website takes too long to load

[Ivel]

Hi,
my WordPress website takes too long to load, 10 - 30 seconds and of course a lot of people don't have the patience to wait and just leave.
Can anyone suggest what the reason might be and how this can be fixed.

Thanks

 

[sipexa]

Wordpress keeps versions of each edit at the database. If you can clear them, pages can work faster.

 

[ryedale]

Hi

This can be down to a number of different factors such as

Issues with the host
Plugin stuck in a loop
Unoptimised images
External scripts delaying the load of the site
Database performance issues

Do you have a link to the site and I'll take a quick look, and who are you hosting with?

 

[sipexa]

One of the best known plugin for this aim is WP-Optimize.

 

[sipexa]

Additionally, according to content of your site, adding compound indexes to posts and postmeta tables, will increase performance so much. Do you have so much posts?

 

[Ivel]

Hi VTS,

hosting is with 123-reg. I will send you the site link in PM as I am not allowed to post links at the moment.

Thanks a lot

 

[ryedale]

No problem, just having a look

 

[fisicx]

Wordpress keeps versions of each edit at the database. If you can clear them, pages can work faster.

One of the best known plugin for this aim is WP-Optimize.

Additionally, according to content of your site, adding compound indexes to posts and postmeta tables, will increase performance so much. Do you have so much posts?

None of the above will make any difference.

The site is just horribly build - a whole load of plugins, bootstrap CSS on a cheap $59 theme.

But I suspect the main problem is the rubbish 123reg hosting - you are sharing a server with 90,000 other websites.

 

[ryedale]

It may actually go beyond general 123's usual poor performance in this case as it's simply not responding at all or throwing up a 500

Having a look on ftp for him.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Yes, you can do all the optimisation you like but if you're hosting on low quality overcrowded hosting like 123-Reg then your site will load slowly.

Overcrowding is especially bad for modern database driven platforms like WordPress.

You'll be competing with far too many users for access to the disks (which likely won't even be SSDs, but old fashioned spinning disks), and for a share of CPU resources and RAM.
It's like cramming a bus load of passengers in a Micra.

Your website's timing out for me. So it's taking so long it's not even loading.

The likes of 123-Reg aren't suitable for anything other than hobby websites, and even then you'd be better off going elsewhere.

Obviously as a web host ourselves it could be argued we'd say this, but 123-Reg and the rest of HEG (Host Europe Group), and their new owners GoDaddy are regularly slated for poor performance.

If you do a search of the forums and on the web you'll see similar stories.

This is probably some of the worst I've seen though, so your website is likely to blame as well (possibly plugin bloat, a bad theme and so forth).

I'd switch to a decent UK web host. They'll be able to advise you on plugins and themes, and best practise for WordPress as well.

If you have any questions feel free to get in touch,

Dan

 

[Schnell Solutions]

Have a look at https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http://www.taxconcept.co.uk/&tab=desktop

This is google's free testing tool to check website performance. You can take some pointers from here and fix the once which will have the maximum impact. Hope this helps.

 

[fisicx]

The site doesn't do too badly in the insight test. The problem is almost certainly the appalling hosting coupled with poor site configuration.

 

[ryedale]

We've moved it onto our servers now and carried out some initial optimisations. Few more tweaks that can be done but it's coming in at under 2 seconds now on Pingdom

Just shows how bad the 123 servers are!

 

[Xtm_Mike]

We've moved it onto our servers now and carried out some initial optimisations. Few more tweaks that can be done but it's coming in at under 2 seconds now on Pingdom

Just shows how bad the 123 servers are!

I hate these big companies. They suck people in with their massive marketing budgets but the service they offer are shocking, very few people have good things to say about them.

 

[webhostuk]

Other things than hosting you can issue you can do to improve WP website speed are optimize images, enable opcache and php-FPM also helps to improve the speed of WP website. But for this your web hosting company should check your website and make necessary changes.

 

[Ivel]

Hi,
Thanks everyone for your replies, your help was much appreciated.

I would like to say huge thanks to Mark from VTS, who managed to move my website to their severs on Sunday and provided me with a very reasonable quote after I was able to see the difference. He also did some other optimisations on the website, which I am not sure what exactly they are as websites are not my strength but I am more than happy with the result, response and the service.

Once again Thanks Mark!

 

[ryedale]

Delighted we could help, I was actually quite surprised that there was no fundamental issue with the site and it really was just down to the poor / non-existent 123-reg performance levels.

I was expecting to find something else with the site not loading at all.

