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Optimising Your Website’s Performance

The FREAKHOSTING Web Hosting Control Panel at web.freakhosting.com includes built-in performance optimisation tools that help your website load faster and handle more visitors. This guide covers opcode caching and the OpenLiteSpeed web server — the two core technologies that power every FREAKHOSTING hosting account.

Difficulty

Beginner

Time

5 Minutes

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Accessing the Optimisation Settings

The optimisation settings are located inside the Advanced section of your website’s control panel.
1

Log In to the Control Panel

Go to web.freakhosting.com and log in with your FREAKHOSTING credentials.
2

Select Your Website

From the dashboard or website list, click on the website you want to optimise.
3

Open the Advanced Dropdown

In the navigation area for your website, click on the Advanced dropdown to expand additional options.
4

Click Optimisation

Select Optimisation from the dropdown menu. This opens the performance optimisation settings for your website.
The Optimisation page gives you direct control over PHP caching behaviour. Any changes you make here take effect immediately and apply to all PHP files on the selected website.

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Opcode Caching

Opcode caching is the primary performance feature available on the Optimisation page. It is enabled by default on all FREAKHOSTING hosting accounts — you will see the toggle switch turned on (shown in cyan) when you first visit the page.

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What Is Opcode Caching?

Every time a visitor loads a page on your website, PHP normally has to read your script files, compile them into machine-readable instructions called opcodes, and then execute those opcodes to generate the page. This compilation step happens on every single request, even if the PHP files have not changed at all. Opcode caching eliminates this repeated work. When enabled, the compiled opcodes are stored in memory after the first request. On all subsequent requests, PHP serves the cached opcodes directly instead of recompiling the scripts from scratch. This means your website responds faster and your server uses fewer resources. Think of it like this: imagine you run a restaurant, and every time a customer orders the same dish, your chef has to look up the recipe from scratch, re-read every step, and start from zero. That is what PHP does without opcode caching. Now imagine instead that your chef memorises the most popular recipes after making them once — they can prepare the dish much faster because they already know the steps by heart. That is opcode caching. Your website memorises the answers to common requests instead of looking them up every time.

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How to Toggle Opcode Caching

1

Navigate to Optimisation

Go to Advanced dropdown and select Optimisation as described above.
2

Find the Opcode Cache Toggle

On the left sidebar you will see Opcode caching. In the main content area, there is a toggle switch for the opcode cache. When the toggle is turned on (the default state, shown in cyan), opcode caching is active.
3

Toggle On or Off

Click the toggle to enable or disable opcode caching. The change takes effect immediately.
Leave opcode caching enabled for the best performance. The vast majority of websites benefit from having this turned on at all times. It significantly reduces page load times and server resource usage, especially on content management systems like WordPress where PHP processes dozens of files on every single page load.

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When to Temporarily Disable Opcode Caching

While opcode caching should generally stay enabled, there are a couple of situations where you may need to temporarily disable it.

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PHP File Changes Not Reflecting

If you have updated PHP files on your website (for example, by uploading a new plugin, editing a theme file, or applying a manual code change) and the changes do not appear when you visit your site, the opcode cache may be serving the old compiled version of those files. The cache does not always realise that the underlying files have changed. This is a common gotcha during development or when you are actively making changes to your site. Here is how to handle it.
1

Disable Opcode Caching

Go to Advanced dropdown, then select Optimisation. Turn off the Opcode Cache toggle.
2

Verify Your Changes

Visit your website in a browser (try a hard refresh with Ctrl+F5 or Cmd+Shift+R) and confirm that the updated content or code changes are now visible.
3

Re-Enable Opcode Caching

Once you have confirmed the changes are working correctly, go back to the Optimisation page and turn the Opcode Cache toggle back on. This ensures your website continues to benefit from the performance improvement.

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During Active Development

If you are in the middle of a development session where you are making frequent changes to PHP files, it can be helpful to disable opcode caching temporarily so you see your changes immediately without toggling back and forth. Just remember to turn it back on when you are done.
Do not leave opcode caching disabled permanently. Disabling it means PHP must recompile every script file on every single page load, which significantly slows down your website and increases server resource usage. Only disable it temporarily while troubleshooting or developing, then re-enable it straight away. Your visitors will thank you.
In most cases, opcode caching will pick up file changes automatically after a short period. Manually toggling the cache is only necessary if you need changes to appear immediately and they are not showing up.

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OpenLiteSpeed Web Server

FREAKHOSTING uses the OpenLiteSpeed web server across all hosting accounts. You can see this displayed in the At a glance section of your website dashboard, confirming that your site is running on OpenLiteSpeed.

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What Is OpenLiteSpeed?

OpenLiteSpeed is a high-performance, lightweight web server that is specifically optimised for speed. It is the open-source edition of the LiteSpeed Web Server and is designed to serve websites faster than traditional web servers like Apache or Nginx.

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Key Benefits for Your Website

Faster Page Loads

OpenLiteSpeed is built for speed and delivers static and dynamic content significantly faster, meaning your visitors experience quicker page loads.

Built-in Caching

The server includes its own caching engine that works alongside opcode caching to further accelerate your website’s performance. It is like having two layers of speed boost working together.

Lower Resource Usage

OpenLiteSpeed uses fewer server resources compared to traditional web servers, which means your hosting account can handle more simultaneous visitors without slowing down.

PHP Optimisation

It uses the LiteSpeed SAPI for PHP, which provides faster PHP processing than traditional methods like PHP-FPM used by other web servers.
OpenLiteSpeed is pre-configured on your account. You do not need to install, enable, or configure it. It works automatically behind the scenes to deliver the best possible performance for your website. This is one of those things that just works — no action needed from you.

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Performance Tips

Beyond opcode caching and OpenLiteSpeed, consider these additional steps to maximise your website speed:
  • Optimise images — Compress and resize images before uploading to reduce page weight. A 5MB hero image can be compressed to 200KB and look almost identical.
  • Minimise active plugins — Each plugin adds processing overhead. Remove any you are not actively using. Even deactivated plugins can sometimes cause minor overhead.
  • Use a CDN — A content delivery network serves static files from locations closer to your visitors, which can dramatically improve load times for international audiences.
  • Keep your PHP version up to date — Newer PHP versions offer significant speed improvements. See our PHP Version Management guide for details.
  • Enable browser caching — Use cache headers to let returning visitors load pages faster by storing static assets locally in their browser.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Go to your website in the control panel, click the Advanced dropdown, and select Optimisation. This is where you can toggle opcode caching on or off.
Yes. Opcode caching should be enabled at all times for the best performance. Only disable it temporarily if you have made PHP file changes that are not appearing on your website, or during active development sessions. Re-enable it as soon as you are done.
No. OpenLiteSpeed is automatically configured and running on your hosting account. There is nothing you need to set up or manage. It works behind the scenes to deliver fast performance.
Website speed depends on many factors beyond caching, including the size of your pages, the number of plugins or scripts running, image sizes, and external resources. Consider optimising your images, reducing the number of active plugins, and using a content delivery network (CDN) for further improvements. Sometimes a single unoptimised image or a slow external script can undo all your caching gains.
PHP version management is covered in a separate guide. See How to Change PHP Version for step-by-step instructions on viewing and updating your PHP version.
This is likely the opcode cache serving the old compiled files. Go to Advanced then Optimisation, toggle opcode caching off, refresh your site to confirm the update is visible, then toggle it back on. This clears the cached opcodes and forces PHP to recompile your updated files.

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Need Extra Help?

If you encounter any issues, our support team is ready to assist:

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Last Updated: March 2026 | Web Hosting Support: Website performance optimisation made simple.