Installed Smush, now site is extremely slow and many images won’t load

How long have you noticed the website speed being so slow?

I normally restore a backup of the website and take it from there. If you don’t have a backup, your host should have one.

Just since yesterday morning. It happened after installing Smush and W3 Total Cache.

When I asked my host about restoring from a backup, they said there is no need because the site works fine on their end, and to contact the developer of the plugins. However, I’ve deactivated both plugins and the problem still persists, so I’m not sure how to proceed.

That is a standard hosting company reply. Sadly.

I’ve seen another post from you also mentioning slow times, and therefore you installed Smush etc. yesterday I assume.

Can you install this plugin and check the results: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/

Yep! I actually already have that plugin. It currently says:

1 critical issue

Critical issues are items that may have a high impact on your sites performance or security, and resolving these issues should be prioritized.
Critical issues are items that may have a high impact on your sites performance or security, and resolving these issues should be prioritized.

WordPress update available (6.4.3) Security

A new minor update is available for your site. Because minor updates often address security, it’s important to install them.

3 recommended improvements

Recommended items are considered beneficial to your site, although not as important to prioritize as a critical issue, they may include improvements to things such as; Performance, user experience, and more.

You should remove inactive plugins Security

Plugins extend your site’s functionality with things like contact forms, ecommerce and much more. That means they have deep access to your site, so it’s vital to keep them up to date.

Your site has 24 active plugins, and they are all up to date.

Your site has 3 inactive plugins. Inactive plugins are tempting targets for attackers. If you are not going to use a plugin, you should consider removing it.

A scheduled event has failed Performance

The scheduled event, epc_purge_request, failed to run. Your site still works, but this may indicate that scheduling posts or automated updates may not work as intended.

You should use a persistent object cache Performance

A persistent object cache makes your site’s database more efficient, resulting in faster load times because WordPress can retrieve your site’s content and settings much more quickly.

Your hosting provider can tell you if a persistent object cache can be enabled on your site. Your host appears to support the following object caching services: APCu.

And yes, Smush was just installed yesterday. I kept seeing the recommendation to optimize images as a way to improve speed, and this plugin had great reviews so I thought it would do the trick.

However, before yesterday my site was on the slower side, but fully functional, and all images loaded just fine. Now half of them don’t load at all, or they load strangely (wrong size, only half of an image, etc.) despite looking fine in the backend.

With that same plugin – Health Check – you can place your website in safe mode without affecting visitors.

In your WordPress dashboard go to Tools > Site Health > Troubleshooting

This will disable all the plugins and theme for you only. Check your site loading speed. Then enable one plugin and check again. Enable a second plugin and check. It’s a process of elimination to see if a plugin or theme is causing the issue you face.

Thank you. Unfortunately this didn’t seem to change anything. I kept seeing the same issues regardless of which plugin I checked.

However, I had already removed the Smush plugin (which I suspect was the one which caused the issue) so I couldn’t test it. Other than that and W3 Total Cache, the other plugins are all things I’ve been using for months/years without any problems.

I’m wondering if I changed something when I set up the Smush settings and that change “stuck” even though I’ve disabled the plugin? In addition to speed, the images load differently now (they sort of “click” or “unfold” one section at a time) so I’m thinking I changed this somewhere but have no idea how to change it back.

Please get in touch with Bluehost and request them to restore a backup from last week. This will undo the mess that Smush caused.

Did the site speed change while you were in Troubleshoot mode?

Just got off the phone with them. They told me to hire a developer to fix it, but unfortunately that isn’t in the budget right now.

I was then placed on hold for about 30 minutes while they tried to troubleshoot. They cleared the servers, and told me to wait 1 hour and then call back if nothing changes. Currently waiting 1 hour but not overly optimistic, considering this is what was tried earlier this morning and it didn’t fix anything.

After my own Googling, I actually suspect it’s a caching issue—I found quite a few posts from people saying W3 Total Cache caused slow image loading and slowed down the backend, which I’m also experiencing.

If I enable W3 Total Cache, all of the warnings above disappear and my site health is “good,” but the images barely load. If I disable it and use the Bluehost cache instead, I see a slight improvement in image loading but get a critical issue: “Page cache is detected but the server response time is still too slow” and a recommended improvement: “You should use a persistent object cache.” And with either method, it’s still taking several minutes for a page to fully load.

The cache messages are server related. Please make Bluehost aware of this.

Sigh. Still on the phone with them. They just keep saying they can’t replicate the issue and there is nothing they can do but clear the cache again.

Send a support ticket instead of phoning? Email is the only way I can get my various hosts to actually pay attention to the issue.

Please urge them to restore a backup from a time period that you know the site was ok. Hosts normally keep backups of a site for 30 days.

If all else fails, inform them that you plan to move your hosting to a different supplier.

Yes, I think moving to a new hosting supplier might be in the cards. Short-term I just want to get the site speed back to where it was, but longer term it’s something I need to investigate.

Between chat and phone I think I spoke to five different people yesterday, and really accomplished nothing. I’ve been with Bluehost for more than a decade, hosting multiple sites for business and personal projects, and their customer support used to be truly top-notch. Sadly that’s no longer the case. I got better advice for free from these forums and Reddit than from the company I’m paying to help me.

I’ve now been upgraded to “level two” and am supposed to receive an email from a technician today, so maybe that will be more productive!