Cornerstone Inital Load is very slow

I am using Cornerstone on a new website, however, it takes a very long time to load Cornerstone. After that, when it finally loads then it is mostly fine… any idea why it takes so long? I have disabled any cache plugins…

Hi @kerrishepard, would you mind providing us with login credentials so we can take a closer look? Please provide following information:

Set it as Secure Note

  • Link to your site
  • WordPress Admin username / password
  • FTP credentials

All the best!

Hi there,

I tried different combinations of your FTP credentials but couldn’t login, it says can’t connect. Please provide the correct credentials. For the meantime, please check for the following first:

  1. Ensure everything is up to date according to our version compatibility list at https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/troubleshooting-version-compatibility/195. Please follow the best practices when updating your theme and plugins. See https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/setup-updating-your-themes-and-plugins/62 for more details.

  2. Clear all caches including browser cache then deactivate your caching plugins and other optimization plugins.

  3. If you’re using a CDN, please clear the CDN’s cache and disable optimization services.

  4. Test for a plugin conflict. You can do this by deactivating all third party plugins, and seeing if the problem remains. If it’s fixed, you’ll know a plugin caused the problem, and you can narrow down which one by reactivating them one at a time.

  5. Remove custom CSS, Javascript and templates.

  6. Reset your htaccess file by renaming it to .htaccess-bak. Then in WP Admin Menu, go to Settings > Permalinks and just click the Save Changes button.

  7. Contact your host to increase your allocated memory or do it yourself by adding this code in your wp-config.php

define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '256M' );
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );

Thanks.

Hi @kerrishepard,

Thanks! I was able to get in via FTP. The port number is what was needed there. I was able to spend a little time looking into this, but didn’t reach anything conclusively. There’s one more thing I can try, but at the moment it looks like I’ve been blacklisted by a firewall. The site suddenly it stopped loading for me. A colleague has confirmed it still opens for them which is why I think my IP is blacklisted.

Can you whitelist the IP I add to the secure note? Thanks!

One other thing. Do you have access to setup any kind of PHP profiling like New Relic? If so that would give a whole lot of visibility to what’s slowing down. It’s not common to have this setup but I figured I’d ask.

Hi Alexander,
thanks for looking into that… I am hesitant to mess with the .htaccess file since I am still learning a lot of WP.
I used the WP Cerber Security Plugin to whitelist your IP address. Hope that works!

Also, I don’t have the PHP profiling you mentioned… sorry

As for the FTP files. I found that I have several .htaccess files and I am not sure if that is because I am running two sites and a subdomain from the same hosting… the “kerrishepard” website is in the html folder in the root folder. Please ignore my comment on that if you already knew that… :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Hi there,

I also tried to find out why this is happening and I also could not find something that we could be of a help. I just found t2 points:

  1. There is a javascript Error regarding plupload:

I am not sure what is the problem cause, but it is one of the core included javascript libraries in WordPress and the fact that it throws error shows that there is a problem on your normal WordPress setup, it might be a plugin conflict or something that causes the problem but normally a typical WordPress installation should not throw the error like that as the script is the core one from WordPress.

  1. It takes ages to get an answer from the server upon the cornerstone-endpoint Ajax request:

See the long green line in the screenshot above, that is the time it took to have an answer from the server. This shows that indeed something is wrong with the server and it is not necessarily the fault of the hosting service provider. We simply do not have any information to back that up, that is the reason my colleague asked for a PHP profiler installation which will give us more information from the server to be able to find the actual bottleneck.

At this point, unfortunately, I do not have any additional solution other than considering the usage of our hosting service as it will work fast and with no problem and we tested all cases there:

Thank you for your understanding.

Thank you for looking into that!
A few things:

  • I am at the moment not in the position to be able to switch hosting providers. So what do I need to do to do the PHP profiler you mentioned?

  • I wanted to mention that cornerstone needed to be installed manually when I loaded the theme. Maybe the glitch started there already, even though I think the problem started a bit later. in the beginning it seemed to work fine.

