Really Slow Website

thetiger2015

Free Member
Aug 29, 2015
960
414
The load time on one of my websites has gone from less than 2 seconds to over 10 seconds!

Website is hosted on shared hosting but I've never known it to be this slow, it was working fine a few weeks ago but since then, an SSL certificate has been added and it just keeps getting slower!

Any ideas? This is what the homepage waterfall looks like, when in Chrome Developer Tools:

Initial Connection: 2.27 seconds (so even before we get to the SSL, the site is slow)
SSL Certificate: 2.23 seconds (seems to be taking a while)
Waiting TTFB: 6 seconds (what is this?)
Content Download: 1 second

There's a couple of javascript files that take around 2 seconds to download but I'm less worried about those.

Any ideas on why the above have suddenly become very slow?
 

Alan

Free Member
  • Aug 16, 2011
    7,089
    1,974
    Waiting TTFB: 6 seconds (what is this?)

    Time to First Byte - normally if this is a content management system like WordPress this is teh time taken todo some database activities before the page is rendered.

    It does rather sound like your host server is overloaded.

    If it is WP then PM me and I will have a look ( no obligation or expectation )
     
    Upvote 0

    MaureenP

    Free Member
    Mar 28, 2016
    92
    6
    The load time on one of my websites has gone from less than 2 seconds to over 10 seconds!

    Website is hosted on shared hosting but I've never known it to be this slow, it was working fine a few weeks ago but since then, an SSL certificate has been added and it just keeps getting slower!

    Any ideas? This is what the homepage waterfall looks like, when in Chrome Developer Tools:

    Initial Connection: 2.27 seconds (so even before we get to the SSL, the site is slow)
    SSL Certificate: 2.23 seconds (seems to be taking a while)
    Waiting TTFB: 6 seconds (what is this?)
    Content Download: 1 second

    There's a couple of javascript files that take around 2 seconds to download but I'm less worried about those.

    Any ideas on why the above have suddenly become very slow?

    I don't think, website speed has gone slow because of enabling SSL but if you feel the same then you can take help of Http/2 for faster connection.
     
    Upvote 0
    Is it a wordpress site ?
    Are the plugins up to date ?
    Have you installed a cache plugin (I would if I was you)
    Have you looked at the html to see if you can compress it ?
    Have you compressed the images etc

    Lots of reasons why it is slow - I can take a look at it - but I charge.
     
    Upvote 0

    Russ Michaels

    Free Member
    Business Listing
    Jan 19, 2018
    214
    1
    62
    If you are using cheap shared hosting, then this is most likely going to be the primary cause of speed issues.
    You can circumvent this up to a point by using cloudflare.com

    You will need to give the domain name in order to get more than guesswork. By default this site will not allow you to post links if you have made less than 30 posts, so feel free to send me a private message if you would like me to take a quick look for you.
     
    Upvote 0

    XombiCreative

    Free Member
  • Dec 20, 2017
    217
    50
    If you have external script in the html file/landing make sure they are up to date.

    An easy way to figure out the issue is using the pingdom tool. I can't post the link but if you search on google 'tools pingdom' it should be first site, that will definitely narrow down the issue.
     
    Upvote 0

    LiveNetworks Ltd

    Free Member
    Jan 31, 2018
    213
    45
    Worth seeing if you can execute a shell script (are you on PHP?) that will show you the load average of the server and free memory / cached memory. Assuming a linux type box, anything over 1 would tend to point to it being busy, over 2 for long periods and you're talking about too busy.
     
    Upvote 0
    A

    arnydnxluk

    Worth seeing if you can execute a shell script (are you on PHP?) that will show you the load average of the server and free memory / cached memory. Assuming a linux type box, anything over 1 would tend to point to it being busy, over 2 for long periods and you're talking about too busy.

    For many modern shared hosting servers a load average of 1 - 2 (or even above 2) would be low and nothing of concern. However to interpret the figure more accurately you would need to know more details about the server, one rule doesn't fit all servers/workloads.
     
    Upvote 0

    LiveNetworks Ltd

    Free Member
    Jan 31, 2018
    213
    45
    The load represents the waiting processes, so on a 4 core processor, a load of 4 would indicate that each core has 1 process waiting. Any server with a ratio of more than 1 in processes to cores would have more work to handle than the processor can cope with. If that's happening regularly the server is overloaded. As you're on a shared server and have no control over it, you really want the load to be low most of the time otherwise you'll regularly be at the mercy of load fluctuations due to spiders crawling the sites or other odd peaks in traffic.
     
    Upvote 0

    Latest Articles

    Join UK Business Forums for free business advice