Serious performance problems 13 seconds+ to load pages... - AIT-Themes.com Support

Spur

I have a number of blogs running from one hosting account at GoDaddy (I'm not proud). I have 3 different themes running on these sites and all perform without any problems.

I loaded Arctica and I cannot get a page back in under 10 seconds.
I have deleted the entire site twise and the WP installation and loaded a completely vanilla setup with only the default pages imported. I get a response in under 200ms from the site but . . . the first page (and all subsequent pages) takes over 10 seconds to actually appear. Usually it takes 13+ seconds.

I have a default page up while I am trying to resolve this issue and you'll see latency is not an issue.

Thoughts?

For faster issue resolution please provide:

URL to your website: www.spurart.at/wordpress
another site on the same host: www.englishintirol.com (for comparison)
Browser version: all Firefox, Safari, Chrome, EI9
Theme version: Arctica 1.16 (latest)

Spur

Note: once the pages starts to load, it is loads all elements in under 2 seconds normally.

Spur

I have loaded WP Super cache with prefetching enabled. I am still using the default site created by importing the default file. The theme appears to get stuck when loading the following: http://spurart.at/wordpress/wp-content/themes/img/icon-menu-shd.png

This takes over 11 seconds.

I am using http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ to verify load times.

ivan

Hi, sorry about that but with this we can't help you. We are using WP super cache plugin on our preview page, and you can see that the site load is not too slow.
http://preview.ait-themes.com/arctica/wp1/
Thanks, Ivan.

Spur

I'm sorry? I am using the EXACT SAME config you are using. I have loaded WP super cache as you have specified! I have identified the exact file that is causing the problem.

I ran the SAME TEST against your preview page I GET THE SAME problem.

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/GLbsE0OFF/http://preview.ait-themes.com/arctica/wp1/

This is a bug. Pure and simple. If you need more information, I am happy to provide it. But Arctica (as pretty as it is) is UNUSEABLE if it takes 15 seconds to load.

Please could you take a look at the very specific issue I have raised. It even happens on a localhost. I know, I tested it.

Thanks.

ivan

Hi, we tested this site and still with cleared cache page load under 7sec. With test page you sent, i receive still load time under 8 sec.
As I said, really cant do anything with this now. User still can look at preview page and decide if it is fine template for him or not.

Thanks, Ivan.

Spur

Hi Ivan,
Here's what I have found:

This link: http://spurart.at/wordpress/wp-content/themes/img/icon-menu-shd.png
Was slowing the whole page down because . . . it is pointing to a graphic that doesn't exist! This is a bug. The link is incorrect. Copying the graphic to the incorrect location specified resulted in a 4 second improvement across browsers.

Administration is a nightmare because of speed. I am waiting 15 seconds to update a page. This morning I ran a test and it turns out that just getting to the wp-admin screen causes the following graphics to be called: NONE OF WHICH ARE LOCATED WHERE SPECIFIED. This again dramatically reduces performance. Caching does not help if the references are incorrect. Here's a partial list from the wp-admin page.

facebook.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
twitter.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
delicious.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
digg.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
linkedin.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
reddit.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
stumbleupon.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…
tumblr.png spurart.at/wordpress/undefined/design…

These types of performance issues are easily resolved (no pun intended). Perhaps running a link check against this version? I do not want to start creating a new file structure to fix this. It means upgrading will be problematic. I am not asking you to rewrite php scripts, I'd just like the references to be correct.

Please?

Thanks

Spur

For reference, here is the link I am using at pingdom.com to reveal these issues:

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/CY70TEo8H/http://spurart.at/wordpress/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http://spurart.at/wordpress/wp-admin/&reauth=1

AntonioCala

Spur is totally right on this. 13secs to load a page is unacceptable. I'm seriously thinking of using another theme if this problem is not solved. Arctica is UNUSEABLE like this.

dennistiboni

try to disable slider feature.
In the homepage.php, the function getimagesize that is called for each image of the slider.
if the url set in the slider settings are expressed in http, the theme is a call for each image by asking the size of the file.
This dramatically increases the load time of the page.

Spur

Hi dennistiboni, Thanks for your input. I took a look for getimagesizes and found it. But I am not a php programmer.
I took a look at the slide settings in the theme. Under 'Slider Items Options' the first two items are 'Image' and 'Link'. I have an image specified in all cases. I do not have a link specified. I think, this means I am already doing what you are suggesting. Is this correct?

Again, thanks for the response.

Spur

UPDATE FOR OTHER READERS

Using Firebug I have moved images that were not loading because the theme points to the wrong directories. This improved performance quite a bit.

I have turned on prefetching in WP Super Cache. This has also helped.

I have optimized images and loaded them directly (WP crunching wasn't helping). This resulted in a lower load per image.

I had a word with my host (I am on shared hosting) and they have helped. However, my performance is very spikey. I am still trying to lower the spikes. :)

Any and all suggestions welcome. I still like the theme. But unfortnately I have started to look at alternatives out of necessity...

dennistiboni

Hi Spur, the attached file contains a fix to improve the performance of the slider, make a bakcup of homepage.php and replace it with the attached file.

d

Spur

dennistiboni,
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. That single change has cut 50% off my wait times. I salute you.

Ivan - are you listening? This makes 3 updates to Arctica that will greatly benefit your customers . . . just saying. :)

dennistiboni

thank you spur :-)

dennistiboni

Hello Ivan, a further improvement in the slider would be to include for each slider language of belonging.
In my case, the site has 4 languages (WMPL) with the same images of slide, so that the load draws four times the images, when it would be enough to filter the query by language

ivan

Hi, I sent communication from this thread to our developers to check it.
Thank you. Ivan.

Spur

Thanks Ivan. It's a great looking theme. If we can improve the performance everyone wins.

aeolous

Hi guys
I get this message when i try to download the fix for the homepage

"The requested content cannot be loaded.
Please try again later."

Spur

I just tried it and got the same result. Here is the file again.

joelspitsnaugle

I am having this same problem:
After installing this theme on one of our sites the page load times (front end) are ridiculously slow, admin also running slow. I am on multi-user install.

Thank you very much for these tips will start trying them immediately.

joelspitsnaugle

I have got my front end pages loads to about 7-9 seconds.
Back end is taking 20-25 seconds to go from one page to the next.

joelspitsnaugle

Just like above, had several social icons missing in page load.
Removed the whole PrettySociableInit function from /design/js/script.js
It dropped login.php load times from 11 seconds to 3.29. Not bad.
Testin the rest of the backend still has me around 25 seconds from my stopwatch. Not sure what the issue is.

joelspitsnaugle

Should note that even on your preview it has the missing social icon images:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/hQ0xb62Kr/http://preview.ait-themes.com/arctica/wp1/wp-admin/

chickybaby

I'm having the same issue. Seems to mostly effect IE8. Works fine in latest version of Firefox, but any one using IE8 complains that it is stalling when loading and the speed test confirm this!

The links to images on the css file ( design/css/fancybox/jquery.fancybox-1.3.4.css ) don't seem to be right.

Weird that some are going to the directory like this

(src='fancybox/fancy_shadow_n.png'

and others aren't like this

url('fancy_title_over.png')

So which is it?

Also in IE8 do you need a back slash in front of the path like this?

(src='/fancybox/fancy_shadow_n.png'

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