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One of my friends has an Elementor WordPress site that was super slow. We added the WP Rocket plugin to speed it up, which majorly improved page speed scores.
However, the website is taking less than a second to load after clearing my cache and then more than 6 seconds to load after I’ve visited the site before.
Any ideas on what might be causing this and how we might fix it?
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We have absolutely no idea without seeing it. Every site is different, and however, optimizing a site involves quite a bit more than just adding a plugin. The best advice is to work through this guide on properly testing your sites speed
Then you will want to work on those items with this guide on optimization
If you’re interested, I can explain how it works, thanks.
Share you URL. Tell us about your hosting environment.
Make sure you read the WP Rocket documentation thoroughly. Out of the box, it will optimize your site by around 80%. However, that remaining 20% lay in configurations and integrations that can really help, as well.
Make sure you read up on the WP Rocket/Elementor usage documentation in the docs, too.
Plugins for site speed is like putting racing tires on a lawnmower:
If the fundamentals aren’t in place then plugins aren’t going to do shit.
You have to start with a good server from a good vendor with good access to the network.
The server has to be using good, modern hardware.
99% of the time, people asking why a plugin didn’t solve their speed issues are on a shared host from a substandard provider.
If you are in that 99% then you need to figure out if you are using a share. Then you need to learn about the different kinds of hosting arrangements. Then you need to find a better provider.
Yes, this takes time and effort. And your hosting costs might rise.
But if you want your site performance to match that of the top-tier sites produced by multi-million dollar companies then you have to put some work in.
Are you on shared hosting?
Many WordPress websites have bottlenecks on the server and database layers, which are exacerbated with shared hosting (many sites share the same server, including sites which are not yours).
Plugins like WP Rocket help with js and css optimization etc, but often still have to reach the server / database.
You could try looking for solutions which enable / configure CDN support, which prevents hitting the server and database layer completely.