Hi!
From version 4.5 there is a new menu item “Performance Options”, where you can try to adjust 2 things.
1. Use custom Ajax Handler – it might not work on all installations, it’s an experimental method to prevent the whole site loading before the search process. This usually helps a LOT.
2. Disabled image cropping – it can save some resources, as the image creation might be faster.
Slow speed is usually not related to the search plugin only, the most likely causes are:
- Too many plugins installed – in my experience using 10 or more plugins can cause an extensive slowdown on your site, which causes to slow down the ajax responses as well. The less plugins, the better. VPS or Dedicated hosts are the best for wordpress, I personally use digital oceans smallest package for 10$ a month.
- Too big database for budget hosting – having tens of thousands of posts on a small server causes huge performance lags, as the database server gets much bigger load.
- Apache server overload – Peak amounts of visitors to a smaller hosting can cause such issues.
Try 1. and 2., they should definitely help at least a tiny bit ??
