why is wordpress sooooo slooowwwww?

That depends, do you have any plugins installed?

Are you on a shared hosting account?

hi!
thanx for the reply!

i disabled all plugins except bandcamp audio player (was playing fine)

im indeed on a shared hosting account, medai temple gridservice light. are shared hosting accounts not suitable for wp?

I would recommend checking it out using Firebug -> NET option.
Then you could see exactly how each request is doing. You should have an idea what went wrong.

Pay attention to scripts, most likely something is looping its way out… or …

hey thanx,
sorry im new to that. where do i check the scripts? and how can i modifie them?
its getting ridiculous. pages take 10 sec to load and there’s almost nothing on the site yet

ok,
scripts are all around you, almost like insects ??
But, really it all depends on your setup.
It is hard to say go there or there, it is a process and you need to figure how it works. It is not really complicated so if you are new do not fear, get motivated and you will figure it all out in a week. (of good work)

My advice was to install firefox for sure.
Then find firebug plug in. -> read about it
Open it up when you load up a page that is bothering you. You will find firebug console with all kind of options (html, css, DOM, Script, NET)
So you want to check out NET option. There you will find all kind of requests (html, css, js, xhr, images, flash, media) You can check’em all out.
But if you are really new in all of that maybe you wont be able to figure what it all means. So, my advice is to get few books about wordpress/html/css and just read it through. If you are motivated enough of course.
I mean, at the end it really pays off, since you are constantly going to bump into small things like that, and more understanding you have… it is less trouble latter down the road.

You know, it does get boring sometimes, maybe, but it is really cool once you figure it out. I would encourage you to give it a fair try.
Wordpress is great and it really deserves a lot of attention.

take care

hey thanx for the advices, much appreciated!

i tested the site with firebug and pingdom, and i think it didnt reveal any problem. it says the page loads in 3 to 4 seconds.
all my plugins are disabled. there is almost nothing on the site, and no traffic at all since my site isnt officially “launched” yet. my theme is atahualpa 3.5.3. never had problems before.
my hosting company is media temple, grid service light.

still, the loading behavior is totally erratic. it can take up to 1 minute to load!! all pages take really long to load. loading my /wp-admin page is also taking ages.
what can it be?

WOW,
that is long. Do you have any other worpress sites running fine?
What did your ISP said?
It could be that your hosting plan is bad. Do you have your own cPanel or just an FTP folder access?

no other wp sites…
I didnt contact my provider, but I asked a few friends to test the site for me: from Moscow to LA through Montreal, people experienced incredibly long loading times. at times, its also blazing fast. totally erratic.
i have a cpanel
i contacted media temple, the hosting company i deal with. they say there are no issues in the functionality of the (gs) Grid-Service or the cluster that your domain is loaded on.
total mystery :S
any clue?

Have you tried using a cache plugin, like Total Cache or similar. There is the minifying plugins too. They work combined and can turn your blog speed up.

Good luck.

yep, i tried total cache, made the site feel a little snappier, but the problem is still there.

i just reached a new high: 3min30 to load the wp-admin page!!!!!
i tried everything, no results. doesnt it means it can oly be the host?

Is your site hosted at a IIS or Apache server? I have a wordpress site hosted at a IIS host and is very slow too.

Not THAT slow, though.

its a Linux-based with Apache…

Well, now I’m out of options….sorry.

WordPress does it’s job great. There is no reason, on application level, that it should be running slow. Now, it is hard to say it for sure, but most likely nothing should be wrong with your instance of wordpress. I assume you are using current versions and all..

I would check php and mySql layers. See if all versions are fine with each other. Most likely it should be fine but you never know.

Also, I would try different themes. Maybe you tried that already. Maybe try to load external jQuery and script library. Use some blank theme.
toolBox, or similar.

It is rare case so we may assume that it is not wordpress. So keep taking apart everything else…

stupid question: if i change the theme, do i lose all the settings on the one i currently have (and painfully customised)?