Need help with performance issues

[orangefloor]

Hi guys, I could really use some assistance on figuring out why my website runs so poorly. It is not a large website by any means but from day one it has ran horrible. I use one of the template themes. All my images are optimized using Smush as well as when I export in PS. I have went rounds with Media Temple who claims it is a Themeco issue. I’ve addressed this in the past with Themeco and have been told it is Media Temple’s issue.

This whole situation has cost me a lot of time and money. I have customers who tell me time and time again that they site times out and they cant order anything.

I am not a developer. I am a graphic designer, creative and printer.

I really just need someone to honestly look this over and bring a real tangible remedy to the table instead of passing the buck off to the hosting company.

Please help! I admire what Themeco is doing but honestly, its been a very poor product for me due to this performance issue.

My domain is : darkhorsemachine.com

thank you in advance.

[marc_a]

@orangefloor,

Thanks for reaching out.

Please check our site performance docs on how to improve the site speed of your website. I hope it will help you.

Thank you.

[orangefloor]

Come on man! I literally wrote that I have been back and forth with Themeco and Media Temple. All you guys seem to ever do is pass along the same “docs”. This is nonsense. I need someone to address why since day 1 of using Themeco, it has ran poorly.

Seriously.

[PremierWeb]

Hey @orangefloor,

1. Media Temple is garbage. It takes about 8 seconds before your site even attempts to start loading. This has nothing to do with the theme.
2. Your page size is HUGE. You’re serving these product images at 1080x1080 pixels which is way larger than they need to be for the space they use on the home page.
3. You need to setup lazy loading on images below the fold.
4. You need to setup browser caching.
5. You need to minify your CSS & JS where possible.
6. You need to defer JS where possible.

The point here being that all the load times issues you’re experiencing are caused by both how the site was built and your host. There’s nothing I can identify that theme.co would be responsible for in your load times.

If you need help with this stuff, feel free to check us out at https://premierweb.io.

[orangefloor]

This has all been told to me before. Ive hired “Themeco” developers. So, what you’re essentially saying is everything I have been trying to communicate. Plus, hiring people from APEX or whatever Themco is now calling this forum was a giant mistake.

I’ve used smush and several other plugins to try and optimize the images.I’ve set up multiple cache plugins etc. Ive even ran the site on a completely different host. Ive even deleted all the images on the site for a day and it still ran slow.

So, everything you just said has been done and then some and it still runs slow.

[orangefloor]

13MB is the TOTAL load of all images. I have LAZYLOAD on which helps performance to a degree on not loading before it’s needed.

[PremierWeb]

I can understand the frustration, but from the gtmetrix report I just pulled, it shows nothing I’ve mentioned has been done.

Smushing images for example only removes the extra data you don’t need for that resolution. It doesn’t actually resize images to appropriate dimensions or lazyload images properly.

If there’s caching on the site, it’s not configured correctly. The report shows very little browser caching is currently being used as well as zero minifying of CSS or Javascript or deferring JavaScript (these are big hitters).

Also, I know you’ve said you moved hosts, but getting almost 9 seconds response time before the server attempts to start loading the site is a really big deal. That has nothing to do with your website at all.

All I can say is that from actually viewing your site, none of the load times have anything to do with theme.co. I don’t work for them but I’ve built about 150 sites so far with Pro and they average around 1-2 second load times no matter how complex. Pro is one of the best featured and lightest loading themes out there.

[orangefloor]

[PremierWeb]

You should never use PageSpeed Insights for anything other than identifying things that you can improve if possible. The performance score doesn’t reflect real world load times. Load times are what actually matters.

Why you Shouldn’t Care About Google PageSpeed Insights

We haven’t touched our own site for a few years and it could definitely use a few improvements as well.

[ruenel]

Hello @orangefloor,

You can check out this another test: https://tools.pingdom.com/#5cd696381f000000
To improve the performance of your site, you will have to check out the suggested solutions. You may also check @Speshled suggestions because he has already said everything.

Best Regards.

[11Studios]

I would agree with Speshled except now I see the minified and the caching. I am getting anywhere from 8-13 seconds, TTFB ( time-to-first-byte ) but when the page finally responds it’s fast. I use Pro Theme for a lot of my customers without problems and they have pretty rich sites. I think all the things you have completed are exactly what you needed to do, but it seems in your case it may be the server your site is hosted. I’ve seen this twice in the past and both time it had to do with server resources.

[PremierWeb]

Yup,

It looks like he’s made some huge improvements. The biggest bottleneck is still the hosting though with a TTFB around 8-9 seconds.

Before:

After:

[christian]

Hey @orangefloor,

I’m sorry if you’re expecting that we’ll fix your website speed issue here. Website Optimization IS outside the scope of our theme support due to the fact that our theme and the rest of the product we offer are only parts of WordPress. There are a lot of things beyond our control.

We only provide some guidance through our Performance article. Please review it as one of the suggestions in there is to choose a good web host. Our theme is not the cause of your speed issues and therefore we will not fix your website.

You said though that you hired us, would you mind referring us to the thread where we offered to fix your website speed issues so we can correct our staff if he offered that in the forum?

@orangefloor

Ive hired “Themeco” developers.

If you’re one of our Elite clients, you should not be using our forum. You’ll have a different mode of communication and handling of projects. This forum is only for Theme Support. Please read our Terms to see what is covered in Theme Support.

Thank you for understanding.