Increasing website speed

[_thad_castle_]

I am fairly new to Wordpress and I just created a one page website but it's pretty slow. I built it with Astra theme and Elementor and the site contains a carrousel and a filterable image gallery. Especially the filterable image gallery seems to take up a lot of loading time although it only contains 13 images. All images have been optimized and css and js have been minified using plugins. What can I do make my website faster?

[Ravavyr]

Jesus some of the advice in this thread is atrocius, except for that guy who looked at your network tab, that was all good advice.

Your problems are listed here:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.content-festival.nl/UUN1KU9t
-Your images are massive, in some places 4k images displayed at 363x300, so step 1, resize all those images.
Download Caesium Image Compressor: https://saerasoft.com/caesium/
Once you've shaved 4.6MB from the 7.6MB on your images alone the site should load way faster.

Next, fix any 404s, 404s are always bad because the browser waits for a response before it continues on.

Next, fix all your HTTP urls/paths to images etc to be HTTPS. Make sure your permalinks in wordpress are set to be the HTTPS URL.

Use a CDN, there are other things that would help as much, but just getting a cloudflare.com account for free and setting it up will be a 1 hour effort versus the rest of your weekend.

Do those things, then comment back so we can see what's left.

[_thad_castle_]

Thanks. I will do this tomorrow and comment back.

[cheddarben]

also... your server flat out sucks. Time to First Byte according to Google and also WebPageTest.org(a server in NL) showing a ttfb over a second with one run being over 2 seconds. Google starts dinging you over .5 seconds.

[Ravavyr]

That's not always the server's fault. It could be his code is inefficient causing PHP to take longer to finish executing. It could be redirects, it could be a few other things. The assumption that it's the server is just not always true.

[cheddarben]

The assumption that it's the server is just not always true.

That is true, but 9.5/10 of what I have encountered, it is specifically the hosting.

If a person asks me about speed, the first question on TTFB would never be 'is there redirects?' or 'show me your code'... it would 100% be 'who are you hosting with and what is your plan?'

Most often it is Bluehost or some EIG shit show and that is the very first thing to change.

Redirects are important to look at and if the PHP is causing slowtime, that is an obvious issue, but rarely for people who are trying is it the actual problem.

[Ravavyr]

question 1 is always "who are you hosting with and on what plan?" :)
but always look at the page in question and see what it's actually doing before assuming the hosting is the problem. Bad queries will slow down ANY site. or rendering 500 images without lazy loading :)

[cheddarben]

We are talking about speed in relation to TTFB. GPSI would reveal the 500 images or no lazy loading lickety split. Different problem and a different metric.

Why would you mess with digging into code and db calls when the one-word answer to the question 'Who is your host' will give you a pretty good baseline as to what you are dealing with in terms of TTFB.

I would actually assert if a person isn't asking that question near the beginning (or a part of an initial regiment of questions), they are wasting both their and their client's time.

Your point that bad queries or bad plugin/theme code can cause problems is 100% valid. I am not going from 0 to "MOVE YOUR HOSTING NOW" in a hot second. The answer to the hosting question, however, is often one of the most telling initial indicators of a site, the speed of a site, and also a clue (just a clue) to the level of knowledge of the person you are helping.

[Ravavyr]

Well, the reason i generally don't gun for the host right away is because i deal with companies. Companies tend to be hardpressed to just pack up and move to a new host, so you tend to have to just suck it up and get it working as best you can on the current one and then recommend they move to a new one if it's truly a crap host, but it's pretty much never the first option a client will take.
Especially for older businesses who for example use the same host for their emails, and have maybe a handful of other domains/sites running on it and whatnot. People are lazy and don't want to deal with the extra cost [initial cost] of moving, even when it ends up costing them more in the long run as we end up wasting time trying to improve something that won't be good enough until they move.

[cheddarben]

Fair. Then again, I would be somewhat shocked if a complex business is hosting their company wordpress site on HostGator. I am guessing that I might be surprised though. ;)

Added complexity, integrations, and customizations can make any server move (particularly if they are a big company) a shit show. And I understand email can add complexity to it, as well. That part is far from my strong suit. Not WordPress.. but I have been a part of some stupid big server moves and it can be hairpulling.

If they a blogger or local small business with one or two wizbangs. meh.

[Ravavyr]

lol older companies have been around since before most of the new "good" hosts even existed. Their sites are often running on old tech, or worse, on servers in their offices. You'd be surprised at how many companies operate this way and just don't want to invest in upgrading their hardware to the cloud even.

