Plugin makes a site effectively unusable

Hi Quentin, could you tell me what theme you’re using?

Me too… I am using the RESPONSIVE theme, and I had load times up to a minute.

Try checking “Disable Gravatar and use only local avatars” in the WP User Avatar settings and see if that improves the load time. I acknowledge that a handful of users have complained about their sites’ speed when using the plugin, but I haven’t pinpointed what the exact problem is, and it’s probable that it isn’t the same problem for every user.

I am using a custom built template.
Unfortunately, it was too much of a problem, so I have had to use a different plugin for this functionality. I will see about setting up a sandbox site sometime and reinstalling the plugin to try and help you pinpoint the problem.

Like Quentin I also moved on to another plugin. I spent many hours with this problem until I realized that disabling your plugin speeded up things. And I don’t even say that your plugin is defective.

As a side note, when I installed the website on my local machine (Mamp on OS X 10.8) I had no delays.

Thank you for providing this plugin, I used it for quite a while and enjoyed having it. Software can be delicate. I am sorry that I cannot be of further assistance I like to focus on other things.

SIncerely,
Holger

I stumbled upon another website of mine with your WP User Avatar.
Turning on “Disable Gravatar and use only local avatars” did not cause any change.

Same issue for me. Page loads in the dashboard dropped to 5-10 minutes. (Using a responsive theme from Elegant Themes).

I implemented a cache for Gravatar calls, which I think are the culprit for slowness. This is in version 1.5.7.