Website speed

[AHarvey]

Hi all,

I'm starting a new job on Tuesday for a company that specialises in providing services for the visually impaired. Great company and staff but after having a look at their websites it is running slow, taking 15+ seconds to load the pages.

Can anyone have a look and see why?

http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/

I am guessing that it's a case of just a bad server, whois says they are with Heart Internet. Thinking of suggesting they move to Vida or TSO as they are both well suggested here. Am I correct in my assumption or can someone else see something that could be causing it?

Thanks in advance!

 

[antijoke]

At a guess is it using Wordpress and the transposh translation plugin?

We've got a site at work with that and it's slow as hell (not quite as bad as that site) but it's a lot faster when you turn that off.

It's a pretty rubbish plugin, it also seems they've got it set to like ~80 languages it's translating, trim that down a bit, speeded up the site at work.

 

[POB]

I'd look into a caching plugin.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/w3-total-cache/

Might not fix the root cause, but would help.

 

[AHarvey]

I'm not sure which plugin but that wouldn't surprise me, they are very into accessibility so probably have a few installed.

Thank you both, gives me something to look into

 

[GravyMonster]

If you check the page in a network monitor it appear that most of the anicllary files are requested and downloaded pretty quickly ( < 100 ms ) what is taking the time is this:

wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wordfence_logHuman&hid=8DCCA4F1D996A1E8E3CE5543B690B973&r=0.6283423905260861

It's taking an averge of 4 seconds on my connection here to do whatever it is it's doing.

 

[gord]

If you check the page in a network monitor it appear that most of the anicllary files are requested and downloaded pretty quickly ( < 100 ms ) what is taking the time is this:

wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=wordfence_logHuman&hid=8DCCA4F1D996A1E8E3CE5543B690B973&r=0.6283423905260861

It's taking an averge of 4 seconds on my connection here to do whatever it is it's doing.

That is taking a while on mine too, but at least it's not holding the page up. The original get request is the issue, which means the server is spending ages preparing the response. I'd be looking at the plugins or a bad functions script.

 

[tedaC]

try looking at this site too, it may help

http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/ejeiJ9/http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/

part of it for your site says

The following cacheable resources have a short freshness lifetime. Specify an expiration at least one week in the future for the following resources:

http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-co...ial-media-widget/images/themes/1/facebook.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/acurax-social-media-widget/images/themes/1/feed.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-co...l-media-widget/images/themes/1/googleplus.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-co...ial-media-widget/images/themes/1/linkedin.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-co...al-media-widget/images/themes/1/pinterest.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-co...cial-media-widget/images/themes/1/twitter.png
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/images/ajax-loader.gif
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Front-of-building-1024x768.jpg
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/logo.jpg
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/26259741_xl-300x200.jpg
http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/wpcf7_captcha/1017246778.png
https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_static/css/translateelement.css
https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_static/js/element/26/element_main.js
https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_static/js/element/main.js
http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js
http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?fam...lic,400,300,400italic,700,700italic,300italic
https://translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/l?client=te&alpha=true&hl=en&cb=_callbacks_._0i94685tn

 

[UberTiger]

Google Page Speed Insights show a slow server response time over over 8 seconds

https://developers.google.com/speed...url=http://www.viresourcing.co.uk/&tab=mobile

http://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.viresourcing.co.uk/DVjFqIQe

As suggested above, enabling a cache could help.

You could also ask the host to enable gzip compression

 

[AHarvey]

first day today, and despite it not being my role I've been given a booklet of accessibility issues, a lot of which I can't do anything about due to using Wordpress over a custom code. Also been asked to look at SEO.

Going to be busy reading up and testing things.

On topic, the site is just as slow in the admin panel as the actual site.

 

[Etheco]

first day today, and despite it not being my role I've been given a booklet of accessibility issues, a lot of which I can't do anything about due to using Wordpress over a custom code. Also been asked to look at SEO.

Going to be busy reading up and testing things.

On topic, the site is just as slow in the admin panel as the actual site.

Check what sort of hosting they are on, could well be a over populated shared server and runs high load constantly.

Regarding tweaks, anything in wordpress can be modified through functions and so on. and possibly already plugins that do the changes you require.

How many plugins do they have active ? people fall for loading a loads of plugins without knowing what they do etc.

Also there was a recent vulnerability released for all wordpress versions so make sure that gets patched quickly before you run into a exploited site.

 

[mtalk]

WP has lots of hacking issues just due to plugins.. will suggest to avoid unnecessary plugin usage or use well upgrade and secured plugins.one of my ecommerce customer had same site loading issue due to plugins was hosted with digitalocean got them migrated to Webhost.uk.net vps hosting and all is well from a month now.

 

[gord]

first day today, and despite it not being my role I've been given a booklet of accessibility issues, a lot of which I can't do anything about due to using Wordpress over a custom code. Also been asked to look at SEO.

Going to be busy reading up and testing things.

On topic, the site is just as slow in the admin panel as the actual site.

Wordpress is very flexible and very customisable. I'd be surprised if it can't accommodate your accessibility concerns.

Plugins can still load in the admin side. Deactivate them all to rule them out, if it fixes the issue then enable them one by one to see which is causing the problem.

 

[asim18]

Does the website even need WordPress? It looks to me as if that website (and about 99% of WordPress websites) don't need to be running on WordPress at all!

You could make that website 100% more responsive by ditching WP. Absolutely no need to use it for basic websites like that.

Personally I'd just copy all the content and paste it into a simple HTML template. You'd instantly remove over 500 unnecessary lines of code per page, remove dozens of links to pointless (and slow) external resources, and no need to refer to a database multiple times per page for otherwise static content.

 

[AHarvey]

Sorry all, new job doesn't leave much time for browsing here at the moment.

The server does definitely seem to be an issue, it's from Heart internet but is a reseller account through the companies external IT contractor.

I've also suggested ditching Wordpress and starting to code a site from scratch. The issue is, there are lots of little issues that although Wordpress is very robust, seem to be a pain. things such as screen readers, CSS editing in WP is a pain as it seems to have no structure to it, lots of little things that would be easier to code from scratch.

I'd even be looking at build 3/4 versions of the site and let the user choose to start with depending on their level of visual impairment.

 

[Frankiemac]

What plugins are installed. I can't see any you would need to use on a site like that.