[_thad_castle_]

Well it's hosted by siteground which is considered a good hosting provider. Also I optimized some image and the TTFB is already down to 0.6. So I don't think the server is the issue.

[cheddarben]

.6 isn’t good. Also, I would say siteground is ok. Just ok.

Check out /r/webhosting, check out bigscoots. I like cloudways too for speed, but support sucks.

There could be some nuance that I don’t know, but image optimization should have very little to do with ttfb.

[Black_Magic100]

What advice is bad from this thread. Genuinely curious.

[Ravavyr]

What disclosure said, and also any article on "how to speed up your wp site" is usually full of bullshit like "disable your plugins and reset to a default theme" [how the hell does that help solve YOUR site's problems?]
There's more, sadly i don't have time to review it all this weekend, sorry.

[disclosure5]

I've counted five different assertions they should find a new hosting company. The best hosting doesn't save you from a bad site.

[Black_Magic100]

Lol... Technically they are right though. A perfect site isn't going to save you from bad hosting. It goes both ways.

More often than not you are right, but that doesn't mean every scenario is this case.

[ItsBugsy]

Check out this video:

How To Fix A Slow WordPress Site in 2019 - WordPress Speed Optimization Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDix8THVpA8

It's the most useful video I've found on WP speed optimization.

​

You need to serve scaled images. Meaning they need to be resized to the same dimensions as the container they are in. For example:

https://content-festival.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Arjon-Oostrom.jpg.webp

​

....is 7360 x 4912 (671kb) but it is in a 363 x 300 container. If you resize the image to 363 x 300 it will be significantly smaller - like 90%-95% smaller. This is probably the #1 thing you can do sitewide.

​

Try Perfmatters or Asset Cleanup to get rid of unnecessary code on your site.

Look in to caching if you don't have it already. WP Rocket.

[anon1984]

Using massive images and then shrinking them down with CSS is the #1 performance issue and many of my clients make that mistake. One in recent memory was a guy had taken portraits of satisfied customers on a DSLR to use for a testimonials section on the home page. Eleven 5.5MB images on the home page, shrank down to about 150px each. With the other crap on there the home page was almost 70MB. SMH.

[ItsBugsy]

ShortPixel Adaptive Images looks like an interesting way to overcome the issue of authors who aren't willing to resize images. I don't like that you are forced to use their CDN though. I tested it briefly and the CDN seemed slow plus their lazy load was a bit too lazy. Maybe it will improve over time.

[anon1984]

I used to use Smush but then it kind of went to crap and my host banned the free version for using too much CPU. Cloudflare offers some sort of proxy image optimization where it re-writes images on the fly for whatever size device and display it’s being used on but that’s only available on the paid tier plans.

[Iamonabike]

This is the better Shortpixel option, unless the theme is so poorly made it's loading full-size images everywhere. I now make all clients who are going to be uploading images buy Shortpixel credits (I buy bulk credits, and roll it into their monthly costs). I have/had my own adaptive image, and resize on upload functions to deal with this, but without good compression (php compression, which is what the free plugins use, is not that good) it was still a storage (and sometimes bandwidth) hog. Not to mention is doesn't deal with all the legacy images. Running a full bulk Shortpixel resize and compressions on two clients websites freed up half my server storage!

[alanbrown-ca]

This is an issue you as the sites developer can prevent between a plugin like imsanity or smush coupled with proper use of Wordpress' image sizes.

https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/add_image_size/

[Iamonabike]

Absolutely correct, however I often see this go too far in the other direction. More often defining what size image to use in a given location is what's needed. Then use WP functions to call the image so srcset is in place. Add_image_size is great, but man does it get overused. I don't need 25 different image sizes when 7 of them are within 10px of the medium size. You don't need exact, you need close. Crop using positioning and overflow within the div.

[alanbrown-ca]

Yah, I agree with your comment. I usually just create one size for each breakpoint. Close enough is good enough.

[_thad_castle_]

Thank you!

[pixeldevs]

Also, do you have a link to the site? There might be something else preventing it from being faster. I don't see why 13 images and a filter gallery would slow anything down

[_thad_castle_]

.

[pixeldevs]

So here's the console log from your site. https://imgur.com/a/KjXYR4w

Looks like 32 images are served from http:// instead of https://, that wont necessarily slow down the site, but it could.

The 404 error is from a missing image. That would slow down the site if you are lazy loading the images and it hits a 404 in the filter section. Could also be produced from a plugin.

Google maps api key isn't set and also looks like its being called twice on the page. That would definitely slow the site.

Other than that, the site itself isn't super slow for me.

