Media Library super slow

  • Resolved europatech

    (@europatech)


    2 years, 10 months ago

    For sometime now, my media library has been incredibly slow to load and selecting an image to insert into my site is now a painful experience! There’s something not quite right but I’m struggling to find out whether its my theme (Avada, with my own child), plugin(s) or something else all together.

    I’ve got 844 images on my site, which isn’t that many compared to some. When I go to Media Library (grid view), the first 80 images in my library takes about a minute to appear, which is not good for my productivity! I can filter, by search or this month, which speeds things up, but that’s not ideal.

    When I upload a new image, WordPress creates its standard thumbnail (150x150px), medium (max 300x300px) and large (max 1024x1024px). In Settings>Media, I have the “Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions” option checked.

    I’m aware than Avada also creates its own set of image variations to help with the delivery of a responsive site.

    To make things even more complicated, I’ve got a WebP plugin operational which converts everything to this web-optimised format and delivers these when appropriate.

    So, for example, yesterday I uploaded a 2000x1000px pixel JPG (a hero background) called public-sector_2000px.jpg and the following were automatically created in the same content folder (/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/):

    ? public-sector_2000px-1024×512.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-1024×512.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-1200×600.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-1200×600.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-150×150.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-150×150.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-1536×768.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-1536×768.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-177×142.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-177×142.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-200×100.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-200×100.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-300×150.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-300×150.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-300×214.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-300×214.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-320×202.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-320×202.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-400×200.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-400×200.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-460×295.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-460×295.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-540×272.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-540×272.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-600×300.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-600×300.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-669×272.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-669×272.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-66×66.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-66×66.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-700×441.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-700×441.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-768×384.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-768×384.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-800×400.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-800×400.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px-940×400.jpg
    ? public-sector_2000px-940×400.jpg.webp
    ? public-sector_2000px.jpg.webp

    That’s 39 additional files added to sit alongside my original. While this seems like a massive overhead, they only took 8 seconds to build (according to the timestamps) and I don’t have an issue with disc space.

    I don’t know if all these go into WordPress’ media database table but, as expected, I only see one entry for the image in my Media Library. Even if there is 33,760 rows in there (844 x 40), that’s really not a very large database and should be queryable in a flash.

    When I have a screen full of images shown in the Media Library (in the grid view), Developer Tools tells me that they’re being rendered at 131x131px and the 150x150px version is being used. This seems perfectly reasonable.

    I don’t have a lot of plugins on my site, but I have tried deactivating various ones that might be responsible, but with no change. I’ve not tried changing theme, but presume that’s more about presentation of the site rather than how the back end performs.

    Does anyone have any ideas why my Media Library is so slow to load? Many thanks.

    Best regards,
    Warren

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Hello Warren!

    Just to be sure, do you experience slowness only when you use the media library, like selecting an existing image to insert into the site, or also when you upload new images to the media library? Or in both cases?

    Depending on the situation you could try different solutions.

    Uploading new images -> I found in the forum someone who had a similar issue: the uploading was slow because, in their case, they had many thumbnails registered (many of those were unnecessary). They installed the Stop Generating Unnecessary Thumbnails (Formerly Stop Generating Image Sizes) plugin, and the issue was fixed.

    Here’s the link to the plugin they used: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/image-sizes/

    Here’s the link to the conversation: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/extremely-slow-image-upload/`

    Using existing images -> You could try disabling all plugins and switching to a different theme. Once you do this, try and and see if the media library is faster. If it’s faster, you should activate again the theme and test again. If it is still faster, activate one plugin and test. Still faster? Activate another plugin and test again. You keep doing it until you find the plugin that makes your media library slow.

    I hope this helps, let us know if one of these solutions work for you ??

    Thread Starter europatech

    (@europatech)

    I resolved this problem by disabling the “Find Posts Using Attachment” (v1.0) plug-in. There doesn’t seem to be any other reports of this nature for this useful plug-in, so it’s perhaps an incompatibility rather than an outright bug. I hope this is useful for anyone else having the same issue.

    That’s awesome, thank you for sharing this! It will definitely be useful for others. If you want, you can report it to the devs using this link: https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/find-posts-using-attachment/#newpost

    Have a lovely rest of your day.

    • This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Isotta Peira.
    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    @europatech I recommend asking at https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/find-posts-using-attachment/#new-post so the plugin’s developers and support community are aware of this.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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