Slow to load

I didn’t change my plugins (I have things like super cache and minify) but load time went up

Hi Pete,
You have 12 js and 7 css files which are not minified. See this file as an example. If it was minified, there would be no whitespace/comments etc.

You should combine the js files into single file and minify it (similarly with the css files). So instead of loading 19 files, you could potentially just load 2.

You can use W3 Total Cache to do this. The plugin will aslo cache your site, database queries and gzip the output. Make sure to add each css and js file to the minify settings.

You should also compress your images with something like SmushIt or PunyPNG.

If you are using Firefox as a browser, install FireBug and YSlow as addons. Then run a YSlow analysis of your site. This will give you some metrics and tips. It will also allow you to run a SmushIt analysis of your sites images – you can then download the optimized images.

Hi Gary,

Thank you so much, this seems to be the plugin I am after. However after installing it I still seem to have 13 scripts and 7 css loading. I’m having a bit of trouble combining them in the minify settings, is it a case of clicking add a script and then just pasteing the location of the script?

Sorry, I’m a bit of a novice at this sort of thing as you may tell.

erm, now it seems like I can’t access my site, could I have broken it by changing the W3 Total Cache settings?

maybe my provider has gone down as I can’t get on with filezilla either, I’ll go try and get some sleep and try deal with it tomorrow, hope it’s ok, just bad timing

Post an update tomorrow morning and I’ll take a look at it.

No it’s back, still having trouble combining JS and CSS though

Have you added each js and css file under the ‘minify settings’?

https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/installation/

Cheers Gary, you’ve been a great help, I’ve sorted it this morning, I think it was clearing the minify cache, I combined the js and css, and have got the objects down to 5 (from 59!) I didn’t actually do anything to the images but they aren’t coming up on the list that pingdom produces and everything looks good so thats great.

The strange thing is the default include js and css (that W3 must produce) comes up in red with no file size and when I click it goes to a page not found, everything seems to work though, just seems a bit odd I was expecting to see a mass of code.

Thanks again though Gary

The strange thing is the default include js and css (that W3 must produce) comes up in red with no file size and when I click it goes to a page not found, everything seems to work though,

It’s not working because your site has no css or js. Empty your page cache – everything looked fine to you because you were viewing a cached version of your site (a version that had js and css).

W3 Total cache is not writing https://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/wp-content/w3tc/min/default.include.css or https://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/wp-content/w3tc/min/default.include.js . You need to chmod/ set the file permissions for wp-content to 755.

You can follow the installation guide here – https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/installation/

You should tick the following setting so that when you are logged in, you are always viewing a non-cached version of your site –

Enable ‘Don’t cache pages for logged in users’ under ‘Page Cache Settings’.

Hi Gary,

Thanks for that (and the email) I’ve set wp-content to 755 now, I think it should be working, I had don’t cache logged in users enabled already.

My JS is pretty big now (according to pingdom) Which is understandable if I combined it, those damn 38 images are back (I really don’t want that mystique header to load!) but I guess they may have to as you can tell I’m not great at this sort of stuff.

Do I now need to sort out images with smushit? I can get on to that. I’m starting to get a bit concerned that my All in on SEO seems to have stopped working and titles aren’t showing, but I guess thats a different thread.

Could you have a quick look and see if there is anything glaringly wrong again? You really have been a big help Gary, as mentioned if you need anything photo wise just let me know.

Hi Pete,

While the single js file might be large, it is still smaller than all of the previous files combined, since the comments and whitespace have been stripped out. By getting rid of several files, you have reduced the number of http requests needed to render your site, which results in faster page loads. W3 Total Cache is also caching your database queries now.

Since you’re caching, compressing, minifying & combining, your site is better optimized for speed than most. It’s now receiving a Grade A / 94 result in YSlow for a small website.

I’ve run your site through SmushIt on YSlow in Firebug (not the wp SmushIt plugin itself). You can reduce the size of your image files by a total of 21% (including those in your theme). If you are not already, you should be hosting your photos on a site like Flikr – their servers are probably a lot quicker than yours.

