wp profile is a WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ command to help you quickly identify what’s slow with WordPress. It’s designed to work alongside Xdebug and New Relic because it’s easy to deployDeploy Launching code from a local development environment to the production web server, so that it’s available to visitors. to any server that has WP-CLI. With wp profile, you gain quick visibility into key performance metrics (execution time, query count, cache hit/miss ratio, etc.) to guide further debugging.
Installation
First, install the wp profile package if you haven’t already:
$ wp package install wp-cli/profile-command
Step 1 – Profile the WordPress load process
Dealing with a slow WordPress install you’ve never worked with before? Run wp profile stage to see metrics for each stage of the WordPress load process. Include the --url=<url> argument to mock the request as a specific URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.
$ wp profile stage --url=runcommand.io
+------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+-----------+------------+--------------+---------------+
| stage | time | query_time | query_count | cache_ratio | cache_hits | cache_misses | hook_time | hook_count | request_time | request_count |
+------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+-----------+------------+--------------+---------------+
| bootstrap | 0.7597s | 0.0052s | 14 | 93.21% | 357 | 26 | 0.3328s | 2717 | 0s | 0 |
| main_query | 0.0131s | 0.0004s | 3 | 94.29% | 33 | 2 | 0.0065s | 78 | 0s | 0 |
| template | 0.7041s | 0.0192s | 147 | 92.16% | 2350 | 200 | 0.6982s | 6130 | 0s | 0 |
+------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+-----------+------------+--------------+---------------+
| total (3) | 1.477s | 0.0248s | 164 | 93.22% | 2740 | 228 | 1.0375s | 8925 | 0s | 0 |
+------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+-----------+------------+--------------+---------------+
When WordPress handles a request from a browser, it’s essentially executing as one long PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/preface.php. script. wp profile stage breaks the script into three stages:
- bootstrap is where WordPress is setting itself up, loading plugins and the main theme, and firing the
inithook. - main_query is how WordPress transforms the request (e.g. /2016/10/21/moms-birthday/) into the primary WP_Query.
- template is where WordPress determines which theme template to render based on the main query, and renders it.
Step 2 – Dive into a specific stage
In the example from above, bootstrap seems a bit slow, so let’s dive into it further. Run wp profile stage bootstrap to dive into higher fidelity mode of a given stage. Use the --spotlight flag to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. out the zero-ish results.
$ wp profile stage bootstrap --url=runcommand.io --spotlight
+--------------------------+----------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+--------------+---------------+
| hook | callback_count | time | query_time | query_count | cache_ratio | cache_hits | cache_misses | request_time | request_count |
+--------------------------+----------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+--------------+---------------+
| muplugins_loaded:before | | 0.1644s | 0.0017s | 1 | 40% | 2 | 3 | 0s | 0 |
| muplugins_loaded | 2 | 0.0005s | 0s | 0 | 50% | 1 | 1 | 0s | 0 |
| plugins_loaded:before | | 0.1771s | 0.0008s | 6 | 77.63% | 59 | 17 | 0s | 0 |
| plugins_loaded | 14 | 0.0887s | 0s | 0 | 100% | 104 | 0 | 0s | 0 |
| after_setup_theme:before | | 0.043s | 0s | 0 | 100% | 26 | 0 | 0s | 0 |
| init | 82 | 0.1569s | 0.0018s | 7 | 96.88% | 155 | 5 | 0s | 0 |
| wp_loaded:after | | 0.027s | 0s | 0 | | 0 | 0 | 0s | 0 |
+--------------------------+----------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+--------------+---------------+
| total (7) | 98 | 0.6575s | 0.0043s | 14 | 77.42% | 347 | 26 | 0s | 0 |
+--------------------------+----------------+---------+------------+-------------+-------------+------------+--------------+--------------+---------------+
Each stage is further segmented by wp profile based on its primary actions. For the bootstrap stage, the primary actions include muplugins_loaded, plugins_loaded, and init. You can also see some intermediate actions like plugins_loaded:before and wp_loaded:after. These intermediate actions correspond to script execution before (or after) actual WordPress hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same.. They’re pseudo hooks in a sense.
Step 3 – Profile specific hooks
When you’ve found a specific hook you’d like to assess, run wp profile hook <hook>. Include the --fields=<fields> argument to limit output to certain fields.
$ wp profile hook plugins_loaded --url=runcommand.io --fields=callback,time,location
+------------------------------------------------------------+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| callback | time | location |
+------------------------------------------------------------+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| wp_maybe_load_widgets() | 0.0046s | wp-includes/functions.php:3501 |
| wp_maybe_load_embeds() | 0.0003s | wp-includes/embed.php:162 |
| VaultPress_Hotfixes->protect_jetpack_402_from_oembed_xss() | 0s | vaultpress/class.vaultpress-hotfixes.php:124 |
| _wp_customize_include() | 0s | wp-includes/theme.php:2052 |
| EasyRecipePlus->pluginsLoaded() | 0.0013s | easyrecipeplus/lib/EasyRecipePlus.php:125 |
| Gamajo\GenesisHeaderNav\genesis_header_nav_i18n() | 0.0007s | genesis-header-nav/genesis-header-nav.php:61 |
| DS_Public_Post_Preview::init() | 0.0001s | public-post-preview/public-post-preview.php:52 |
| wpseo_load_textdomain() | 0.0004s | wordpress-seo-premium/wp-seo-main.php:222 |
| load_yoast_notifications() | 0.0016s | wordpress-seo-premium/wp-seo-main.php:381 |
| wpseo_init() | 0.0329s | wordpress-seo-premium/wp-seo-main.php:240 |
| wpseo_premium_init() | 0.0019s | wordpress-seo-premium/wp-seo-premium.php:79 |
| wpseo_frontend_init() | 0.0007s | wordpress-seo-premium/wp-seo-main.php:274 |
| Black_Studio_TinyMCE_Plugin->load_compatibility() | 0.0016s | black-studio-tinymce-widget/black-studio-tinymce-widget.php:206 |
| Jetpack::load_modules() | 0.0564s | jetpack/class.jetpack.php:1672 |
+------------------------------------------------------------+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| total (14) | 0.1026s | |
+------------------------------------------------------------+---------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
There you have it! We’ve discovered that wpseo_init() and Jetpack::load_modules() are collectively contributing ~100ms to every page load.
With wp profile, discovering why WordPress is slow becomes the easy part.
