Horrendous Speeds

Hello,

I checked the demo site on GTMetrix. See the screenshot – https://prntscr.com/ogmj7o
We are using WP-Rocket cache. You can also use a CDN to increase the site speed along with the cache plugin. Instead of it, go to Dashboard > Theme Panel > Scripts & Style and disable the files that you are not using on your site.

WOw, how are you getting those speeds with the same theme? This is the store – religionstore.com

I get 80/90’s on the site I use the theme with. I don’t have bad page speed at all.

What diagnostics are you getting back from Google Pagespeed test?

I used pingdom, today it took 18 seconds to load – Results here: https://tools.pingdom.com/#5b012c6388c00000

Did you all import the demo content, including images?

It’s reporting that you have failed results at these levels – these are not theme related IMO.

Fewer requests. Caching can help this by combining CSS/JS files
Cookie Free domains. CDN will resolve this. This is host dependent in some cases too.
Expiration Headers. This may be a server issue again. For example with WP Rocket and Nginx hosts you have to do extra config at the server level for the caching to work properly.

The demo content for my cases has been replaced with real content – and in most cases a lot more content than the demo site had. So my sites are bigger.

Strange, I have about 15 websites hosted on the same shared server with Hostgator. 14 are blazing fast and this is the only one I’m having issues with. I never had to modify them either or install caching plugins, and they’re all running WordPress with different themes.

One of my sites on hostgator is: Bayside-ac.com

Below is reply from WP Rocket folks. I don’t remember if I had to do this on Hostgator or not…

I would also test on Google pagespeed test tool. See if you get any images that aren’t cached – that’s where I found my clue.

Tom

It seems that browser caching rules are not enabled on your server. WP Rocket automatically configures this for Apache servers, but yours appears to be NGINX. WP Rocket cannot automatically enable it and you will have to see the help of your host for the same.

We have a tiny doc for this here on how to fix it in Nginx, but your host will know the details for sure – https://docs.wp-rocket.me/article/80-browser-caching#nginx

Please contact them and request them to enable browser caching for CSS and JS and images.

I got the site loading now from 18s to 3s. Thanks a lot for the help on here.

I reached out to the host provider and had them enable leverage browser caching and also enabled cookie free domain. All arrows were initially pointing to the theme, as I have 17/18 websites working fine on WP on the same server without any tweaks done on the server end.

Thanks again

One thing I have had host providers have to do is enable gzip. For some reason that often isn’t set up. Huge boost.