What else would cause a WP site to be REALLY SLOW and/or UNRESPONSIVE?

  • Hi there –

    I am completely stumped on this one. A couple of months ago, the dashboard area on one of my client sites started working VERY slowly — and sometimes it wouldn’t work at all.

    The front end of the site works fine, but any time we click on a section in the dashboard, it takes a minute or two for it to show up on the page.

    (Example… from the Dashboard, if I click on “Posts,” sometimes it just times out and never lets me see the list of posts on the site. Same thing happens when trying to access other areas of the dashboard. If we DO manage to get into a post, sometimes it won’t let us add tags. Other times, it won’t let us add images. Other times, it won’t let us publish. It’s SO weird.)

    I have done EVERYTHING I can think of… disabled plugins, completely deleted and re-installed plugins, tried different browsers, different computers, different themes. I contacted HostGator, but they were no help and referred me back to WordPress.

    This has been going on for a couple of months, and I’m completely out of ideas.

    I’m hoping somebody out there has experienced something like this and has solved the mystery. Anybody?

    Website: https://www.MarthaASanchez.com

    Thanks in advance for ideas,
    Cynthia

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    When the dashboard takes a long time to load, do you notice a change in its appearance? For example if it’s taking a long time to load its fonts you will see a different font when it hasn’t fully loaded.

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    Most of the time, no. It stays the same. IF it even loads at all.

    Every once in awhile, it’ll show up as the bare-bones, no-formatting, no graphics style. Kinda like it can’t find a style.css file or something.

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    Are you familiar with Chrome’s debuggers tools?

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    No! I’ll go look for them. What should I do once I find them?

    THANKS so much for helping with this, Andrew!

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    Chrome has some built-in tools that can help you understand what’s loading on your Webpage: https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/index#improving-network-performance

    To get its tools up right click on the page where applicable and select “Inspect element”.

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    Go to the “Network” tab and refresh the page to see the resources that it’s trying to load in real time.

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    OH! Just like Firebug. Got it…

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    Great. It loaded fine just now. Just my luck. LOL

    edit.php took almost 6 seconds
    load-scripts.php took almost 5 seconds

    Are those times good or bad?

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    It seems to be loading at the normal rate right now. I’ll keep the “network” tab open in case it starts happening again.

    What should I be looking for? Anything specific?

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    You may not find any useful results, but if you find a file or collection of files that are contributing significantly towards the loading time issue you could raise that with your hosting providers, even “save as HAR with content” and provide your hosting providers with that .har file.

    Thread Starter butterflyherder

    (@butterflyherder)

    Excellent! I will do that, and I’ll show my client how to use the developer tools, as well, so she can do the same thing.

    Thanks so much for your guidance. This at least gives us a direction — hopefully, we’ll end up with a solution soon. ??

    Have a great weekend!
    C

    My wordpress site is occasionally slow and there isn’t a great deal on it. I would be that the hosting company is causing the slowness for what ever reason – especially when you say its normal now.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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