardless of what website builder they are using, need to rely on the hosting provider to handle more traffic.

Depending on how much traffic you are getting, you can then add more resources to your hosting plan to manage more traffic.

That being said, let’s take a look at some real numbers.

We’ll break it down into different types of hosting plans and how much traffic your WordPress website can manage on those platforms.

How Much Traffic Can WordPress Manage on Shared Hosting?

Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting plan used by the majority of WordPress websites.

It is suitable for small business websites, new blogs, and low-traffic websites.

Shared hosting plans are budget-friendly because they split sever resources among several customers.

To make sure that all customers get good service, shared hosting companies place different limits on how much traffic a customer can get on their websites.

These limits vary from one hosting provider to another, and they are not made public to prevent abuse.

Some shared hosting providers have incredibly fast servers, and access to larger data centers with high bandwidth. This allows them to provide generous resources to their shared hosting customers.

Other providers may cut costs by choosing low-cost data centers with restrictive bandwidth caps. They may not be able to offer much flexibility and will start blocking requests more frequently during peak hours.

Our top pick for shared hosting providers include Bluehost, SiteGround, and Hostinger.

All three of these companies provide generous resources for small businesses, and they each have hosting plans to grow with you as your business grows while keeping the costs affordable.

They have ultra-fast servers operated by state-of-the-art data centers, higher bandwidth, and superior technical expertise to provide a much better user experience to their customers.

They deploy in-house solutions to handle traffic, with built-in caching and behind the scene server tweaks.

We ran our own tests on Bluehost servers to see how much peak traffic they can handle. Here are the results:

We gradually increased traffic to 100 users at a time within a 5-minute period. As you can see that it didn’t crash and remained quite stable throughout the test.

The folks at Bluehost are offering WPBeginner users a generous discount on hosting with a free domain name. You can start with just $2.75 / month.

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How Much Traffic Can Shared WordPress Hosting Handle?

A good shared hosting company can comfortably handle traffic between 10,000 pageviews to 100,000 pageviews per month.

However, you’ll need to optimize WordPress performance to get better results. Some hosts automatically add WordPress acceleration and optimization to help you handle more traffic.

For example, Hostinger on their shared Pro plan can handle up to 200,000 visitors monthly.

Whereas, SiteGround on their GoGeek plan can handle upwards of 400,000 visitors monthly.

Your experience may still differ from the estimates above based on how complex your website is and what resources it requires, but the above estimates are true for vast majority of small business websites.

Don’t worry, we’ll talk later about saving those server resources to efficiently use your hosting plan.

How Much Traffic Can Managed WordPress Hosting Handle?

Once you have utilized your shared hosting plan to the maximum, you will need to upgrade your hosting plan.

Managed WordPress hosting is like the concierge service for WordPress websites. Your hosting provider will take care of updates, security, backups, and more.

Since they are focused on WordPress websites, they deploy additional tweaks to their server technologies to make WordPress run faster and perform reliably under stress.

On top of that, managed WordPress hosting plans make it super easy to scale up your server resources when you get sudden huge traffic spikes.

WP Engine is our top recommendation for a managed WordPress hosting platform.

They are pioneers in the managed WordPress hosting industry and leading the way with state-of-the-art infrastructure and top-notch customer support.

We ran our own tests on WP Engine by sending up to 100 virtual visitors within a short period of time. Here are the results:

As you can see, our test site remained stable throughout the period with a very low response time.

If you want to look for an alternative, then we recommend SiteGround. They are also a WordPress-recommended hosting provider.

How Much Actual Traffic Can a Managed WordPress Hosting Plan Handle?

A managed WordPress hosting plan can easily handle traffic of 400,000 visitors into millions of page views per month.

For example, SiteGround on their GoGeek plan can handle upwards of 400,000 visitors monthly.

WP Engine on their Managed Scale plan can also handle upwards of 400,000 visitors monthly.

And both of them offer custom plans for sites that are larger than this.

For example, our WPBeginner website along with other sites are hosted on SiteGround’s custom managed platform, and we receive hundreds of millions of requests each month.

We also know several super large websites that receive tens of millions of visitors that use WP Engine.

When you’re on a managed WordPress hosting platform, they can handle any amount of traffic needed. You just have to pay the additional hardware costs.

How Much Traffic Can WordPress Handle on Cloud Hosting?

