Slow image uploads to wordpress media folder on private server. How to debug?

  • I am running wordpress on a private LEMP server. I have total control of this server and full ssh access. Everything in general seems to be working quite fine, aside from the fact that recently, when uploading (using the wordpress web interface) jpeg, webp, or png files to the wordpress media folder, each image uploads extremely slow. Well, to be particular, each image “Seems” to actually upload quite fast if you are gaging your upload speeds from the upload status bar to the right of your uploading files. However, even when the upload status bar shows the upload is complete right away, it then takes wordpress about 4-5 minutes to move onto the next upload, and again show the upload status bar (very quickly) of the new upload, only to take another 5 minutes to move onto the next file and start uploading again. This process repeats itself per file when dragging multiple files into the wordpress uploads directory. To my knowledge, THIS WAS NOT ALWAYS AN ISSUE! I’m not sure if I misconfigured something in Nginx, wordpress, Php, fpm, the pagespeed module, or what, but I am at a loss. I can’t find anything truly relevant in any of the error logs, and at that, I’m not sure I know how to truly debug this issue, and get upload speeds working fast like they used to be.

    If anyone can help me debug this issue using ssh on a private server, I would greatly appreciate all of your help! Thanks in advance!

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

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • Hi @danrancan ,

    That’s quite unusual.

    Seems you’re on the right track in terms of debugging though.

    Did you also check if there are any errors logged to the JS console? There might be a clue in there.

    If not, my next step would be to move the site to a staging environment, either on the same server or on another server (e.g localhost).

    The advantage of trying the uploads on another server is that you’d get to know whether the problem is some configuration on your production server or something wrong with a theme or plugin.

    This moves us on to my next suggestion, if simply copying your site to another environment doesn’t solve the upload issue, the next thing I’d do is perform a conflict test, that is deactivate all plugins, mu-plugins, and install a default WordPress theme (doing all of this on the staging environment).

    After you deactivate all the plugins and activate a theme like TwentyTwentyTwo, you’d then see if the problem is solved and then start activating all the plugins again one by one to see when the issue came back.

    Oh, one more thing is to check the health screen (Tools > Site Health). That might point you in the right direction of a missing server module.

    I think that’s how I’d go about it.

    Let me know it goes!

    Kind regards,
    Mwale

    Hey @danrancan,

    You may aware of Media Thumbnails in WordPress that WordPress generates automatically for you based on registered thumbnails size. If you don’t know about that please check the information here https://www.wpbeginner.com/glossary/thumbnail-sizes/

    So these additional thumbnail sizes generate when your upload is complete, and they can take a while and time depending on how many thumbnails are registered on your website and what are their size is. as if your image is HD quality image and there are 10 thumbnails registered on your website then it can take a long time in the thumbnail generation process.

    WordPress tries its best to enhance this process. You can read some information here on the update of image processing https://make.www.ads-software.com/core/2019/10/11/updates-to-image-processing-in-wordpress-5-3/

    So there are 4 default image sizes:

    – Thumbnail : (150px square)
    – Medium size : (maximum 300px width and height);
    – Large size : (maximum 1024px width and height);
    – Full size : (full/original image size you uploaded).

    on top of that, plugins & themes can also add their thumbnails sizes if they need those thumbnails for their design structure.

    Using this plugin you can see what image sizes your website currently have and you can control those and disable unnecessary thumbnail sizes. Disabling image size won’t make any error on size.
    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/image-sizes/

    On a Side note: You can check Site Health if it’s telling you about any PHP missing module, most of the time ImagePick module is missing. You can enable that module if it’s not enabled.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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