As for the All In One plugin – I’m not sure what the problem is. You can install Platinum SEO which will allow you to import all of your All In One settings into it. Try this and see if the title tags are appearing correctly. If they are, then you know that the problem is centred on the All In One plugin, and can deactivate that plugin. If it doesn’t solve the problem, the source of the issue is elsewhere.

I get D/68 with yslow (edit B/82 set to small site), why is that is it not clearing caches again? I clear them in the browser and through W3 total cache. It still says I have loads of JS and CSS running.

I’ve installed platinum SEO and migrated the AIO stuff no problem and it’s still not showing title tags, it’s driving me wild dude! not what I need on a friday! I’ve disabled a few plugins but still no change, When I do theme previews it’s still the same. I think you might be the only person on here helping gary, you’re a absolute star

Hmm, you’re not still running another caching plugin along with W3 Total Cache by any chance? You have to empty both the page cache and minify cache to view any changes. If you’re doing this, then I’m not sure what the issue is (could it possibly be your browser settings?) You’re getting a 94 for a small site and 76 for a regular site, on my end according to YSlow. If you want to improve the ‘general site’ score, add the following line to your .htaccess file in your root

FileETag none

It won’t make any real difference to your page load speed, but the ‘configure futute entity tags (ETags)’ section should go from an F to an A.

On the general settings page of Total cache, tick every box in the debug section – this won’t make any changes to your site, but it will provide me with more info when viewing you page source.

I took a look at some other files, your js (266.9) and css (48.1) can still be minifed further. Under both the js and css settings, tick ‘comment removal’ and ‘line break removal’, then view your site. If it looks weird, undo this move

Re Title Tags:

When I first viewed your site, the title was

‘Wedding Photographer in Wakefield, West Yorkshire’

I now see

Wedding Photographer in Wakefield, West Yorkshire | Pete Barnes – Wedding Photographer

Is this how it is supposed to be?

Hi Gary,

Done those steps Gary, I think the htaccess was just a case of adding the line in notepad I assume then resaving it. I’ve added the debug info if that helps.

I used to have WP super cache but disabled it, although I can’t delete it as I get an error.

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘../../../wp-load.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/petebarn/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/uninstall.php on line 8
UNINSTALL_WPSUPERCACHE must be set to a non-blank value in uninstall.php.

With the title tags I just have home coming up at the top of my browser, nothing else and if I check it on https://www.goingup.com/analyzer/ I have 0 for title that worries me.

Wedding Photographer in Wakefield, West Yorkshire should be the title of the home page, Blog title should be Pete Barnes – Wedding photographer. And tagline is Wedding Photographer, Wakefield, West Yorkshire. I’m not overly worried about the order I think it’s set to “page title” then “blog title” I just don’t want them to be empty, maybe I’m freaking out unduely, Platinum SEO looks with all the fields filled out it’s just the titles at the top of firefox and the on hover test when you hover over the navigation bar, for example gallery just says gallery and I think it used to be wakefield wedding photographer gallery. I have visions of google suddenly just dumping me!

Again mate, your help is brilliant, I’d look at using you if I need a complete site overhall if you do that sort of thing, could be a while down the road though.

Hi again ??

Hubspot seems to be seeing the same title tags as myself – https://websitegrader.com/site/www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk

This is what your site looks like when I use pingdom – https://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/?url=undefined/&id=2002161.

When you click view > page source in Firefox, is the line

rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”https://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/wp-content/w3tc/min/default.include.css

included, or does it look like

rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”https://www.petebarnesphotography.co.uk/wp-content/themes/mystique/style.css

When you scroll down to the bottom of the pagesource, can you see

<!– W3 Total Cache: Minify debug info:
Engine: disk
Group: page-col-1

I’m currently running linux on a laptop, so I’ll try viewing your site with Firefox & Internet explorer on Windows later tonight.