A Malaysia international university website had become slow, expensive and difficult to maintain.

When performance problems appeared, the previous recommendation was to keep increasing server resources. That approach did not address the real causes inside the website.

Fix the causes before increasing the hosting spend

The audit showed that database, media, form and scheduled-task defects needed attention alongside infrastructure. Addressing those issues first gave the team a basis for deciding how the website should be hosted and maintained.

Key takeaways

  • Pre-revamp audit completed before infrastructure changes.
  • Hosting costs reduced.
  • Gravity Forms and cron job issues fixed.
  • Database, media and WordPress components optimised.
  • Security and technical SEO improved.
  • Private load testing supported up to five times more tested traffic.
  • Launch monitoring and ongoing maintenance established.

Finding the real problems

We took over the website from an international agency and carried out a full pre-revamp audit.

The audit reviewed SEO, links, redirects, performance, database health, plugins, forms, scheduled tasks and security. It found database bloat, oversized images, unnecessary page-builder elements, unused plugins and themes, broken links, unreliable cron jobs, Gravity Forms errors and weak security controls.

The findings showed that adding more server capacity alone would not solve the problem.

Fixing the website before scaling it

We cleaned the database, removed unnecessary logs and records, deleted unused plugins and themes, and optimised images and page layouts.

We also corrected important links, redirects and metadata. The Gravity Forms error was fixed so enquiries could be submitted and processed correctly. Cron jobs were repaired so scheduled WordPress tasks could run reliably.

Infrastructure and launch monitoring

The website was migrated to our web server management. This reduced hosting costs and gave us better control over security, performance and maintenance.

After launch, we monitored routes, redirects, forms, security headers, server responses and Core Web Vitals. Private load testing showed that the revised environment could handle up to five times more tested traffic than the previous setup with much lower costs.

Ongoing maintenance continues to support security updates, performance checks and technical monitoring and retainer for content / website updates.

Is adding server capacity not solving the problem?

Ulement audits and remediates the underlying issues affecting enterprise WordPress websites before recommending infrastructure changes.

Request a WordPress infrastructure audit.

Related Ulement service: website audit and analysis.