Hi everyone,
I’ve recently started building a new wordpress based website for my business http://pillarpost.com.au
I’ve found the site to be terribly slow and the following report supports that view: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140319_69_7V6/
I’ve taken all of the usual steps of optimising and installing W3TC, but I haven’t noticed a significant improvement in speed.
Thanks for your help,
Breece
Hi Breece,
The site has a number of issues, but there are two main problems that will have a huge impact on load time:
For #1 you might have to change hosts or upgrade the host you are on. Where is your host located? I’m assuming that your customers are in Australia, so getting on a host that is also located in Australia is going to have a big impact. You should also make sure that your DNS provider has a point of presence in Australia as well.
#2 can be done by a plugin like w3-total-cache: W3 Total Cache – WordPress plugin | WordPress.org.
Thanks for the advice JKlein, really appreciate it mate!
I am doing some testing on deactivating plugins at the moment. I’m also trying to configure W3TC better to resolve #2
I’m going to contact my host VentraIP here in Melbourne. I understand I’m am being hosted on a Melbourne (Australia) based server, but I’m keen to check this.
I see you’ve already fixed this… Your site tests much better now. But here’s my analysis of the test you posted.
You are loading over 3 MEGAbytes. How fast do you expect that to load? That is equivalent to a three minute music piece in mp3 format!
You have a ton of image glut coming from google maps. Even if you scale these small in the script, the byte load of the entire image still loads on browsers.
You have several jpg images you need to optimize.
[b][u]Image breakdown here.[/b][/u]
Leverage browser caching of static assets via htaccess file. [u]Article on that here.[/u]
I always use either IE 10 or 11 for testing, to get the extra IE compliance out of the way. [b][u]Here’s your site tested the right way.[/u][/b]
Do you really need 3 MEGAbytes of glut? You might consider rethinking your design. This page is going to give fits to anyone on slower connections like DSL and dialup.
(Glad to see you came to that conclusion as well, I see your site is now down to a more svelte 660 KILObytes.)
Actually, http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140321_3G_105Y/ is the site tested the right way… removing the initial redirect to get the effective TTFB, and run locally ( well all things are relative! ).
TTFB is still slow, showing a need to tune your infrastructure - using cloudflare can/will never address this for a dynamic site… something their glossy literature doesn’t actually mention.
I recommend that you drop CF, and work on your own site to improve performance.
[quote=“GreenGecko, post:5, topic:8631”]
Actually, http://www.webpagetest.org/result/140321_3G_105Y/ is the site tested the right way… removing the initial redirect to get the effective TTFB, and run locally ( well all things are relative! ).
TTFB is still slow, showing a need to tune your infrastructure - [b]using cloudflare can/will never address this for a dynamic site… something their glossy literature doesn’t actually mention.
I recommend that you drop CF, and work on your own site to improve performance.[/b]
[/quote]We definitely agree on the bolded. CF doesn’t really do jack for you. I know, I ran with it for almost three years.
Thanks for the testing tip!
Thanks very much Anton Chigurh and GreenGecko.
My site actually crashed and burned during testing, so what you can see there at pillarpost.com.au right now is the fresh load of the Slowave Theme with no mods (I’m working on a rebuild this weekend).
I’ve installed WP SuperCache this time instead of W3TC and noticed an immediate improvement.
I intend on following your advice Anton here but I’m going to wait until I have a bit more of the site up and running. I am inexperienced with modifying things like the .htaccess file.
Interestingly, the Theme that I’m using was around 1.5mb before I started to tighten it up. That’s pretty darn heavy before I even start adding my bits and pieces to it.
I will follow your advice and kill CF. That’s interesting because I’ve been sold on it’s “speed and reliability”.
The TTFB seems to be a little bit all over the place. In tests I’ve done today it can be as quick at 500ms and as slow as 7500ms. Highly variable?
On the page you guys originally tested, I had a WP plugin called Progress Map. It seems like a great feature to show the 100s of projects we have around Melbourne, but it’s incredibly “heavy” and impacted on the load times. Maybe I’ll put that on a specific page for “projects” ?
Anyway, thanks so much for all your help. I really appreciate it!
[quote=“Breece, post:7, topic:8631”]
Thanks very much Anton Chigurh and GreenGecko.
My site actually crashed and burned during testing, so what you can see there at pillarpost.com.au right now is the fresh load of the Slowave Theme with no mods (I’m working on a rebuild this weekend).
I’ve installed WP SuperCache this time instead of W3TC and noticed an immediate improvement.
I intend on following your advice Anton here but I’m going to wait until I have a bit more of the site up and running. I am inexperienced with modifying things like the .htaccess file.
Interestingly, the Theme that I’m using was around 1.5mb before I started to tighten it up. That’s pretty darn heavy before I even start adding my bits and pieces to it.
I will follow your advice and kill CF. That’s interesting because I’ve been sold on it’s “speed and reliability”.
The TTFB seems to be a little bit all over the place. In tests I’ve done today it can be as quick at 500ms and as slow as 7500ms. Highly variable?
On the page you guys originally tested, I had a WP plugin called Progress Map. It seems like a great feature to show the 100s of projects we have around Melbourne, but it’s incredibly “heavy” and impacted on the load times. Maybe I’ll put that on a specific page for “projects” ?
Anyway, thanks so much for all your help. I really appreciate it!
As far as the “heavy” add-ons go, you might code in some conditionals, hiding these from guests making them visible only to those who log in.
The code provided for .htaccess is stand alone, you merely copy and paste it into the top of your existing .htaccess file. You can easily revert if it messes you up.
If a theme is 1.5mb before extras, it might be a good idea to look for some other themes.
“TTFB is still slow, showing a need to tune your infrastructure - using cloudflare can/will never address this for a dynamic site… something their glossy literature doesn’t actually mention.”
This is actually not really true. While CloudFlare only caches static content by default, but you can use PageRules to extend caching to include dynamic content (we recommend caching dynamic content with care).Railgun also helps accelerate dynamic content.
As noted earlier, however, you will get wild swings with TTFB if you’re on share hosting.
[quote=“damoncloudflare, post:9, topic:8631”]
“TTFB is still slow, showing a need to tune your infrastructure - using cloudflare can/will never address this for a dynamic site… something their glossy literature doesn’t actually mention.”
This is actually not really true. While CloudFlare only caches static content by default, but you can use PageRules to extend caching to include dynamic content (we recommend caching dynamic content with care).Railgun also helps accelerate dynamic content.
As noted earlier, however, you will get wild swings with TTFB if you’re on share hosting.
[/quote]CF does nothing at all for TTFB and cannot. I know this for a fact, two years of using CF and could never get any decent TTFB with it or without it, and never did until I got my host to put me on a new machine.
TTFB has nothing at all to do with caching anyway and won’t improve performance much at all and especially if the site isn’t already optimized.
Folks out there who want site performance - you’re not getting that from a CDN alone. You need to optimize your site.
Hi Breece,
Here’s a bunch of quick wins to speeding up your site: https://cdnify.com/blog/10-ways-to-speed-up-your-site/
Cheers,
Jamie