Load Times are Very Slow

[bellabody]

Hello, my load times are very slow. http://www.le.bbskinnywraps.com
Also, when I open the site on an iPad, it is distorted (can’t see menu functions). Not responsive at all. I had to do the Alt Demo because the Full Demo wasn’t working (and I spent a couple of hours yesterday with my host–iPage–to get this resolved, and it still wouldn’t import. So, what tips do you recommend to get this site moving quickly and to be fully responsive?

[bart]

Mine too. The theme is really slow. Especially compared to the neighborhood theme.

[Grey-Support]

I think I know why –

There is a Google Maps API that hangs. For some reason, every page loads some type of Google Maps API.

Please turn that off.

[bart]

where can i turn it off? Plugins? the ngfb open graph?

[mik421]

I’m using W3 Total Cache and i’m quite happy with, page speed and Yslow are two times better (gmetrix.com) and front end navigation/speed is much more better. I was about to change theme, Dante was really to slow, too bad lot of work on http://www.loujett.com/shop and more coming. Speed is quite ok now and could be better !

When minify css and/or js front end is broken and gmetrix very low. Please some feedbacks, advices for the minify settings, which files are not good to be minified (jquery.js…) ?

For people who wants to improve speed with W3 Total Cache have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypaoFdzmxo

@Greg about the google maps API let us know where to turn it off

[Tahir – SUPPORT]

Hi Guys,

Please take a look at here http://support.swiftideas.net/knowledgebase/better-wordpress-minify/ . We are using Better Minify WordPress plugin on the demo and it seems to work great. Configuration Screenshot is there as well .

All the Best
-Tahir

[bellabody]

Hi Tahir,
Do you use the W3 Total Cache plugin in addition to the the minify plugin? How about Smushit for photos?
You can check out my site at le.bbskinnywraps.com
It does load very slowly.
Also, does it slow down the site to have all of the demo pages? I mean, once I have my site established, should I delete the extra demo pages to speed up the site?
Thank you!

[Tahir – SUPPORT]

Hi,
We are using ‘WP Super Cache’ for the caching with minify disabled. And ‘Better WordPress Minify’ for minification as earlier mentioned .

All the Best
-Tahir

[bellabody]

How do I disable the minify with the WP Super Cache? Not sure where to look to do this. Thanks!

[Tahir – SUPPORT]

Hi,
I am afraid i dont have access to the live demo so gonna have to wait for Ed to post back. Have assigned this to to him.

Best,
Tahir

[Radu]

Hello ladies and gentlemen,
Let me give you some piece of USEFUL information on how to improve your page speed.
First of all you will need:
A. W3 Total Cache;
B. Better WordPress Minify
C. Plugin Organizer;
D. Ewww Optimizer.

A. In W3 Total Cache I suggest you to enable:
1. Page Cache, method Opcode (any, if there’s one available always use it). Otherwise use disk enhanced.
2. Minify (optional, I will tell you after why!): enable and set modify mode to automatic. If you get errors, change it to manual.
3. Database Cache, method Opcode (same as with Page Cache). Very important, some servers might cause you errors when you enable the Database Cache. So make some tests to be sure is everything ok.
4. Browser Cache
5. CDN: Don’t enable it, yet! Just chose what kind of cdn you want.
I suggest you to use Rackspace Cloud Files. Is cheap and easy to set up. You pay a few dimes a month, based on your traffic. But if you don’t want to pay for a professional CDN, you can use your own server. Just create a subdomain cdn.sitename.com and chose Self-Hosted. In this way you will upload the files to your subdomain via ftp.

1. Page Cache
Enable: cache front page, cache feeds, cache URIs, don’t cache pages for logged in users.
Advanced: Maximum lifetime of cache objects: 86400 (1day)
Never cache the following pages: *.xml (add this so you won’t have problems with your sitemap)

2. Minify (optional). It’s important to tell you, I haven’t used before W3 Total Cache with Better WP minify, so you need to test which combination is better for you. W3 Total Cache with minify function disabled + Better WP Minify, Only W3T Cache with minify function enabled and without Better WP Minify and so on. You will have to test on your own.
But anyway, what I will tell you know is going to work for most of the users:
Enable: Rewrite URL Structure, HTML & XML and set minify settings to enable, enable CSS and start adding manually the files to be minified (you must do this only if the automatic minification is not working well).
Minify is optional because you can also use the plugin Better WP Minify. But if you are going to enable the cdn and host the minified css files on the cdn, only W3T Cache can do that for you. Better WP Minify it will not upload the minified versions of the files to the CDN. Anyway, make some tests and see which solutions is better for you.

3. Database Cache: everything works out of the box

4. Browser Cache
Enable: set last modified header, set expires header, set cache control header, set entity tag, set w3 total cache header, enable http (gzip) compression, Disable cookies for static files, Do not process 404 errors.
404 error exception list: add this for not having problems with sitemap -> sitemap(_index|[0-9]+)?\.xml
CSS & JS, HTML & XML, Media & Other Files: enable everything except prevent caching of objects after settings change.
Set expires header lifetime to 31536000 seconds.