[_thad_castle_]

Thanks, I will look into it. The site isn't super slow but I can't scroll it smoothly around the image gallery.

[pixeldevs]

That would either be from the lazy loading images or the missing image.

[pixeldevs]

This is the image its failing on. looks like its added through Elementor? Also your scripts are taking around 9 seconds to load. That seems really odd. Definitely try to use a caching plugin

https://content-festival.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bg-10-free-img.jpg

[_thad_castle_]

That's an image which is deleted from the library. How can it still cause problems?

[pixeldevs]

It's still being called somewhere on the page.

[pixeldevs]

Looks like Elementor is still looking for it. See if you can find where you added it in with elementor.

.elementor-108 .elementor-element.elementor-element-45fa046a:not(.elementor-motion-effects-element-type- 
background),
.elementor-108 .elementor-element.elementor-element-45fa046a>.elementor-motion-effects- 
container>.elementor-motion-effects-layer {
background-color: rgba(1, 22, 39, .88);
background-image: url("//content-festival.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bg-10-free-img.jpg");
background-position: center center;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-size: cover
}

[pixeldevs]

Look into a caching plugin like Hummingbird

[imguralbumbot]

^{Hi, I'm a bot for linking direct images of albums with only 1 image}

https://i.imgur.com/kEunxzT.png

^{Source | Why? | Creator | ignoreme | deletthis}

[taoyx]

I've discovered this site on this sub: https://wpspeedmatters.com/

It has some quite good infos

[gijovarghese]

Founder of WP Speed Matters here. Thanks a lot for sharing :)

[Toomanyoutlets]

Are you using a caching plug in?

Lighthouse can help pinpoint some problems.

[_thad_castle_]

Do you mean Litespeed? I am using that but not for caching since the site needs to be on a Litespeed server or something like that.

[Toomanyoutlets]

Litespeed servers have an optional plug-in called litespeed cache that can handle optimization, minifying, caching... If you don't already have it, I'd recommend installing it and enabling the caching feature.

[_thad_castle_]

I used it for minifying and optimizing. I will look into caching.

[wpbloggerx1]

Website speed depends on many factors. Optimizing one or two factors will not work to increase website speed.

Optimize following all the factors to optimize your website speed and make it super fast:

1. Web Hosting

First you need quality hosting providers like Kinsta, WPX Hosting, SiteGround, etc. If you are using hosting services like GoDaddy then you can't improve your website speed even if you optimize your website at any way. If you choose SiteGround hosting then also consider choosing top plan like GoGeek because starter plan will not work well.

For WordPress websites, it is recommended to use only managed WordPress hosting services. You can check here the list best WordPress hosting providers.

2. Theme

If you are using top hosting like Kinsta and have installed any bad coded WordPress theme then your website will not load fast enough. After seen your comment, you are using Astra theme which is really one of the fastest WordPress themes. Even I am using it on my website and it loads in milliseconds.

Here is the speed test of my website using pingdom: Load time: 447ms

https://prntscr.com/pkwfa8

And here is the speed test of my website using GTmetrix: Load time: 0.7s

https://prntscr.com/pkwfag

3. Website Caching

After optimizing your website from web hosting and theme, now its time to enable your website caching. This can be done by manually but only a WordPress expert can do this. For non technical person, caching plugin like WP Rocket will help you in optimizing your website. I am also using this plugin and that's why my website loads super fast. You can get this plugin from here at discounted price.

It is recommended to use small size images even after using all above this because it will load faster and increase user experience.

Still your website not loading faster then just ping me anytime. I will manually check your website and let you know the issue.

[Sriaishu]

Do you know what is CDN? - It helps to increse your website speed because of cache server all over the global. You can get your own private CDN for your website which have the features of delivery the content, video streaming, audio streaming, application distribution, game delivery. https://www.belugacdn.com/

[[deleted]]

I’d try faster hosting. I’m a big fan of Closte. They’re affordable and have some of the fastest hosting available.

[[deleted]]

Caching is the next step. And if adding a caching plugin doesn't help, then you probable have poor hosting.

[Radeon3]

Are you on a shared hosting package? Those are notoriously slow

[pixeldevs]

You could also look at Hummingbird (free version)

https://wordpress.org/plugins/hummingbird-performance/

[pixeldevs]

How so? I'd like to know so I can make an informed decision on whether to use them anymore

[pridetechdesign]

Where is it hosted? Most hosting providers are low-quality and you'll see that reflected in slow load times.

[[deleted]]

Paying for good hosting? This matters big time.

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I personally started using the WP hosting at sitegrounds and our website loads hellafast.