For shared and managed WordPress hosting, you share server resources with other customers.

On a cloud hosting platform, you get guaranteed resources on a cloud platform made up of several servers. If one server fails, your website will remain available on other servers.

Due to this redundancy, guaranteed resources, and enterprise-grade availability, cloud hosting is suitable for large businesses, busier eCommerce stores, and other enterprise clients.

We recommend using SiteGround Cloud Hosting. They use the Google Cloud Platform and offer free CDN, unique IP address, enhanced security, and priority support 24/7.

WP Engine, Kinsta, Rocket.net, and others can also create custom cloud platforms based on your hosting needs.

How Much Actual Traffic Can WordPress Handle on Cloud Hosting?

A proper cloud hosting platform can allow WordPress to handle millions of pageviews per month without any hiccups.

For example, Rocket.net public pricing shows that they can handle upwards of 5,000,000 visitors on their Enterprise plan because they use 20+ server locations along with a smart Cloudflare cache.

You can see our performance test results in our detailed Rocket.net hosting review.

Handling Billions of Monthly Requests in WordPress

Now when most people think about WordPress, they think of it as a blogging platform, but the reality is that WordPress is the most popular website building platform on the planet with over 43% market share.

There are even full-blown SaaS apps that are built using WordPress.

For example, we built a popular conversion optimization software OptinMonster which underneath is powered by WordPress.

We process billions of requests each month, and that’s all WordPress.

So when someone says WordPress doesn’t scale, they are clearly misinformed, or simply lack the expertise themselves to do it.

You should challenge their perspective and find another WordPress consultant that has the expertise to scale WordPress.

What do you need to handle really large traffic in WordPress?

This is where you need Enterprise Custom Cloud Hosting on platforms like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud.

These companies provide cloud servers that you can sign up for and create your own custom hosting environment.

You can add as many CPU resources, memory, storage, or geographical locations as you need.

You will be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis for the resources you have utilized. That’s why you’ll need your own team of server admins to efficiently use these resources.

Luckily, you don’t have to become a DevOps team either. Companies like WP Engine, SiteGround, and others can build and manage these custom clouds for you.

How Much Traffic Can Enterprise Cloud Hosting on AWS or Google Cloud Handle?

Enterprise custom-built cloud hosting on AWS or Google Cloud can handle extremely large volumes of traffic.

They can be configured to handle millions of hits per day or even billions of pageviews per month.

Our app OptinMonster runs on AWS and powers billions of requests without any hiccups.

You can combine it with a CDN and web-application firewall like Cloudflare for further scalability.

For example, our WPForms website is hosted on Google Cloud managed by SiteGround. We use Easy Digital Downloads to handle our eCommerce and software licensing which means for a plugin with over 5 million active installs, we’re receiving billions of requests each month across our portfolio.

Aside from Google Cloud, we’re using Cloudflare to efficiently scale our WordPress eCommerce site.

Tips on Managing Heavy Traffic on a WordPress Website

WordPress does a very good job of reducing the server load and processing requests so your users can get to your website as quickly as possible.

However, there are so many things that you can do to further optimize that performance. Below, we outline some of the most important practices that you can implement on your website for the best performance.

1. Always Get The Best WordPress Hosting for Your Budget

The web hosting industry is highly competitive, and there are tons of companies offering unlimited bandwidth, unlimited this, and unlimited that.

Don’t fall for false advertisements. Do your own research and sign up for the most trusted hosting providers in the industry. Unlimited rarely actually means unlimited.

For instance, if you were looking for a shared hosting provider, you can compare these top WordPress hosting companies as a starting point.

Choosing an unreliable WordPress hosting company will make your website slower, and it will not be able to handle much traffic.

2. Turn on a Caching Plugin

What if instead of generating pages repeatedly, you save them temporarily on your WordPress server and reuse them?

This technique is called caching. When you update something on your website, the cached version is deleted, and the newly updated content is served to your users.

Most WordPress hosting companies like Bluehost, Hostinger, and SiteGround come with their own built-in caching solutions that are turned on by default. However, if you are unsure, just ask their support staff to turn it on for your website.

Alternatively, you can use WP Rocket, which is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market.

It is beginner friendly, and once you turn it on, you don’t need to worry about the technical stuff as it automatically configures the best settings for most websites.

3. Use CDN for Static Content in WordPress

Using a CDN or content delivery network allows you to serve static files like images, javascript, and CSS, using separate servers.

