Slow load/time out of back end editor

[ArieleK]

Attached is what our hosting company (WP Engine) said about the issue. They said they need you to take a look as they are unsure how to fix. Attached are their comments as well as our login for the hosting account.

Thanks

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

Hi

I will forward this to the developer to check, however we use WP Engine with all of our themes and have never had an issue with loading times in the backend

– Kyle

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Spoke to our guys who have helped on other topics and seems you have 5000+ menu items, which may have been an import issue – this is the problem here.

Please respond to those topics so that we can assist.

– Ed

[ArieleK]

Hey, What do you mean by respond to those other topics?

I have made a back up of the website so you can help resolve now 🙂

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Hi,

I replied in the other topic where I already delete those extra menu items, but still exist memory issues.
Try to adjust the memory settings that suggest in my other reply.

Thanks

-Rui

[ArieleK]

Hey,

We’ve tried increasing the PHP memory to 512MB and 1024MB, both didn’t end up fixing it. There are around 100,000 entries in the wp_postmeta table in the WordPress db, which seems to be the issue. If I clear the entire table, it fixes the issue, but we lose all of the styling/content added to pages. Could that have been caused by having too many menu items while adding new pages?

I’ve tried going through and searching for entries which may be the issue, but can’t seem to find the exact entries which might’ve been added. Would you be able to possibly check the wp_postmeta table in the database (accessible through WPEngine login previously provided) and see if you can figure out what may be causing the issue? I’m out of ideas.

Thanks!
Colin

[ArieleK]

Also here’s some extra info from talking to WPEngine support:

Unfortunately doing a fresh install of WordPress wouldn’t fix this issue as it’s related to the Page Builder that you were utilizing for your website. This information was clarified in ticket #415776 and the cause of the white screens you’re experiencing is because the theme is inserting Style Arrays into the wp_postmeta table which as Jonathan mentioned is not standard practice and it results in the PHP Memory available to the install running out.

The PHP Memory limit has already been raised substantially on the install to the maximum we could set on the server, though even were this able to be raised higher this would be a bandaid fix for a larger issue.

Our best recommendation on getting this corrected is to see if the theme developer that wrote the page builder has any form of tool available that would allow you to export your content from WordPress or at the very least, remove the PageBuilder data that’s formerly been inserted into the wp_postmeta table.

As much as we would like to assist with this, unfortunately the core of the problem sits within the realm of development & would be outside of the scope of support that we would be able to help with.

When reviewing the database tables for wppostmeta it looks like you have cleared out a large number of them which has made it quite a bit easier to pinpoint the exact style tables that are causing the problem, It looks like these are all (or mostly) prefixed with ‘sf’ within the table- While this would cause you to lose all of the styling on the pages, if you were looking to recover the content of the posts it would be possible to run a mysql query to delete all of the table rows that were prefixed with ‘sf_’ and leave only the remaining attachment metadata which should allow you to use the core WordPress export functions to export the posts and attachments to a new install to rebuild without the PageBuilder.

One company we may recommend checking out for assisting in getting this cleaned up would be WP Curve- They specialize in small fixes and optimizations for a small fee. I would recommend checking them out if the theme developer does not have any recommendations as to re-associate the style arrays.

If you have additional questions, let us know!

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Hi,

Regarding the memory settings definitely it shouldn’t go above the the 256M

Don’t understand what WPEngine mean to say with Style arrays, all our demo sites are hosted in WPEngine, our main demo that has more content than the average production site is running with 40MB of memory, so it shouldn’t be something in the software.

Notice that you are running a multisite install and analyzing the network results I notice several gaps in the processment having gaps of more than 20 seconds that’s not usual.

Also create a normal page without any asset of the Swift Page Builder and the slow times loading still occur.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dcri1ak2wsuxnxv/Screenshot%202015-07-20%2019.08.37.png?dl=0

Also found some scripts that seems to interact with the page request.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3wwx6giof35eqcg/Screenshot%202015-07-20%2019.25.39.png?dl=0

To figure this out and compare results, it would be necessary to have a copy of your current installation(or a clean install) in your server so that I can reset it and install the Atelier demo from scratch.

Let me know your thoughts.

Also I don’t what plugins you have in the multisite, you should try to deactivate them all to discard any plugin conflict.

-Rui

[ArieleK]

Hey,

I’ve already tried disabling plugins to see if that would fix it, didn’t seem to fix the issue. It also shouldn’t be an issue with it being a multisite, the only other one is a staging site that doesn’t have much on it.

I’ve also tried running a WP Optimizer plugin, to remove post revisions, etc. and it didn’t affect anything. The website itself uses about 36MB of memory when not trying to access the page list, but won’t load the page list (white page) when you try.

I really think the issue might have been caused by the extra menu items being in the site when using the page builder, because 100,000 wp_postmeta entries seems extremely high for the amount of pages the site has. Could a developer possibly take a look and see if they can find anything in the database, or offer their input?

Thanks!

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

I’m also a developer. The problem is that looking at the database and start deleting things that we are not sure what they are wouldn’t be a solution. In WordPress the major part of the information is stored has an record in the WP_POSTMETA so it’s easy that a single posts or page could have 20, 30, 50 records in that table depending on the info, the same goes for products and all the custom post types.

In that situation it’s better to export your current pages/posts and import them in a fresh install with our demo content, that I can import for you.

-Rui

[ArieleK]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Can you just confirm what is the site url of the installation? and if the WordPress credentials are similar to your current site?

Thanks
-Rui

[ArieleK]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

Hi,

Already installed the demo content in the staging site and it’s working fine the editor is fast.

What I found during this process, was that I tried to install the demo content and although it went to 100% it didn’t import anything so maybe something was corrupted inside.

I deleted our importer plugin and installed it again. After that I run the importer with success.

Also noticed(but didn’t change it) that the theme it’s in an older version 1.10 and also the Swiftframework there is already a 1.40 version.

Links for the latest theme and framework.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nzu5dt30b7iaqcq/AAB3PXxk-nj9qBg22ed0cFuga?dl=0

Swift Framework Plugin

In my opinion now you should stay with this install, and export from the other install all the pages/posts/etc that you created. Don’t export everything because I’m afraid that something could be messed up.

I’m also suspecting that this could have started with our previous Importer plugin that had some issues, not sure what version you used.

-Rui

[ArieleK]

Awesome, thanks so much!

It looks like importing the pages causes the same issue, so it was definitely something to do with that before. Would you suggest just trying to re-build the site as similar to the old one as possible, without importing pages? Or is there another option you’d suggest?