Agency Client Hosting Migration
February 22, 2018
E-Commerce Store Rescue
February 22, 2018Case Study: Membership Site Performance
A large membership community with thousands of active users struggled with sluggish page loads and timeouts during peak hours. Members reported frustration with accessing gated content, and the client feared losing subscriptions.
The Challenge
The site relied on multiple membership and LMS plugins layered together over time. The combination generated heavy queries on usermeta tables, which overwhelmed the database during high traffic. Pages with dynamic restrictions (courses, profiles, forums) were especially slow, often taking 8–10 seconds to load.
The Fix
I profiled the slow queries and introduced database indexing on critical membership tables. The membership plugin was reconfigured to reduce redundant checks. I also implemented object caching via Redis, offloaded media to a CDN, and added a server-level PHP-FPM pool tuned for concurrency. Finally, I replaced outdated shortcodes with lightweight custom functions.
The Outcome
- Load times reduced by 68% — course pages now load in ~2.5s vs. 8–10s.
- Server errors eliminated even at peak traffic.
- User retention improved as fewer members dropped due to frustration.
- Admins now manage users without backend slowdowns.