Site is slow to render page

Hi,

When I first tested the site the initial response and TTFB times were very slow, in the 10 second range. However additional tests with cache cleared have the site loading in 2 to 3 seconds. Did you make any changes with regards to CDN or cache purging in the last 5 minutes?

Here is the current GTMetrix report which looks pretty good on PageSpeed but could use some work on Yslow (Mainly there are a lot of external domains loading from Google.): https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.oleolife.com/OEkotxaZ

Here is the Pingdom report – https://tools.pingdom.com/#59bc989099000000

You can also see similar data in Chrome DevTools.

In response to your question about plugins:
Yes plugins can affect render times if they add additional PHP, javascript, or CSS that need to be processed and loaded when a page is requested. You should use as few plugins as necessary to get the function you need.

My suggestion would be to review all of the Google scripts that are being loaded. Do you need all of the information they are collecting on every page of the site? It looks like Google Tag Manager is being used. This makes it really easy for marketers to add tags and scripts to the site that can slow things down.

Sincerely,
Roger

Hey Roger, thanks for the reply.

Concerning the Google scripts, I don’t think they are needed on every single page so I imagine what you are suggesting is to only add them to the necessary pages, which I believe I could do. Would that help with render time?

I think the site load times/reports seem to be okay but I’m still unsure why it takes so long to render the page contents.

To me, the site renders abnormally. I’m used to sites rendering piece by piece and not all at once (like this site does). Would you have any suggestions concerning how to improve/troubleshoot rendering times?

Thanks!

To me, the site renders abnormally. I’m used to sites rendering piece by piece and not all at once (like this site does).

I get what you mean by “abnormal” rendering.

I’m not a developer to know what’s going on here. But I’ve seen this sort of “abnormal” rendering on so many websites, especially ajax-heavy websites, that… I’m tempted to think it’s a feature of the theme rather than a bug or sign of a problem.

Anything you can remove from the page load will speed up the page load.

The reason the Render is taking so long here is that you have javascript files that prevent the page from rendering until they are fully loaded. You can set javascript files to defer or async load and that can help.

Here are the two files that Google page speed (https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oleolife.com%2F) is picking up as preventing the rendering from happening:
https://www.oleolife.com/…-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.12.4
https://s0.wp.com/…ontent/js/devicepx-jetpack.js?ver=201845

There are a number of plugins that can help setup defer or async, here’s one I found on the Google:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/async-javascript/

Here is a great explanation of what defer and async are and do:
https://bitsofco.de/async-vs-defer/

While Divi is great for making feature rich websites it also tends to throw the entire kitchen sink at your users. The jquery library is super popular with developer cause it has a lot of features. Unfortunately it is also a large library.

Awesome, thank you so much for the help! Greatly appreciated. I understand now what is happening and will see about setting up those javascript files to defer or load async. Mahalo!