Site really slow due to chaining critical requests etc.

The main issue is the server reponse time. I tested on three different sites (pagespeed, gtmetrix and webpagetest), and the server response is between 2 and 3.5 seconds. This is the issue you need to fix. The chaining issues etc can be ignored for now as these show up on almost any site you test.

The first thing to test for is a plugin or theme conflict that is slowing the site load. Temporarily disable all plugins and activate the Twenty-Twenty WordPress theme (all your settings are safely saved in the database). Then test again. If the server response time is still slow, then contact your host. If the response time is much improved after you deactivate the plugins/theme, then reactivate one by one and test each time until you find the conflicting plugin.

Thank you! I will test the plugins and the theme. My other problem is the very slow redirects – that is 7 seconds to redirect from “choptsicktherapy.com” to “https://chopsticktherapy.com” then to “https://chopsticktherapy.com”. Are there someway I can reduce that redirect time, or reduce the amount of redirects? My domain is registered as “chopsticktherapy.com”, my WordPress Address and site URL is “https://www.chopsticktherapy.com”. Is this the correct setting? I don’t know what other documents are controlling the redirects.

I can see the issue there, a very slow redirection from the naked domain (non-www.) to www. and then from http to https.

If I test the page speed using the domain prefixed with https://www, then 2 of those redirects are cut out. Of course you are still left with the slow intial serevr response.

While this is very slow, my first question is who will be accessing your site through the naked domain? Google has all your pages indexed as https://www :
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achopsticktherapy.com&oq=site%3Achopsticktherapy.com&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.7874j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The redirects may appear to be an issue, but they need to be there to ensure that anyone who tries to access your site using the naked domain (either by a link or typed in directly into the address bar), is correctly redirected.

I still think you need to prioritise fixing the server response issue

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by barnez. Reason: points 2 and 3 deleted

Note that I have removed points 2 and 3, as your CNAME records in the domain registrar must already have www and non-www entries.

Thank you Barnez. I followed your advice and have reduced the initial response time from yesterday’s 2 to 3.5s to around 1.5 to 2.1s (by removing one plugin). The initial server response time is 1.4 to 2s using Twenty-twenty WP theme without plugins. My webhost did clean up the redirect issues (which cut 7s). I will contact them to see if they can help to reduce the server response time further from their end (or what I can do). I just want to say thank you again – I wouldn’t have known where to look or what questions to ask my webhost without your help!

Thanks for the update. I visited your site again, and it is much more comfortable to navigate now. I would still keep working with your host. Initial server response should be around 0.5 seconds. You could also try re-installing WordPress to see if that helps: https://snipboard.io/aKHAF7.jpg

Good luck! And keep publishing the recipies – I have bookmarked the tofu stew in tomato sauce

I managed to get hold of my webhost and installed Super WP cache. That plugin has reduced the TTFB to around 0.5ms. Now I feel I can schedule some time to work on the many other aspects of optimizing the site, and keep publishing ?? Thank you again!

Well done. The site loads really smoothly now. Bravo to your host for providing solid support, and to you for choosing a reliable host. Happy publishing!