  • Is it a possibility that it would help if I disable cornerstone and go with visual builder that is part of the themeco bundle as well…

  • I am using themeco x on another site as well and there we are experiencing slow load times as well with a different hosting provider, however, not as slow as on this site… FYI

Thanks!

Hi there,

  • You will need to install a software such as NewRelic on your server. If you do not have access to the server you will need to contact your hosting service provider.
  • I don’t think that is an important factor regarding the builder being slow.
  • We do not recommend that as the main builder of the website is Cornerstone and all the goodies and new stuff come with it. The Visual Composer is a backup one for cases that site is built with it before. So it is a legacy one.
  • We should check that server too, please consider that we have thousands of the installs in virtually every server you can imagine and it is working ok. This is 100% something related to the server, at least this case as I did a complete check regarding the response time and it is the server delay. But I will not be able to give more information if I have the tool in question at hand.

Thank you.

Hello,
so I have contacted my hosting provider and they have run several tests on their end to see where the problem is. The tests haven’t yielded any errors on their end.

They indicated, however, that there is a problem with the theme and some js error and have confirmed that there is a long loop in a query and then somehow it gets abandoned and thats when cornerstone finally loads!

Please look into the problem from your end again. I am afraid I am not able to install the new relic php profiler on the server due to admin restrictions.

My hosting provider offered you send any reports their way so you guys can look at the problem from different angles and from professional to professional. Their email is support@hoststar.ch

I hope this can be solved soon! Thank you!

Wanda

Hi there,

Unfortunately, we do not know how to continue the support here. If you can not give the tools we need to check the case then we will not have any visibility to be able to test the case.

Please consider that the current state of our code works for thousands of the customers with diverse hosting service plans. So indeed this is something related to your environment which needed to be addressed.

Without the tool at hand, we are completely blind and can not give any suggestions to be helpful.

Our code base is a little bit changed regarding in the latest version of the theme and the Cornerstone which is now on manual update channel. So I suggest that you test the case and update the theme to version 6.0.1 and Cornerstone to version 3.0.1 by going to your Themeco Dashboard and downloading the theme and install it manually.

The last point that we could be of a help is that you can give us a backup of your website and we can temporarily install it on our hosting service. Then you can compare the speed between yours and ours and judge the case for yourself.

Besides the points I mentioned above, I am afraid we do not have any other suggestions.

Thank you for your understanding.

Good evening!

I have talked some more with my hosting provider. They ran some more tests and they let me know that apparently the cornerstone function isnt working well with this CGI version of the PHP. I am running PHP 7. They also have just received another support ticket from a different customer with the same problem. That customer apparently said that themeco had let him know that they were aware of the problem and were working on it. So with that information, hopefully there will be a broader solution.
I have, however, tried to install New Relic and was unsuccessful because I am not familiar with that at all and I don’t know what I need to be doing for that.
I have updated my version of the x theme as well as of cornerstone, as you have suggested. The problem remains, however, and from time to time I am getting these two types of error message, even though I don’t run cacheing or have limited the number of plugins i am running, nor did I make any complex customizations.

Have a great evening!

Wanda

Hi Wanda,

In Cornerstone 2.1 we added V2 elements. Part of the loading process is more intensive now because of that feature. We did identify a way to speed this up for slower hosts but it won’t be added until our next release (Cornerstone 3.1)

We do have a hotfix version of Cornerstone available that will disable V2 element styles. The builder will load much faster, but you won’t be able to get correct live previews for V2 elements. Classic elements will continue to work as they always have.

I’ve added a link to the hotfix version in a secure note. Here’s how this works:

  1. Delete the currently installed version of Cornerstone
  2. Install the hotfix version (linked below)
  3. Make sure you have a child theme installed and activated
  4. Add this line of code to functions.php of your child theme:
add_filter( 'cs_compile_element_style_templates', '__return_false' );

When that line is present, the builders will load much faster. V2 elements will not get any styling in the live preview but will work on the front end. When Cornerstone 3.1 is released you can safely use automatic updates. It will replace the hotfixed version and an official fix will be in place to speed things up. You will need to remove the line of code from your child theme at that point.

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