5. CDN.
Tip: In my opinion is better to host only the css and images files (jpg, jpeg, png and gif) to the cdn. let the javascript be hosted on your own server and to be minified by the plugin Better Wp Minify.

You can enable: host attachments, host wp-includes, host theme files, host minified css and js files, host custom files, force over writing of existing files.

You scroll down to the end of the page and wherever you see “file types to upload” you add ONLY *.css;*.gif;*.png;*.jpg and be sure you have canceled *.js for anywhere.

Now you configure it with Rackspace user name and api (or ftp credentials) and you test Cloud Files upload. After that you start uploading the files. Only after all the files are uploaded, you can Enable it from General Settings tab.

B. Better WordPress Minify
You have the tutorial on how to configure it on this site, so read it 🙂

C. Plugin Organizer;
With this plugin you can save a lot of bandwidth and speed!! Because you can choose individually on every page what plugins you will load. For example, if you have the revolution slider only on the homepage, you can enable it only on the home page and disable it on all other pages. And it will not load all the css and js files 🙂
You can also choose the plugin load order.

D. Ewww Optimizer.
Optimizes the images, I used it in the past and it was good. I don’t know if is better or not than Smush.it, but I fully suggest you to use it.

A BIG TIP ABOUT IMAGES:
If you don’t have Adobe Photoshop, download it. You will find cracks allover the internet.
1. When you save an image for web and devices, you can keep a high resolutions but you must reduce the quality. I change it to 55-60%, depends on the image.
2. Use only jpegs when you don’t need transparent backgrounds.
3. Check Progressive!! google progressive jpegs if you don’t know what it is.

Do you need me to make your WP site uber fast? Contact me for a price quote. I don’t charge much 🙂

[mik421]

@Radu thanks a LOT for your great post !

[ALDD]

I don’t rely on cache plugins for faster loads. Instead I have modified my .htaccess file as such:
—————————————————————
# BEGIN Compress text files
<ifModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/xml text/css text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml application/xhtml+xml application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript application/javascript application/x-javascript application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf application/x-font-otf
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/truetype font/opentype
</ifModule>
# END Compress text files

# BEGIN Expire headers
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault “access plus 5 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access plus 2592000 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access plus 2592000 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 2592000 seconds”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 2592000 seconds”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access plus 2592000 seconds”
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 604800 seconds”
ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 216000 seconds”
ExpiresByType application/javascript “access plus 216000 seconds”
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript “access plus 216000 seconds”
ExpiresByType text/html “access plus 600 seconds”
ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml “access plus 600 seconds”
</ifModule>
# END Expire headers

# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
<filesMatch “\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “public”
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch “\.(css)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “public”
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch “\.(js)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “private”
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch “\.(x?html?|php)$”>
Header set Cache-Control “private, must-revalidate”
</filesMatch>
</ifModule>
# END Cache-Control Headers

# BEGIN Turn ETags Off
# http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html#etags
FileETag None
# END Turn ETags Off

# MINIFY/gzip JS and CSS during deploy on the server
# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19491306/sending-pre-minified-pre-gzipped-css-and-js-to-the-browser
AddEncoding gzip .jsgz .cssgz
AddType application/x-javascript .jsgz
AddType text/css .cssgz

RewriteEngine on
# If client accepts compressed files
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
# and if compressed file exists
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}gz -f
# send .min.cssgz and .min.cssgz instead of .css and .js
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.(min.css|min.js)$ $1.$2gz [L]

# CACHE BUSTING
# https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate/
# This rewrites file names of the form ‘name.123456.js’ to ‘name.js’
# so that the browser doesn’t use the cached version when you have# updated (but not manually renamed) the file

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)\.(\d+)\.(js|css|png|jpg|gif)$ $1.$3 [L]
</IfModule>
—————————————————————
Post revisions can build up in your database and make it bulky.
If you have no reason to save post revisions, you can disable them entirely by adding this line to your wp-config.phpfile.
define(‘WP_POST_REVISIONS’, FALSE);

Remove the old post revisions and their meta data from the database. You can do this by using phpMyAdmin. Run this query:
DELETE a,b,c FROM wp_posts a WHERE a.post_type = ‘revision’ LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id) LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id);
—————————————————————
Automatically empty the trash by adding this line to your wp-config.php file.
define(‘EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS’, 10 );
—————————————————————

Any additional ideas for .htaccess file speed-up…please share!
Antonio

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Thanks for providing your solutions guys, appreciate it 🙂

– Ed

[costin]

@Radu Thanks for your tutorial. It would be nice to get in touch! Could you please write me at cristescu.costin[at]gmail.com?

Thank you!