There aren’t any limits to the size, we have users with hundreds of thousands of records and no reported issues with the scale. The database server is not going to get bogged down by the number of records that are stored, issues with volume are going to be related to inefficient access, and things like loading or processing all the records when it is not necessary. Participants Database has lots of optimizations for handling large databases and avoids these kinds of problem.
There are many possible reasons for things slowing down, so identifying the specific circumstances of slow performance can really help you figure out how to improve it. Caching plugins can improve front-end performance, but do little to help things on the backend. It helps to identify if it is specific plugins or theme code that is slowing things down.
If the situation is that the same page or interaction is sometimes fast and sometimes slow, this is an indication of the server struggling to keep up when there happens to be a lot of requests from other users on the server at that moment. Shared hosting can often have this issue because there can be dozens of websites on the same server, so the momentary demand on the server can vary a lot.
Thread Starter
lcp298
(@lcp298)
That’s good to know, thank you.
One page in particular takes around 20 seconds to load every time. It has a number (currently 24) of pdb_total shortcodes, giving the number of records added each month for 2024 and 2025. I’m assuming it’s calculating each one every time it loads. I guess I could replace the older ones with the number as it’s not going to change, unless there’s a neater solution to do this?
Elsewhere we find that saving logs can take several seconds, and is fairly consistent.
The theme is minimal as is it an internal website just used for tools using pdb.
Yes, that’s pretty slow! Those total shortcodes shouldn’t be too much of a problem, databases can count records quickly.
If saving a log entry takes a long time, I’d say you’re having performance issues with your server. Your IT person should be able to tell if that’s the case and possibly what can be done about it.
If you want to look at the details of what is slowing things down a plugin I’d suggest you try is Query Monitor which gives you a thorough breakdown of where database access is slowing things down. You should only keep that one activated while investigating.