This reduces the load on your WordPress server and frees up resources to process more traffic requests at faster speeds.

We recommend using Bunny.net they are one of the best CDN services on the market. Adding it to your WordPress website is super-easy even for absolute beginners.

Alternatively, you can use the Cloudflare Free CDN, which some hosting providers such as SiteGround include as a base option within their platform.

4. Filter Bad Traffic with Firewall

Bad traffic is the traffic generated by malicious spam bots, hackers, and DDoS attacks. These are not genuine website visitors, and they could waste a lot of your server resources and make WordPress slower.

A DNS-based website firewall service blocks such traffic even before it reaches your website. This saves you a ton of server resources and your WordPress website can cater to your genuine visitors.

We use Sucuri on the WPBeginner websites and Cloudflare on others. See our list of the best WordPress firewall services on the market.

We hope this article helped you learn how much traffic WordPress can handle. You may also want to follow our WordPress performance optimization handbook or take a look at these tips on making high converting sales funnel.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How Much Traffic Can WordPress Handle? (+ Expert Scaling Tips) first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 20, 2022 at 03:15PM

How to Create Mobile Popups That Convert (Without Hurting SEO)

Do you want to use mobile popups on your website?

Mobile popups can be very effective for lead generation, increasing sales, and getting more app downloads, but you need to design them the right way. Otherwise, you could end up harming your website’s search engine rankings.

In this guide, we will share how to create mobile popups that have high conversion without hurting your SEO rankings.

How Could Mobile Popups Hurt Your SEO?

Mobile popups could harm your WordPress SEO efforts if they go against Google’s guidelines. Google states that sites may be ranked lower in mobile search for using intrusive interstitials or intrusive popups.

If your page has a popup that appears immediately, then Google can penalize that page. This means your page will not rank as high in Google’s search results as it otherwise would have.

Google doesn’t want your popup to cover all or most of the page before the user gets to see the content. These are some examples from Google of what they want you to avoid.

So you might be wondering, then why risk creating popups on mobile?

The short answer is that it helps you increase conversion rates, which results in more leads and sales. This is why many smart business owners and marketers continue to use popups on both mobile and desktop.

The important part is that you must create your mobile popups the RIGHT way so it doesn’t impact your SEO rankings.

How to Create Mobile Friendly Popups That Won’t Hurt Your SEO Rankings

There are several ways to create mobile popups that won’t hurt your SEO rankings. You could:

• Create a full-screen popup that only appears after a delay.
• Create a banner or slide-in that only covers a smaller part of the screen.
• Only use immediate full-screen popups for legal notices. Examples of these include cookie permissions and age verification popups. These aren’t penalized by Google.

In our example, we’ll cover how to create a full-screen popup that only appears after the user has been on your site for a certain length of time. However, we’ll also share best practices and tactics that you can use to add smart display rules for further optimization.

Creating a Mobile-Only Popup With OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the easiest way to create a mobile-only popup. It’s the most popular lead generation tool on the market and has a powerful WordPress popup builder.

First, you need to visit the OptinMonster website and register for an account. Simply click the ‘Get OptinMonster Now’ button to continue.

While all their templates are mobile responsive, you need the Pro account to unlock mobile-specific display targeting rules.

After registering, you need to install and activate the OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress site. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon installation, you should see the welcome screen and the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Connect Your Existing Account’ button and follow the on-screen instructions.

Next, a new window will now open asking you to connect your WordPress website to OptinMonster.

You can click the ‘Connect to WordPress’ button to continue.

Once your OptinMonster account is connected, you are ready to create a mobile popup.

You can head to OptinMonster » Campaigns in your WordPress admin and click the ‘Create Your First Campaign’ button.

You will be taken to the OptinMonster campaign builder, where you can choose a campaign type and template.

Simply leave the Campaign Type set to ‘Popup.’

Next, OptinMonster will show you multiple templates for your popup campaign.

First, click the ‘Device/Mobile’ tab and select the ‘Mobile Specific (Optimized)’ device filter. From here, you can select any template for your campaign.

When you choose a template, a window will open.

Simply enter a name for your campaign and click the ‘Start Building’ button.

The template will automatically load the popup’s optin view in the OptinMonster builder. Customizing the content or adding new items with the drag & drop interface is easy.