 

[fisicx]

If you had read the whole thread you would have noted that the problem was the hosting company. And this has now been sorted.

 

[bigbuzzbelfast]

I would never use Bluehost (bad hosting experience) Slowdaddy (as I like to call them) good for domains terrible for hosting. 123 reg are just an overcrowded joke in my eyes and as for 1&1 (don't use them if you want to keep your sanity again this is my experience others may differ) they still owe me a small fortune which I will never see.

And last but certainly not least in my eyes the so-called "Fasthosts" I think somebody thought that name with sarcasm in their mind at the time. All based MY hosting experiences over many many years.

 

[harshita]

Add the following plugins
1> wp smush for image optimization
2> W3 Total cache or W3 super cache for caching
3> Ad expiry date to header in htaccess file
4> lazyload to images
5> If possible use any CDN (content delivery network)

It will reduce your site load time. Tired and tested by me

Thanks

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Hi all - web sites is not my thing, yet I am trying.
As per the pics attached, any tips on where I go now to achieve a better score?

arghhh...! How do I get a link or picture on here??

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi Hugh, welcome to the forums.

You need a higher post count to post links - this is to prevent spam.
You need to have made 30 posts:
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/pages/rules-and-help/
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/pages/link-in-my-post/

It might to worth starting your own thread unless this is directly related.

Feel free to PM me if you'd like us to have a look.

To test the performance of your website, GTmetrix is good:
https://gtmetrix.com/

Also Google PageSpeed:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

And the Pingdom Website Speed Test:
https://tools.pingdom.com/

Websites can load slowly for a number of reasons, often a combination of poor/overcrowded hosting and plugin bloat or badly optimised images.

There's no point in optimising a website if your underlying hosting isn't of good performance.

But obviously paying for good quality hosting and then not making full use of it by having a well optimised website is a bit of a waste.

I hope that helps.

Best of luck,

Dan

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Thanks Dan.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

GT Metrix im all green score of 90

Pingdom score of 92 all green

Google 63 / 100 This is the bit I need a little help with.
Showing 3 errors I need to try & resolve.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

How do I PM you Dan??

Thanks

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Found it PM sent

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi Hugh,

So looking at your site you have two classic optimisations that can be done.

Firstly, after your run Google PageSpeed you should see the following at the bottom:
"Download optimized image, JavaScript, and CSS resources for this page."

Click that and download the zip file.
You cant then upload the optimised images, and even run it again (sometimes you can do multiple passes).

Alternatively you can use some of the plugins already mentioned, or other online tools, but I'd avoid additional plugins if you can, and Google's tool works well.

Obviously if your images aren't finalised, then you can do this when they are.

Before optimising images, make sure you're not scaling images, using images that are too large, and so forth.

Regarding the other common fix:
"Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content"

Firstly make sure you don't have uncessary plugins or widgets loading extra render blocking JS and CSS.

Also make sure your theme is of a high standard (lightweight and well optimised, without uncessary bloat and requests).

Then if you still have this issue, you can try a plugin such as the following:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/

You can look at the "inline all CSS" (easy) and “inline & defer CSS” (better) options, covered here:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/autoptimize/faq/

However, care should be taken with any such plugins as they can break your installation.
Watch out for plugin interaction or odd behaviour.

Lastly, you're currently hosted with 1&1 and for a pretty small homepage your website loads rather slowly.
This is indicated by the Pingdom load time and Google's consider fixing "Reduce server response time"

1&1 heavily market in the UK, but they're a German business, and your website is actually hosted on a server in Germany.
This means there's a greater distance between your UK visitors and the server you're on.
Google now takes performance into consideration for SEO, so there's a definite benefit to hosting a UK website on UK web hosting.
1&1 are also not well known for good service or performance.

I hope that helps.

All the best,

Dan

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Thanks Dan.
All comments good or bad always welcomed.
From the GT metrix site I added the Add Expires Headers code
using Filezilla into the .HTaccess folder

Has helped on the desktop stats not the mobile stats.

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
# Enable expirations
ExpiresActive On
# Default directive
ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 month"
# My favicon
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 year"
# Images
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 month"
# CSS
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 month"
# Javascript
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
</IfModule>

Yes as with the pics I need to take a day out around town & get some original content so just uploaded anything that I could get to fit for the time being.
Started at page 4 on google & now on top of page 2 for the main search terms - on page 1 for other specific terms.

I feel a little more tweeking over the next month or so - should get me where I need to be.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Firstly, after your run Google PageSpeed you should see the following at the bottom:
"Download optimized image, JavaScript, and CSS resources for this page."

