I am helping a local non profit with a word press site. The issue is that the website takes anywhere form 10-20 seconds to load and I cannot figure out why. Disclaimer: I am not a web developer but I do work in the industry.
The Website was hosted by another company and due to some disagreements the website was moved from HOST A to HOST B (Network Solutions). When the Website was on HOST A it was very fast but ever since the move to HOST B it takes forever to load the website / wordpress site. I have plugged the URL into different ping tools and this confirms the long load times.
https://preview.redd.it/x4j6laylzr7d1.png?width=1783&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a9124680531a36a9d0affac5375098fa081e09a
https://preview.redd.it/hg0z86qmzr7d1.png?width=1783&format=png&auto=webp&s=e2174a971e2205d48ce3de4e42743fefef7f7655
I loaded the website with Chromes Dev Tools and it shows somewhat the same thing.. but I have no way to figure out what the website is doing for the initial load time.. it basically shows idle
https://preview.redd.it/zm36i0yvzr7d1.png?width=3022&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ec5864c5fd0ab6d0f132e718cd1eeafc50ee80c
To my unstrained eyes, it looks as if there is a timer firing every second and while this timer is firing the website is just sitting idle. Is there any way to dig in and find the exact line of code that is the issue?
Also note, there has been the thought that when the website was transferred to the new Host by the old company some sabotage was done to the site so I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a big idle loop somewhere that is just spinning to make the site slow
Are there any tools within the WordPress Admin site that can help here?
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Does your new HOST B know that you are running a WordPress site? Many hosts setup that environment differently.
Also, in your WordPress site, are you using a cache, such as StackCache? If so, have you cleared everything after relocating the site to a different host?
You answered it yourself. Host B is bad. I am sure there are other optimization to be done but I’d move the site elsewhere.
Honestly it’s difficult to say with the info you’ve given us. It does seem that the website loads relatively quick after a long initial delay. A more complete waterfall would help.
But assuming it’s the host and we are just looking at the server-side factors that are affecting speed, start here:
1. **Server location/speed – What is the Initial Server Response time?:** Anything above 500ms is generally bad for your specific location. Although this on its own wouldn’t explain the high 20s load time you’re seeing after switching hosts. The only solution to this is to get a faster server for your location (location matters) check on pagespeed insights to find this number. This can also be high due to resource bottlenecks and an overloaded CPU
2. **Server-side factors affecting load speed**
1. **HTTP/2 activated?:** HTTP/2 is wonderful if you’re loading a bunch of resources like images at once (You are making 80+ http requests) Use the chrome Inspect tool > Network tab > Enable the ‘protocol’ column. You should see ‘h2’ as the protocol for most files like images. Or just use: https://tools.keycdn.com/http2-test. This could explain the large delta in load time from the previous host. If not enabled, just contact your host to get this working
2. **Server resource bottlenecks**: Without knowing how resource heavy your website is, and server quality, it’s difficult to ascertain for sure. But do you know the server specifications between host A & B? Was it shared hosting? a VPS? What about the Cores? Ram? SSD Vs. NVME? If your website is starving for resources with a backlog of scripts/CSS to process this could explain the slow initial load time,
3. **PHP Version:** Is your new host running the best PHP version for your site? Anything below PHP 7x is generally outdated, some hosts I’ve dealt with run on PHP 5x by default, I run 8.x and it’s been very stable. This could contribute to worse use of server resources and slow things down overall especially if you’re dealing with bad server resources. An outdated PHP can also be throwing errors that is slowing down the website load too, you would see this in the console.
4. **PHP FPM Setup:** This is relatively advanced, but if running PHP-FPM and if it is configured to run ‘ondemand’ vs. static or dynamic, this can have a significant affect on initial response times in particular cases
5. **Server-side caching:** Did the previous host have Varnish on? Was it a LiteSpeed server? Varnish for example can drastically improve load speeds especially for static content. Even if you’re on a garbage host, Varnish could make the situation livable if your host allows it.
1. Additionally, check if they have object caching enabled (Like Redis) this is just another important step in speed/resource optimization although probably not directly related to your current issue.
This is all I can think of off the top of my mind when it comes to hosts, but let us know how it goes. All the best!
Network Solutions are garbage. They have been for 20 years. Love to a better host. Someone that’s well known and reputable and doesn’t cost $5 per month. Someone like SiteGround, Kinsta or WpEngjne might be worth you checking out.
I recommend taking a look at my guide if you’d like to fix it yourself. Table of contents is the hamburgery menu icon on the top left on Desktop:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ncQcxnD-CxDk4h01QYyrlOh1lEYDS-DV/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114514252262811175804&rtpof=true&sd=true
Hmu if you want to schedule a consultation. I can’t really speak to your specific issues without your url, but given the load time you must have a lot going on. Your request count is the ~low end of medium, and I’m sure you’ve got way too many js, css, image and font files loading just off the cuff.
If you want a plugin to help diagnose your issue, I recommend checking out [Query Monitor](https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/) and [Code Profiler](https://wordpress.org/plugins/code-profiler/). [F12 Profiler](https://wordpress.org/plugins/f12-profiler/) is also going to do wonders to identify the specific culprit if it’s your plugin or theme.
For an actually useful/insightful speed test, I recommend using [Debug Bear](https://www.debugbear.com/test/website-speed). Pagespeed insights is your optimization target, but the feedback they provide to identify issues is useless. While they may appear similar as Debug Bear runs a lighthouse test, their request tree gives a sizable amount of optimization information, and you’ll get full debug options by making a free account and creating a project to analyze your site as opposed to just the speed test function above.
Weirdly the active monitoring function of creating a monitoring project for the url doesn’t have a request tree, so you’ll need to use those features in conjunction with their pagespeed test url that I’ve linked.
What is the website? You have omitted the URL.
There’s a tab called Lighthouse in Chrome’s devtools. It helps diagnose stuff like this.
It’s almost never a simple one-line-of-code fix, sorry to say.
From the screenshots you showed us, it seems possible your site has some absurdly oversized images. But run the tool and see if you can spot stuff to fix.
And, Network Solutions hosting, yeah, friends don’t let friends…