agm285

Our site (alps-tours.com) benefitted quite a bit by having the host move us from a Windows server to Unix/Linux. I had not realized it was on Windows! Now I’m seeing about 6 seconds for initial page, and 3 or 4 seconds on subsequent pages viewed for the first time. Viewing a page a second time is almost instant, which I think is due to the caching plugin we added before the switch to unix.

But I’ve experienced this first-page-delay problem on other sites as well–including a bare-bones “Hello, World” single page test site, on Unix server, using Twenty-xxxteen, and no plugins. Can’t explain it. So even though my current site is much improved, I’m not satisfied that the larger issue is understood or resolved.

Thanks. Good find.

New problem I have, now we (my client) can’t update the Melos theme without it reverting to OFF. Is it possible to implement this change as a child theme?

By the way, are you by any chance hosted on Network Solutions?

HOLY MACKEREL! I just assumed we were on Apache/Unix. Well … hmm. At least that suggests a possible “fix.” Wow. Thank you for noticing that! I built this site for someone a few months ago but I don’t have access to the hosting control panel.

Yeah, we already have the W3 caching plugin and Jetpack with some other optimizing tools. (Not using CloudFlare, but some other comment I saw suggest removing CloudFlare to speed things up!) One last suggestion was gzip compression. Again, though, that’s clearly not causing the 16s wait on the server.

But looking at the pingdom test, the problem is waiting for the server. I’d like to know what the problem really is, but like you, I’d be happy just to speed up the site. I’ll have them try Apache.

Thanks!

Very interesting! We’re already on an Apache server, hosted by Network Solutions. I’m wondering, when you switched from Windows IIS to Apache, did you also change host company?

Well, I tried our site on Pingdom, HERE . Got a 16 second wait! For a total of about 18 seconds to load the page. (So clearly, as you suspected, it’s not a question of optimizing images or minimizing css.)

Then on a few subsequent tests, got an average of about 3 seconds to load the full page.

Later got another 16s wait.

On the DNS tests with Pingdom, I see a few issues with not being able to reverse lookup. I have no idea, but could it be that when switching servers, you also switched your DNS lookup provider?

Other thoughts I have are, could the server be having trouble establishing a new database connection object, which then gets cached for that session. I don’t think so, but who knows. The reason I doubt that is because it seems like the “subsequent” requests can even come from a different ip. At least, I think it can….

Anyway, I appreciate your lengthy explanation. Yours was the first support question I found that really described the exact issue we’re experiencing!

Thanks. Lots of good ideas there. Interestingly, I thought of trying CloudFlare to solve the problem.

But again, the site is not generally slow — it’s only the first view after a certain amount of time. Don’t have a time limit nailed down yet. And that may mean time with no requests at all or per user.

So it may be a plugin — I’ll test — but I don’t think so. Some weird server issue. And again, clearing the browser image cache makes for a 3-second load time. Not 30 seconds.

Thanks. That’s interesting. Maybe it’s only slow to respond after no one has made any requests in a while. Or put another way, maybe it’s the server caching something. Maybe the database isn’t indexed well — or at all. Or a db connection is taking a long time to be generated. Hmm.

I’ll be curious to read a few more user experiences. Many thanks to those who take the time to clock in.

Enhanced Media Library plugin worked for me. Lets you create and search on media categories.

Ok, one plugin that does it is Enhanced Media Library. The free version worked for me. After activation, the Set Featured Image selection page will allow you to filter by media category.

Hi,

When you had the slowness problem, was it every click? I have a speed problem, but it’s just on the first viewing of the site, regardless which page. Maybe 20 seconds to open. Then all subsequent pages come up fine. Then after a day not viewing, the first page is slow again.

Is that the same problem you had?

I’d be curious what Host you moved back to. I’m having speed issues I can’t resolve. Could just be my host.

Many thanks, that’s exactly what I needed!

Thanks for a great plugin. It sounds like you learned php specifically to make these WP plugins. Nice work. I’ll post a review.

Thanks!

Many thanks. Maybe one day html/xhtml output will just be a toggle in the Dashboard.

It’s not really so much a question of preventing certain tags. I’m wondering whether the string entered in the field is stored in the database using a prepared statement. If not, I don’t think preventing certain tags is going to make it safe!

On the other hand, this is just a text entry. Maybe injection attack doesn’t work here.