Slow Load Times - Controlled Test

I am struggling with slow load times on my primary sites so I did an experiment:

Step 1: Fresh Wordpress Install
Server: Azure App Service for Linux
Plugins: Query Monitor + WP Super Cache
Query Monitor: 0.49s
Chrome Dev Tools Load: 1.74s
Chrome Dev tools TTFB: 709.28ms

Step 2: Install X Theme
Query Monitor: 5.50s
Chrome Dev Tools Load: 12.50s
Chrome Dev tools TTFB: 5.93s

By simply installing X theme, my whole site including wp-admin, has become incredibly slow! This same thing is happening on my production site so I am wondering what is going on.

Thanks!

HI There,

The website loading slow may be due to the PHP memory of the server.
Please check this article for further clarification and how to increase it.

Thanks

Thanks, I’ve added the following:

.htaccess
php_value memory_limit 256M

wp-config
define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ‘256M’);

Query Monitor: 4.74s
Chrome Dev Tools Load: 5.88s
Chrome Dev tools TTFB: 5.04s

This appears to have helped but the load speeds are still quite bad.

Hi @raahul,

Thanks for the update.

As I check, it is not slow but slower without X theme. I will forward this thread to our dev so they could look more however I could not guarantee that they will reply very soon.

In this case, you can check the link below on how to increase your site speed.

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks.

Thanks @nico,

When I tested it before installing X Theme it gave the following results:
Query Monitor: 0.49s
Chrome Dev Tools Load: 1.74s
Chrome Dev tools TTFB: 709.28ms

With X Theme + Memory Change Suggestion
Query Monitor: 4.74s
Chrome Dev Tools Load: 5.88s
Chrome Dev tools TTFB: 5.04s

This is on an identical set of plugins (except Cornerstone) with no other changes. It’s surprising that there has been a 5-10x slow down in speed by simply installing and activating the theme.

I agree that some performance optimizations would be helpful, but my main concern is why the theme itself, with no content, is causing such a performance hit.

Thanks,
Raahul

Hi there,

What theme did you use before installing X theme? I just like to see its feature and compare if it’s uses some resources.

We’ll continue checking, the performance could change depending on existing contents, design, active features or even the host environment.

Thanks!

Hi @Rad,

Before X Theme it was a brand new Wordpress install, so it would have been whichever theme pre-loads with Wordpress.

In both cases, there is no content on the site as it was a brand new install.

Hi raahul,

When it comes to measuring the website performance, I don’t recommend using Chrome DevTools as one of the parameters included there is your network, which might have some latency or your connection might be not that stable, I recommend using services like GTmetrix or Pingdom, here you are two links showing your website result:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/test-wpl.azurewebsites.net/CMdz7xbJ

As you can see your website page speed score isn’t that bad at all, the theme includes CSS and JS files that we worked hard to minify and make them optimized as much as we can, however the way your server loads and serve these files to users might affect your website page speed, using some tips mentioned in the Customizations - Performance guide should help in getting better results, things like enabling browser caching, using CDN, enabling gzip compression and others should definitely be helpful.

Thanks.

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