[acumenstudio]

Trying to identify why the site is so slow. I have a number of optimization plugins installed and GTmetrix shows the page is 887KB in size and there are only 30 requests. Grade is B at 87% but the fully loaded time is 16 seconds! It looks like the minified JS and CSS are taking forever to load. Why?

NiceThemes_
NiceThemes_ AUTHOR
2 days ago Flag
Hi John,

Thanks for writing and thank you for your purchase. Would you please create a support ticket at https://nicethemes.com/support/support-forum/new-topic/ – You will be able to share your site access details with our support staff so they can check your site configuration and if there’s any plugin that may be causing your site to take 16 seconds to load. Perhaps there are two different plugins trying to minify the scripts at the same time and that is causing a kind of loop.

But we’ll be able to check that once we enter and see your website configuration.

I can share some of the results that you see in our demos:

– https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/JQib33RQ – https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/4LgSXZNo – https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/PZe75H19 – https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/KUpZlNzK – https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/idKF0EY6

I share these in order to “illustrate” that it is quite likely that the problem has to do with some configuration issue or some plugin conflict.

Thanks for your patience. Juan.

[Andrés Villarreal]

Hi,

Thanks for writing, I hope you’re doing well.

You’re right, your website is taking a lot of time to load for what is expected from a setup like yours. I took a look at your WordPress admin, and it seems that several things are happening there.

First of all, your W3 Total Cache configuration seems to not be working fine. In fact, the W3TC Dashboard is showing the following error messages: https://cloudup.com/cnD2Lqd3IoS. Once you fix these issues, you’re site loading speed is expected to improve.

Also, your CSS and JavaScript minification settings don’t seem to be working fine either. If you open any of the minified files in a new browser tab, you’ll notice that not all of its code is being minified. For CSS and JavaScript minification, we recommend ignoring W3TC settings, and using the Autoptimize plugin instead (https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/). The following configuration should be OK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l621ucr6mlpuepk/Screen%20Shot%202017-06-28%20at%2014.53.49-fullpage.png?dl=0&raw=1.

With Smart, you don’t really need to use the Lazy Load plugin. The theme includes our own LazyLoad implementation, and using a plugin to that end may cause conflicts.

We also recommend to increase your PHP memory limit to 256 MB (your current value is 40) and PHP maximum input variables to 3000 (your current value is 1000). You can see the complete system requirements by going to Smart > Support & Updates. There, under the “Changelog & System Status” box you’ll find the “System Status” link. By clicking on that link you’ll get a pretty comprehensive description about your current installation. For further information about each item, you can take a look at our article about that section: https://nicethemes.com/article/server-requirements/.

Some other speed issues have to do with your current server setup and WordPress installation, and not with Smart or the plugins you’re using. GTmetrix recommends to leverage browser caching, add expires headers, use a CDN and configure ETags. You can take a look at the links that GTmetrix provides for each of those items in this report: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/kopydev.com/UekVyZRm

Additionally, here’s a great article about website performance and optimization: http://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-performance-speed/.

One last thing: We would really appreciate if you could give us some information about your server setup, such as the name of your hosting provider and your current plan, so we can check if there’s some kind of limitation there that may be slowing your site.

Hope this helps. Please let us know how it goes.

Best,

Andrés.

[acumenstudio]

Thanks for the response.
I have made some edits based on what you have provided and significantly improved the number of requested updates in the GTmetrix suggestions.
But it hasn’t really improved the site speed.
My pagespeed score is at 96% and my Yslow score is at 82%
Page size is 824kb and number of requests at 28
All of these are desirable numbers on Gtmetrix except for the massively long page load time!

I created a video walk through of this here: https://www.screencast.com/t/7tcigI84sIx

When viewing the waterfall load it looks like it references the website loading twice and then admin-ajax.php loading long as well.
When the below the fold content loads it feels as if it is time but is way too long.

I have submitted to activate a CDN so that will help slightly, but still these load times are nuts.

I am using MediaTemple Grid Server.

[acumenstudio]

On my phone Android Samsung Galaxy 7, the site loads much quicker (typically under 3 seconds)

[acumenstudio]

Ok the CDN helped a lot!

It’s still loading at around 6 seconds, because the admin-ajax.php file is taking so long.
What could be causing that?

When viewing the response on GTmetrix is shows very little information to use for diagnosing.

[Andrés Villarreal]

Hi there!

I see you did a great job with your site speed 🙂

The values you’re seeing are pretty standard for your current setup. You can check our report for the demo you’re using, where you’ll see similar results: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo.nicethemes.com/QhrYrPgl

There are some things to keep in mind here:

The duplicated requests you see for your homepage in your report’s waterfall are normal. The second one is usual to appear before an AJAX request needs to be made.

Also, the different requests to the admin-ajax.php file are normal too, and they have to do with different AJAX processes that are performed in that page. One of those requests, though, comes from our Nice Likes plugin. It has a normal response time, but we’re trying to improve it. However, you can deactivate that plugin if you’re not really going to use it.

The default GTmetrix report measures the time between (1) the moment where a request to a page is made and (2) the point where all JavaScript actions that depend on the page being loaded are finished. Most web pages are readable and usable before these JavaScript actions are finished, specially AJAX processes (which you see as calls to admin-ajax.php).

You’re using a cache plugin to improve your site speed. Cache plugins work by creating static copies of your web pages once a visitor comes in, and then showing those copies in further requests. For stability reasons, cache plugins don’t show cached pages to admin users, and that’s probably the reason you see the site loading faster in your smartphone. When you’re logged in as an administrator, you see the full un-cached website, which is expected to load a lot slower than the cached version. If you open your homepage in a private browser session, you’ll see it loading much faster.

Like I said before, 6 seconds is normal for your setup, given that your site is in a shared hosting, where you share resources with a lot of other clients of Media Temple. All multipurpose themes contain lots of functionality that can impact on your site speed, and the same can be said about large plugins such as Visual Composer and Wordfence Security, which you’re using. Smart is much faster than the average multipurpose theme (we apply all the latest best practices recommended for WordPress and we’re core contributors), but you’ll still notice an impact that you won’t have with more limited themes, and the same applies to plugins. Further improvements would require you to increase your plan or move to a VPS, but I think you shouldn’t need that.

Your overall speed will probably improve once you can manage to solve the YSlow recommendations that are left.

Hope this helps, please let us know how it goes.

Best,

Andrés.

[acumenstudio]

Deactivated the nice like plugin and am now down to 3 seconds!
Thanks.

As for the Yslow, I probably won’t be able to do much more there because much of it is affected by the external google call for tag manager, analytics, etc. which I won’t do anything with.

[Andrés Villarreal]

That’s great to see 🙂

We’re currently working on a new version of Nice Likes that we hope solves the AJAX issue. About YSlow, you’re right: Since those are external resources, you can’t do much more to improve those numbers. However, those resources load pretty fast, and they only have an impact on the metrics (which are merely statistical) and not on the real performance of your site.

Please let us know if we can be of any further help.

Best,

Andrés.