My website is slow!

Hello friend!

It is rather slow. Some of it is the time to first byte, much of it continues beyond that. Check out an overview of it here: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/blockcompound.com/BY22LN9O

I would try a static caching plugin for Wordpress. I don’t know what the latest popular plugin is for it, but I found this one and it certainly sounds like it does what I’m suggesting: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-fastest-cache/

Note that some popular caching plugins can be configured in a wrong way so as to actually slow down your website, despite being very capable for advanced users. One example of that is W3 Total Cache with database and object caching set to disk.

If that doesn’t work, try just disabling plugins one by one and see if the website speeds up after disabling one. Use gtmetrix.com rather than just refreshing your web browser, let it give you a more objective answer. Hope that helps!

Kind Regards, Jarland

Hi @Kevinhofer,

I’m just posting the typical issues/resolutions to such cases. They are almost every time connected with two things - Website Optimization and Server/Droplet Optimization.

Let’s start with Server Optimization.

When looking at Server/Droplet Optimization, there are a few necessary services/packages that are universal.

• The first one would be Server-side caching. Server cache is an umbrella term covering a number of different types of caching. This includes Content Delivery Network (CDN) caching, object caching, and opcode caching. Depending on what you want to achieve you might need one or the other. Usually, though, you can have all 3 types of caching as it shouldn’t interfere with your Website/App. I won’t go into more details about what each caching does as this post will become 3 pages long. There are multiple documents providing services/packages for each of the server-type caching.

• Next would be using PHP-FPM (if your Website is using PHP of course). PHP-FPM is an efficient method on how to minimize the memory consumption and rise the performance for the Websites with heavy traffic. It is significantly faster than traditional CGI-based methods in multi-user PHP environments.

• Another solution would be Database Caching. A database cache supplements your primary database by removing unnecessary pressure on it, typically in the form of frequently accessed read data. The cache itself can live in a number of areas including your database, application or as a standalone layer. Usually, for this kind of caching is being used Redis.

• Apache NPM modules. If you are using Apache, you are using one of three NPM modules. Most certainly if you haven’t configured anything on it and have used the default configuration, you are using NPM_Prefrok which is the most outdated one and thus the slower. I’ll recommend using one of the other two - NPM_Worker and NPM_Event depending on your situation. Again, I would urge you to read more about these 3 and what is applied in which case.

Those were the basic optimizations on a server level, let’s start with your Website/App

If you are using a CMS like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Opencart or anything of the same matter, there will be plugins/addons. These addons can be very powerful if used correctly. The most helpful plugins are:

• Caching Plugins
• Image Optimization Plugins
• Plugins that reduce redirections/requests
• Plugins that reduce the size of JS and CSS files.

If you are not using a CMS, you’ll need to try and do what these plugins are doing manually.

Usually, Websites/Apps are slow because of a couple of reasons which range from too many requests or big images to a bunch of unnecessarily big JS or CSS files. Optimizing these whether you are using a Plugin or doing it manually is enough.

I hope this was helpful.

Regards, KFSys

Hello there,

There are a lot of things you can do in order to speed up your WP site. Most of them are related to the website configuration itself - reduce the number of active plugins you have, reduce the website’s size (front page and etc), reduce the number of heavy database queries and external/3rd party requests for CSS/js and any other content as well.

If you’re interested in hosting your WordPress site with us you can check this article and see how you can speed up your asset delivery using our Spaces CDN:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-speed-up-wordpress-asset-delivery-using-digitalocean-spaces-cdn

Regards