Extremely slow average page load time

The only way to solve this problem is to reduce the file size of the pictures, especially the last still picture, which is 1.4MB all by itself. It probably takes Google 18 seconds to load the 3.5MB or so (total page “size”) through their network.

It might be worth experimenting with hosting the pictures on your WordPress site, rather than Flikr, just in case Flikr is slow.

But, in the final analysis, I can’t see you winning this battle without creating smaller pictures. Concentrate on the storage size more than the pixel width. Graphics programs let you get more compression, giving you smaller size, by only slightly reducing quality. GIMP, for example, recommends its 85% setting.

But, be warned, I’m not a graphics guy.

You also have some javascript files that are trying to load and don’t exist and also there are some errors on the page. Using Safari Resources Developer tool there are errors you should fix.

@adiant. I considered hosting straight from my server too, but wondered if that would clutter up my server and make it slower. Worth trying for sure!

@equalmark. Thanks for the tips. What’s Safari Resources Developer?

Hosting your own images reduces the number of possible points of failure, i.e. – as you have it now, slowness or failure of either Flikr or your server will impact your site. Taking Flikr out of the picture halves the points of failure.

On the other hand, using Flikr does reduce the bandwidth usage on your server. But I would still opt to self-hosting “everything”.

I’m not sure how much difference it actually makes, but content from other sites likely slows down your visitor’s browsers as the browser’s phishing function kicks in.

Its part of the developer tools in safari. You can see how long your page takes to load and get a break down of the time it takes each file to load.

Someone look at https://www.arkenid.com and tell me why sometimes it loads fast other times it hangs for ever and times out on the load. ANY help would be appreciated.

@hamfest I’m no expert, but it is probably your server.

YEAH, That’s what I thought!! I figured it was somewhere between the server and the database? I contacted customer support and this is the response I got from them:

Thank you for contacting online support.

Your site does appear to load a bit slowly but I’m not showing any issues with the server that you are on. If you try loading any static content on the page (such as images, plain html documents) you will see that these load very quickly so it appears that the issue is not with the server but with the code on some pages. The best solution in most cases is to optimize the code for efficiency to ensure it loads as fast as possible. (If your site uses databases, check those as well. Make sure all database connections are closed at the end of query.) If that is not an option, then you may want to consider purchasing a server for quicker loading times.

SO, now I am turning to you guys and begging for help!!! Thanks so much for your reply!

You may wish to try following my advice on this thread:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/350343

Basic concept: see if WordPress speed is directly related to server’s processor (CPU) “busy-ness”.

When you start having issues of this kind, you have to realize that the amount of memory usage your server has allocated to your wp instellation is crucial…highly graphic sites require much more memory, and a lot of hosting companies won’t admit that their cheep plans only allow for about 10-12 users at a time, with very small graphics.

Btw, an update to my original post: I changed my theme and it seems to be a lot faster now. Not sure what was going on with the previous one. It’s still a bit slow because of the large images, which I’ll be resizing eventually but at least it doesn’t take Google 18 seconds to load the homepage anymore.

Thanks for everyone’s help. At least I know it’s not entirely the server or database in this particular case.