Child theme
A child theme inherits the functionality of a parent theme while letting you customize templates, styles and functions in separate files. Upgrades to the parent theme never overwrite your changes. At WPForge we ship custom child themes so client sites can keep receiving parent theme security updates without losing modifications.
Core web vitals
Google’s user-experience metrics: LCP (loading), CLS (visual stability) and INP (interactivity). They are ranking signals and, more importantly, conversion signals — our speed guides focus on fixing the three of them on WooCommerce specifically, where carts and galleries break the generic advice.
Cron job
In WordPress, scheduled background tasks (publishing scheduled posts, checking for updates) run through WP-Cron, which is actually triggered by visitors rather than system time. High-traffic or very quiet sites should replace it with a real server cron hitting wp-cron.php — a fix we apply on nearly every speed audit.
Custom post type
A content type beyond posts and pages — for example Themes, Plugins or Case Studies on this very site. CPTs get their own archives, taxonomies and templates, which is how we structure a review site instead of forcing everything into blog posts.
Heartbeat api
A WordPress feature that pulses AJAX requests every 15–60 seconds for autosave, session tracking and lock notifications. On WooCommerce it multiplies server load with every open admin tab; throttling it is standard in our rescue work.
Hsts
HTTP Strict Transport Security — a response header that tells browsers to use HTTPS only for your domain, preventing downgrade attacks. We add it after confirming stable HTTPS, because removing it later requires waiting out the max-age on every visitor’s browser.
Lcp
Largest Contentful Paint — the render time of the biggest visible element (usually a hero image or heading block). On WooCommerce the LCP element is almost always the main product image, which is why lazy-loading it is a mistake and preloading it is the first fix we make.
Cls
Cumulative Layout Shift — how much the page jumps while loading. WooCommerce themes shift when fonts swap, banners inject late or product galleries resize; each shift erodes trust and CLS is measured cumulatively, so small repeated jumps hurt as much as one big one.
Inp
Interaction to Next Paint — responsiveness measured from tap or click to the next visual update. Replaced FID in March 2024. Heavy checkout pages with cart-fragment AJAX often fail INP even when LCP looks fine; the fix is reducing blocking JavaScript, not caching harder.
Ttfb
Time to First Byte — how long the server takes to start responding. TTFB is where caching architecture, PHP version and hosting quality show up first; if TTFB is over 800 ms, no amount of client-side optimization will save the page.
Object cache
A persistence layer (Redis or Memcached) that stores the results of expensive database lookups in memory. WordPress transients and queries hit it instead of MySQL. Object caching is the single biggest server-side win for WooCommerce carts and tax calculations.
Opcache
A PHP-level cache that keeps compiled script bytecode in memory, skipping recompilation on every request. Enabling and properly sizing OPcache is free performance — yet we still find it disabled on client servers during audits.
Permalink
The permanent URL structure of your content. Changing permalinks after content exists breaks every external link unless redirects are mapped — which is why our migration checklist always includes a full redirect map before cutover.
Php fpm
FastCGI Process Manager — the modern way PHP is served under Nginx. Its worker count, memory limits and pool settings decide how many simultaneous WooCommerce requests your server survives before queuing.
Plugin conflict
When two plugins load conflicting JavaScript, CSS or hooks, features break in ways that are hard to see in any single plugin’s settings. We diagnose conflicts by bisection — half the plugins off at a time — documented in our troubleshooting guide.
Rest api
WordPress’s built-in HTTP API for reading and writing content as JSON. Powering the block editor, headless builds and integrations — and a frequent attack surface when not properly authenticated, which is why our security checklist covers it.
Staging site
A private clone of your live site where updates and changes are tested first. Every migration and major update we deliver goes through staging — it is the difference between a routine update and an outage.
Wp cli
The command-line interface for WordPress: updates, search-replace, cron control, user management — all without the dashboard. Most of our maintenance and speed work is scripted through WP-CLI because it is faster and safely automatable.
White screen of death
A blank page with no error, usually caused by a fatal PHP error with display_errors off. Our troubleshooting guide walks the bisection: enable WP_DEBUG, check the error log, disable plugins in batches, and inspect memory limits — in that order.
Wp config
The wp-config.php file holds database credentials, salts, debug switches and performance directives like WP_CACHE and memory limits. It is also where our site-level integrations (lead API endpoints) are configured via constants.