Thanks never saw that before.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Once downloaded what do I do with it?

 

[fisicx]

Delete the files from your server and upload the optimised versions. But the difference this will make is negligible. The big fix will be to change hosts. The next big fix will be to strip out all the plugins and theme functions you don't need. A well optimised Wordpress site can load like lightening.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

You can upload the zip file to your web hosting space, and extract the images to replace your existing images.

Or if you prefer, unzip it on your computer and upload the images using your File Manager or FTP.

Personally I would add the following to your wp-config.php file:

/** Set custom Uploads directory. */
define('UPLOADS', 'media');

So the whole file will like like this:

/**
* For developers: WordPress debugging mode.
*
* Change this to true to enable the display of notices during development.
* It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG
* in their development environments.
*/
define('WP_DEBUG', false);

/** Set custom Uploads directory. */
define('UPLOADS', 'media');

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

/** Absolute path to the WordPress directory. */
if ( !defined('ABSPATH') )
    define('ABSPATH', dirname(__FILE__) . '/');

/** Sets up WordPress vars and included files. */
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

That sets a custom media directory called "media" in public_html folder

And in your WordPress Dashboard, under Settings > Media
Untick the checkbox for "Organise my uploads into month- and year-based folders"

Your image URLs will the look like:
yourdomain.com/media/image_name.jpg

Rather than for example:
yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/typically_a_badly_named_image_name.jpg

Using the custom media directory it's so much easier to then optimise and manage your images, as they're all in one folder.

You can just drop the Google optimised images into the one folder.

That does mean you'll need to remove all your images and upload them again though (I wouldn't recommend trying to edit your database to correct the URLs/locations)

Also I'd highly recommend using HTTPS from the start for a new website. It's much easier than switching to HTTPS in the future, and Google's moving strongly toward HTTPS everywhere - so it can give some SEO benefit as well as improved visitor confidence (no this website is insecure warnings).

Kind regards,

Dan

 

[fisicx]

Or just use the smushit plugin.

Or better still, optimise the images before uploading.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Dan thats excellent - As I say Im new to wordpress but learning bundles.

This makes perfect sense & will mess around with this on another site first to make sure I fully understand it.

I thought I was on a HTTPS set up?

Thanks again

 

[fisicx]

However...

All this will make little difference while you stick with 1and1. @Dan_HiHosting will do a much better job at hosting your site than 1and1.

Optimising wordpress needs a bit of time and effort. If you jump in and install the wrong theme or a load of plugins then you can make the site even slower.

 

[Hugh Jampton]

Or just use the smushit plugin
Thanks have downloaded that now.

Yes I think I will have to give Dan a call in the week, as I am paying a fair bit to 1&1 and it feels as though I am dealing with BT at times.

No one really cares so long as you pay your money..!

 

[Certa-Hosting]

Reduce HTTP Requests
The number of HTTP requests your webpage needs affects page load time, which impacts user experience, bounce rate, and other key metrics. Most of web page’s load time is spent downloading the different pieces of the page, including images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. An HTTP request is made for each one, so the more on-page components, the longer it takes for the page to render.

 

[Certa-Hosting]

Enable browser caching
When you visit a website, the elements on the page you visit are stored on your hard drive in a cache, or temporary storage, so the next time you visit the site, your browser can load the page without having to send another HTTP request to the server.

The first time someone comes to your website, they have to download the HTML document, stylesheets, javascript files and images before being able to use your page. That may be as many as 30 components and 2.4 seconds. Once the page has been loaded and the different components stored in the user’s cache, only a few components needs to be downloaded for subsequent visits.

It’s important that you make your page fast for first-time visitors because they will have a clear cache. But you also need to enable caching to cut time off following visits.

Static resources should have a cache time of at least a week. For third-party resources like ads or widgets, they should have a cache time of at least one day. For all cacheable resources (JS and CSS files, image files, media files, PDFs, etc.), set expires to a minimum of one week, and preferably up to one year.

 

[Intuz]

There are many ways to decrease a load speed of website you can do the following changes first:

Minify JavaScript & Style Sheets to Speed Up your Website

Apply CSS3 and HTML5 to Improve Page Load Time

Minimize Image Size to Reduce Average Page Load Time

Avoid Inline JS and CSS files

Optimize Caching

 

[visuallyconnected]

You can also do a free trial on onpage.org which will analyse the problems and show you how you can possibly fix them. Failing that, you could look at moving your hosting to a different provider to speed things up! You can keep your DNS/Domain with 123 and switch to a more substantial hosting optimised well for SEO