You can drag any block from the menu on your left and drop it on the template. For example, you can add an image, button, countdown timer, and more.

Besides that, the plug lets you customize existing elements on the template.

For instance, to change the default text, you just need to click on it and type the text you want to use.

You also need to edit the ‘Success’ view. This will be what users see after they enter their email addresses.

To edit the Success view, simply click on the Success tab at the bottom of the screen.

Once you’re happy with both the optin view and the success view, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen.

Setting the Display Rules for Your Mobile Popup

Now, it’s time to set the display rules for your popup. First, you need to click the ‘Display Rules’ tab at the top of your screen.

The default rule is for your popup to show after users have been on your site for 5 seconds. You can increase this time period if you want.

You can also add other mobile-safe targeting rules to unlock further optimizations such as:

• Exit Intent for Mobile – this will only show the popup if the user hits the back button or is about to close the tab.
• Inactivity Sensor – this will only show the popup after the user has stopped being active on the site for a certain number of seconds.
• Scroll Trigger Popups – this will only show the popup after the user scrolls down a certain percentage of the page.
• Button Click by MonsterLinks – this will only show the popup if the user clicks on a specific button.

Your popup uses a Mobile Optimized template. This means it will automatically only display on mobile devices.

Next, you can select the pages on which the popup will appear.

By default, the rule will be set to ‘current URL path is any page.’ This means that your popup will appear on all posts and pages of your site.

You can then click the ‘Next Step’ button.

OptinMonster will then allow you to add an animation and sound effect when your mobile popup appears.

After that, you can click the ‘Next Step’ button.

You will now see a summary of your display rules. At this stage, you can edit your settings and make changes to your campaign.

Next, you can go to the ‘Integrations’ tab and add an email marketing service such as Constant Contact. OptinMonster integrates with most major platforms, so you will just need to select the one you use.

If you don’t have one, WPBeginner readers can get 20% off their first 3 months with Constant Contact.

Simply click the ‘+ Add New Integration’ button from the panel on your left and choose your email marketing tool.

Next, you can go to the ‘Published’ tab at the top.

After that, make sure the ‘Publish Status’ is changed from ‘Draft’ to ‘Publish.’

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen and close the campaign builder.

Putting Your OptinMonster Campaign Live on Your Website

Your OptinMonster campaign won’t automatically go live on your WordPress website. Instead, you need to log in to your WordPress admin and go to OptinMonster » Campaigns.

You should now see your new mobile popup campaign listed here. Then, click the ‘Change Status’ link below your campaign’s name and select the ‘Publish’ option under the Status column.

Now, your campaign will be live on your WordPress website. Go ahead and view it by going to your site on a mobile device.

Simply wait for the length of time you specified in the display rules, and your popup should appear. Here’s our popup live on our demo site.

Other Types of Mobile Popups That Won’t Harm Your Mobile SEO Rankings

Aside from time-delayed and user interaction popups in OptinMonster, you could create a floating bar, slide-in, or inline option. Google won’t consider these intrusive, so you don’t have to worry about your SEO taking a hit.

• A floating bar optin can appear at the top or bottom of the user’s screen, without covering up the content.
• A popup can slide in from the bottom or side of the website, usually after a time delay.
• An inline optin can sit within the content itself, part way through a page or post.

Simply select one of these types when you begin building your campaign. You will then see the templates you can use.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create mobile popups that won’t hurt your SEO. You might also like our article on the best WordPress plugins for business websites, and how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create Mobile Popups That Convert (Without Hurting SEO) first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 19, 2022 at 11:22PM

How to Use AI to Generate Images in WordPress

Do you want to use artificial intelligence tools like DALL.E to generate images in WordPress?

AI-generated images can be a good alternative to generate images for your WordPress blog posts without worrying about copyright.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use AI to generate images in WordPress.

Why Use AI Tools to Generate Images for Your WordPress Website?

There are a ton of paid stock image websites offering images to use on your WordPress website for a small fee.

However, the cost of these images is an extra expense. Most bloggers and small businesses don’t have the budget for that.

There are certainly many websites that offer royalty free images like Unsplash or ShutterStock‘s limited free library.

But those images are highly overused and often too generic.

Now, the best way to create images for your website is by making your own images or using your own photographs. But not everyone is a professional photographer or digital artist.

This is where artificial intelligence comes in.

AI tools like DALL.E can generate unique artwork from text descriptions provided by the users.

