# WordPress Best Practices

Here you'll find some best practices and suggestions for WordPress, to get the most out of your TurboStack environment.

Updating all plugins blindly often leads to errors.
Instead, use Blackfire to analyze performance issues and optimize selectively.

WordPress uses a built-in “pseudo-cron” system called wp-cron.php, but it has several weaknesses:

• wp-cron is triggered on page load. If your site has low traffic, cron tasks might run late or not at all.
• If your site has high traffic, wp-cron may trigger too frequently, causing unnecessary load.
• Every visit can trigger a separate php process to execute wp-cron. This means increased research usage.

To disable wp-cron, add the following line to wp-config.php:

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', 'true');

To start making cronjobs, you need to initialize it first with the following command:

crontab -e

If this is the first time you are using crontab, it will ask you to select an editor. If you are new to these editors, choose nano.

Set a cronjob to run every 5 minutes:

*/5 * * * * cronlock /usr/local/bin/wp-cli cron event run --due-now --path=/var/www/xxx/public_html > /dev/null 2>&1

Every minute:

* * * * * cronlock /usr/local/bin/wp-cli cron event run --due-now --path=/var/www/xxx/public_html > /dev/null 2>&1

Note: Replace xxx with your actual user.

Run this in your terminal:

/usr/local/bin/wp-cli cron event run --due-now --path=/var/www/xxx/public_html

The output of this command should be like this:

Executed the cron event 'action_scheduler_run_queue_rucss' in 0.026s.
Executed the cron event 'action_scheduler_run_queue' in 2.179s.
Executed the cron event 'rocket_saas_clean_rows_time_event' in 0.013s.
Executed the cron event 'rocket_saas_pending_jobs' in 0.008s.
Executed the cron event 'rocket_remove_saas_failed_jobs' in 0.007s.
Executed the cron event 'rocket_saas_on_submit_jobs' in 0.005s.
Success: Executed a total of 6 cron events.

If you have a multi-site setup, it's not sufficient to run the cronjob once. It must run for each site:

#!/bin/bash
# Adjust path to WordPress root
WP_ROOT=/var/www/xxx/public_html

/usr/local/bin/wp-cli site list --field=url --path=${WP_ROOT} 2>/dev/null |     xargs -i -n1 /usr/local/bin/wp-cli cron event run --due-now --path=${WP_ROOT} --url="{}"

SSL redirection and HTTPS handling are webserver tasks, not WordPress tasks.

Our TurboStack already handles this for you.

To deactivate and remove the plugin via WP-CLI:

wp plugin deactivate really-simple-ssl
wp plugin uninstall really-simple-ssl

We suggest WP Rocket for large static websites. It does not require extensive configuration and works great out of the box.

For slow static pages, this will also increase the performance.

For NGINX setups (non-varnish):
Rocket-NGINX config: https://github.com/SatelliteWP/rocket-nginx

Using wp-redis is recommended for dynamic WordPress sites because it solves a performance problem that page caching alone cannot fix:

logged-in pages, carts, dashboards, and personalized content must be generated dynamically.

Install and activate the plugin via WP-CLI:

wp plugin install wp-redis
wp plugin activate wp-redis

If you have Redis installed on your server, installed via our TurboStack, you can configure it in wp-config.php:

$redis_server = array(
    'host'     => '/var/run/redis/redis.sock',
    'port'     => null,
    'database' => 1,
);

Note: Make sure to assign different Redis DB IDs if multiple apps run on the same server.

Enable Redis via WP-CLI:

wp redis enable
Success: Enabled WP Redis by creating wp-content/object-cache.php symlink.

Delete all remaining transient data via WP-CLI:

wp transient delete-all

Install it once, optimize and remove again:

wp plugin install index-wp-mysql-for-speed
wp plugin activate index-wp-mysql-for-speed
wp index-mysql enable wp_commentmeta wp_comments wp_options wp_postmeta wp_posts wp_termmeta wp_usermeta wp_users
wp plugin deactivate index-wp-mysql-for-speed
wp plugin uninstall index-wp-mysql-for-speed

If you see this error:

Error: These tables are not found…

Use correct prefix:

wp index-mysql enable SsW6eC_commentmeta SsW6eC_comments SsW6eC_options SsW6eC_postmeta SsW6eC_posts SsW6eC_termmeta SsW6eC_usermeta SsW6eC_users

These are some extra plugins we recommend to use.

• User indexing: https://wordpress.org/plugins/index-wp-users-for-speed/
• Menu speedup: https://wordpress.org/plugins/speed-up-menu/

For bigger environments, you can give wordpress more resources by adding the following to wp-config.php:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M');
define('WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M');

Note that if you increase the memory limit in WordPress, you should also increase the memory limit for PHP.

You can do this in the .user.ini file:

memory_limit = 512M

So WordPress cannot exceed PHP’s authority, it can only work within it.

Activate Varnish addon in WP Rocket AND install the Hosted Power mu-plugin.

You can download the file here

Place hostedpower.php inside /wp-content/mu-plugins.

This helper plugin ensures the hosting environment, caching layers, and WordPress all communicate correctly for optimal performance. It prevents cache-breaking behavior, enforces proper HTTPS detection, and ensures Varnish purges and full-page caching work reliably.

Activate Element Caching if using Elementor.

This setting can be found in: Elementor > Settings > Features > Element Caching

Activating Element Cache is beneficial, because Elementor dynamically assembles pages from many database queries, template parts, and metadata on every request.

By caching these repeated lookups in memory (Redis/Memcached), Elementor pages render significantly faster for logged-in users and dynamic views, reducing database load and improving overall performance.