Multisite WP-Admin and WP-Login INCREDIBLY Slow

Is there anything in the server logs? It sounds like perhaps you have an apache issue where it’s hanging on to the rewrites in a funny way,

Hey Mike,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I apologize it’s taken me a few days to get back to you. I wanted to take some time to comb through the relevant logs and see if I could find anything of relevance. There doesn’t appear to be anything that would indicate a problem; certainly not anything pointing to rewrite issues.

What’s more interesting to me, it seems, is that I sat with top open as I made some of these slow requests, and neither Apache nor the MySQL processes took up significant resources as these requests were being processed.

Any other ideas, or suggested troubleshooting steps?

Thanks again, Mike!

With My Best Regards,

S. Wyatt Young

Another interesting development. Just to rule out rewrite issues, I went to the Network Setup screen, copied the lines both for wp-config and for .htaccess, and when I went to find the .htaccess file in the folder, discovered it was missing.

So, I created the .htaccess file, pasted the rules in, restarted Apache, and now it seems to be slower, not faster. I should also note that this site, the one that I’m particularly concerned about, is nested in a folder whose parent folder also has a WordPress install, with its .htaccess file.

Not sure if that triggers any thoughts in your mind, Mike, but if so, I’d love to hear them!

Thanks again!

Wyatt

Have you tried disabling all your plugins?

Akismet is the only one installed, and isn’t enabled. This is a new site that I’m developing…quite slowly.

Anything usual about your system? Using IP address, behind a firewall, etc? Might be a network issue. I would either recommend turning on WP_DEBUG in wp-config.php:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

or you could try installing Query Monitor plugin. I use it for debugging and found it very useful – https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/query-monitor/

Two silly tests I like to do.

1) Make a phpinfo page and see how fast THAT loads

2) Check the readme.html page and check that

It’s possible that it’s PHP is weird. What’s your version and flavor?

Hey Mike,

Thanks again for your reply. Made a phpinfo page in the same folder as the WP install, and it loaded with lightning speed. The readme file also loaded with lightning speed. PHP version is 5.3.10 on Ubuntu 12.04 server. Apache version is 2.2.22.

As for networking stuff, it is behind a NAT, but the NAT forwards all traffic on an external IP to the internal IP, no questions asked. Any and all firewall filtering happens at the server level.

(Plus, as noted above, the other sites run fine.)

Loaded wp-admin with the debug constant set to true. Still slow as molasses, no errors, PHP or otherwise.

Any other thoughts/troubleshooting tips?

Thanks again!

With My Best Regards,
S. Wyatt Young

I think you should give the Query Monitor plugin a try. It reports on mostly db queries but has other info as well.

FYI – We initially had our WP server in a non-routable network; no requests can be initiated from the server. /wp-admin had similar problems to what you are experiencing. We found out that WP sometimes does calls to itself. On the non-routable network, that call would fail/timeout. We verified this by logging into the server and attempting to do an http call to itself, e.g. https://myhost.com/wp-cron.php was the call that failed and delayed rendering of wp-admin.

Installed the plugin. MySQL queries are taking around .005 seconds. Page load is taking over 60 seconds each. I’ve defined the host.com in /etc/hosts as pointing to 127.0.1.1, so that shouldn’t be an issue, either.

Solved it. Turns out that you were right, jkhongusc. It was a problem with both wp-cron.php, and WordPress’s new auto-update feature, timing out because they couldn’t connect to the localhost using the website’s domain name and curl. I had example.com defined in /etc/hosts, but not www.example.com. The plugin pointed me to the error. (Nice plugin recommendation, by the way!) So dumb…

For those having similar issues, the way to solve this is simple. Just add the following two lines to your /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1     example.com
127.0.0.1     www.example.com

Thanks for all your help, guys!

Hi S. Wyatt,

I have the same login screen delay problem as you.

I found your thread and have navigated to the etc folder via Ftp.
It contains a folder for each of my websites.

Each of the website folders contain files called;

@pwcache (this is a folder which contains a file called info)

_privs.json
passwd
passwd,v
quota
quota,v
shadow
shadow,v

To which file do I add the two lines?

127.0.0.1 example.com
127.0.0.1 https://www.example.com
Thanks, Denis

Hi MarkDenis,

Are you paying a web host to host your sites, or are you self-hosting? If you’re self-hosting, what platform are you hosting on? (e.g., Ubuntu Linux, Windows, Mac, SUSE Linux, etc.)

Thanks,
Wyatt

Hi Wyatt,

I am paying a web host.

I have the Linux Business Plan viewable on this page;

https://www.letshost.ie/hosting-plans/business-hosting/

Hi MarkDenis,

Unless you’re paying for a dedicated server or VPS, you won’t have access to your server’s /etc/hosts file, which is what you need to edit. Accordingly, you should contact your host. If you want to determine for sure that it’s a DNS issue (which will help your host), download the WP Query Monitor plugin and install it on your WordPress site.

Activate the plugin, then reload the admin page. WP Query Monitor will help you to pinpoint what is slowing you down. If you get any errors relating to HTTP requests, particularly HTTP requests that call files using your domain (e.g., example.com/wp-admin/something.php), then your host has a problem with their DNS setup.

When your website is doing the DNS lookup for your domain–in other words, when it asks the world wide web, “What’s the IP address for this domain?”–it gets the external IP address for your host’s network. So it then sends its request to that IP address, and the host’s router freaks out. It doesn’t know what to do. Some routers handle it well (usually commercial-grade), some don’t (usually consumer-grade).

By putting the entries above in your /etc/hosts file (which, again, you probably can’t access; it’s a system file that only your host can access, unless you’re on a dedicated server or VPS), you bypass your server’s request to the outside world, telling it, “Hey, for this (or these) domains, just send the request to yourself.” In other words, you’re doing what the router should be doing automatically.

That tells me that your host is an amateur, and you’re probably overpaying (€15.95 is way too much). You’re better off using a host that WordPress recommends. My company (Eleora, Inc.) hosts WordPress sites, but only for clients. Bluehost is a decent alternative, and one that WordPress recommends, but they load up their shared servers to the max, so you don’t get the best performance.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Wyatt