Hummingbird Assets Causing Latency

Hello @extinctdisney,

I was able to see the same on the google page speed insights but was not able to replicate it on my test site. This surely needs deeper checks which is why I’ve passed it over to our developers to check this further.

Kindly note that our developers are constantly working on such critical issues which is why it may sometimes take a bit more time for them to revert back on the same. I will be keeping my self in the loop and would get back to you soon.

Regards,
Prathamesh Palve

Hello @extinctdisney,

I checked this further and I see that this is perfectly normal. I was initially confused about why the other assets are not minified and things seemed to be a bit unusual but when I deep checked things here is what I found.

1. The asset you mentioned is perfectly normal as that is how it would load and there is not much we can do there until it is compressed and minified.
You can do that from the Asset Optimisation and check as to what output that gives.

2. What is not normal is I see only one file being minified on the site. Usually, it should compress and minify all the files but here it did not which is what concerns me.

Can you make sure you are not using any other caching and compression plugin and hit the compression button beside other files which need compression and check as to how that works and let me know the results for the same?

Regards,
Prathamesh Palve

The asset you mentioned is perfectly normal as that is how it would load and there is not much we can do there until it is compressed and minified.
You can do that from the Asset Optimisation and check as to what output that gives.

I don’t even see the Hummingbird assets on the Asset Optimization page.

The only other caching/compression plugin I am using is Smush (another one of your plugins).

From Google PageSpeed Insights a few moments ago:
…hummingbird-assets/dcca489….js(www.extinctdisney.com)
42 KB
1,230 ms

Reviewed the full list of js assets under Asset Optimization, after a cache clear and force recheck of assets, and do not see this listed to compress or place in footer, etc.

Good morning! Just curious if there is an update yet to solve this? In checking my PageSpeed Insights again today, I see the response time on mobile for this as 1,380 ms.

Note, on Desktop the response time is much less at 230 ms.

Hi @extinctdisney,

Assets in the hummingbird-assets/ are optimized versions of the original versions on your site. The load time is not controlled by Hummingbird, it’s controlled by your server.

In terms of response times – the mobile tests are run on a limited bandwidth connection to simulate, I believe, a 3G network, so the load time will be slower compared to the desktop results.

Best regards,
Anton

While I appreciate the response, I have noticed that even on 5G, my mobile site is loading quite slowly and that tool is my way of identifying the reasons why. Of all the assets that are listed, the Hummingbird JS is by far the largest delay at 1400+ ms. As that’s the easiest way to determine what assets I need to optimize (by either compression or loading in the footer etc.) it sure makes it difficult to feel like I’ve accomplished much with the tool when I see little change in the resulting speed assessments.

Hi @extinctdisney,

I’m sorry, but I don’t see this issue when I run the tests.
Please have a look at the waterfall chart for your site: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.extinctdisney.com/f1sLMhwa
As you can see, all Hummingbird assets are loading at the same rate as the other files on your site. The major performance issue is coming from your server performance, which Hummingbird cannot really adjust much. This is indicated by the purple bars on the chart. Most of the load time is spent on “Waiting”, that is the time it takes for your server to generate a response (see https://gtmetrix.com/blog/how-to-read-a-waterfall-chart-for-beginners/#requestwaiting). What you can try and do is enable Hummingbird Page Caching + disable preloading in the page caching module (should be disabled by default), that should take some processing off your server and improve the load time. If that doesn’t help, I would recommend talking to your host about the server performance.

Best regards,
Anton

The Google analysis identifies the server slowness issues as well, but completely separately from assets that cause delays. If you’d like to see what I’m seeing, please follow the below link:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fextinctdisney.com%2F

A new check this morning continues to identify “https://www.extinctdisney.com/wp-content/uploads/hummingbird-assets/dcca48920b7c25b6805bdb4b4fe2e65d.js” as having a response time of 1230ms.

Also, again, to clarify, the analysis for the Desktop site seems fine. It is specifically on the mobile side that this particular asset is causing a delay.

Hi @extinctdisney,

You’re just looking at the directory and thinking that it’s coming from Hummingbird. But that is an asset from WordPress (jQuery). You can disable Asset Optimization, run a new PageSpeed scan and you will see that the jQuery file is still listed on that audit. As you can see from the waterfall chart that I shared, the 1230 ms delay is not coming from the asset itself, it comes from the slow serve time by your host. No matter how you optimize the file, it’s still going to load slow. This is a hardware limitation, that you need to fix with your host – either by upgrading your plan or finding the cause of high server load.

I would also strongly recommend enabling Page Caching and checking if that helps improve the response time.

Best regards,
Anton

Thank you Anton. I had Page Caching enabled already though a few of the options under it I could not use as they ended up serving my page incorrectly.

I removed Hummingbird and installed another optimization plugin and saw a large increase in my response times so this issue can now be closed.

Thank you again for your help.