These images are not only unique but highly creative and artistic.

For instance, here is an image of an office desk with a sunset backdrop generated by DALL.E 2. It mimics the style of generic stock image photos that you can find on hundreds of websites.

Now take a look at this example of an artwork created by DALLE.2.

This one is artistic, more colorful, and in a comic book style.

You can see the variety of styles, topics, and ideas you can use on the DALL.E homepage.

The best part is that you are free to use these images for your blog posts, articles, and even landing pages.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily use AI-generated images in WordPress.

We’ll be showing you two methods using two different AI tools, you can choose one that works best for you.

1. Generate AI Images for WordPress with DALL.E 2

DALL.E 2 is an Artificial Intelligence tool made by Open A.I. It is quite popular for its artistic rendering, surrealism, creativity, and versatility.

There are no plugins available to integrate DALL.E 2 directly with your WordPress website.

However, you can create images on DALL.E 2 website and download them to your computer. After that, you can upload those images to your WordPress website.

First, you need to visit the DALL.E 2 website and sign up for a free account which gives you 50 credits for your first month.

Upon signing up, you’ll see the DALL.E dashboard with a prompt field and some recent artworks generated by DALL.E.

Type a text description of the image that you want to generate in the prompt field. You can be as descriptive and creative as you want.

Click on the Surprise Me button to see some examples of prompts you can generate.

Once you click on the Generate button, the AI will generate images based on the prompt you provided and show you four results.

You can download all of them to your computer if you want. You can also click on any of the generated images to edit them.

The image editor in DALL.E allows you to expand the frame or pan in. You can also erase or retouch an area of the image.

Click on the Generate button again for AI to regenerate the image based on your changes.

Once you have downloaded the images to your computer you can switch back to the admin area of your WordPress website.

You can now upload the image to your WordPress media library by visiting the Media » Add New page.

You can also add an image directly to your WordPress posts and pages. Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the image.

On the post edit screen, add the Image block and then upload the image from your computer.

What is The License Used for Images Generated by DALL.E 2?

You retain the copyright for the images generated by the prompt provided by you to DALL.E 2.

You can use the images anywhere you want including your WordPress website, YouTube videos, eBooks, magazine, and more.

2. Use Imajinn to Generate AI Images in WordPress

For the first method, we’ll be using Imajinn AI to generate images in WordPress.

Imajinn AI is similar to the tools like DALL.E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. It generates images using artificial intelligence based on the prompt you provide.

First, you need to install and activate the Imajinn plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: The base plugin is free and gives you 10 credits. After that, you can buy more credits from the plugin’s website.

Upon activation, you need to visit the Media » Imajinn AI to configure plugin settings and generate images.

First, you need to sign up by providing an email address and password to create your account.

After that, you will be able to start generating images using Imajin AI.

Simply provide a detailed prompt describing the image that you want to generate.

You can also choose from a list of styles, artist style, style modifier filters, and aspect ratio to further customize your prompt.

Below that you can choose to click on the Summon button to launch the Prompt Genie tool.

Based on the prompt description you provided the tool will suggest further prompt ideas to generate the best possible image.

You can click on the generate button to use a suggested prompt, or continue writing your own prompt by copying ideas from the suggestions.

Once you are satisfied, click on the Generate button to continue.

The plugin will now start generating images using the AI tool running on the cloud. Once finished, it will display four variations of images for you to choose from.

Below each image, you’ll find options to share the image, repair faces (The AI is not great at generating human faces), or touch up the image.

You can also just click on the Save button to store an image in your WordPress media library.

To use the image in your WordPress posts and pages, simply edit the post or page where you want to add the image.

On the post-edit screen, add the Image block where you want to display the image and then click on Media Library.

Next, you need to select the image you saved earlier from your Media Library and provide an Alt text for the image.

After that, go ahead and click on the Select button to insert the image.

The plugin also comes with a Imajinn block that you can add to your post or pages and generate an image inside the block editor.

What is The License Used for Images Generated by Imajinn AI?

All images generated by Imajinn AI are provided under the free domain or CC0 license.

You are free to use them on your website as you see fit.

We hope this article helped you learn how to use Artificial Intelligence to generate images for your WordPress website. You may also want to see our ultimate image SEO guide and these easy tips to optimize images for speed.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Use AI to Generate Images in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

October 19, 2022 at 03:41PM