Hello, since a few weeks we have massive problems with loading times. Before everything went smoothly. The web shop is extremely slow at certain times and in some places images do not load/display correctly, until you refresh the page. Initially, I ran the preload in Cache menu. That took several days… I activated compress images and let it convert to WebP. Minimization is enabled. Page caching is enabled and has a lifespan of 14 days. Still, it looks to me like the cache is being cleared every 24 hours… WordPress display site state says that the presence of a page cache cannot be detected…
Please let me know how we can fix this problem.
Kind regards, Johannes
The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]
With regards to the cache lifespan, we think this is related to the WebP cron job, our Development team are working on this but it might help to turn the WebP conversion functionality off for the time being.
Hello vupdraf, I forgot to answer that the problem really seems to be with the WebP. As soon as I turn that off, the loading time is much better. How will I know when the CronJob is working again?
Hello vupdraf, I see that our backup plugin backs up all images twice (once in the Uploads folder, which is correct, and once in the Other folders). So the backup file is now twice as big as before… I think that this is also related to your problem with the WebP files (the timing matches).
Please provide information on how we can get everything under control.
Are you referring to UpdraftPlus, if so, my install does not do this. The others folder is mostly cache and files that are included in every WP install such as languages. Personally, I don’t backup this up on my sites as there is nothing in there that I need.
Can you unzip your “Others” and take a screenshot of what you see?
Hello, yes, I also reported the backup size issue to UpdraftPlus. I’ve already sent screenshots there. I have now entered in the UpdraftPlus settings that the uploads folder is not processed in the “Exclude these from Others” option.
I hope that’s solved. I’ll have to wait until the next automatic backup to see if that worked.
Back to the caching problem. It seems to me that the “Create WebP version of image” function results in long loading times. After deactivation, the website responds much faster and the cache is no longer cleared. But should I wait and try every day to see if this problem is solved, or should I look for another plugin that provides WebP?
And SEO went 10% down …?!? Shows a litte difference every scan… But the real loading time is more than 8 sec. per click. After disabling WebP loading time is at about 3 sec. And thats the primary thing that counts, short loading time for user that are searching items in our webshop.
Google Chrome loading time in console shows this with activated WebP. Finished after 17.23 sec.
Console shows with deactivated WebP finished after 4.39 sec.
So the loading time is 4-times longer with activated WebP. That is our issue. By the way, site health analyse from WordPress shows that no active caching is detected when WebP is activated. So it seems that there is a issue with this function since some weeks now.
WebP is deactived again now for better performance. Do you have any idea how we can fix this problem?
I notice that you have minifiction on, as your site supports http2. I would turn minification off.
When loading a website from an HTTP1.1 server, A single request is processed at a time. therefore, the browser will first download the CSS, then another CSS, then another JS. At the end of the download process, the pages will be rendered. This happens one after another, until all assets are loaded on the page. A single HTTP request on an HTTP 1.1 based server will always load quicker than multiple, as there is no waiting period.
With HTTP 2, All requests load at the same time. There is no waiting and there are the same number of connections for the number of assets being requested. Therefore, merging and minifying creates a larger file which then takes longer to to upload and download, leading to a longer render process for the website. By keeping all of the individual files un-merged and un- minified they can all load at the same time.
In all honesty, I have never experienced WebP making sites slower. I am just checking with one of my colleagues to see if they have any thoughts, I will get back to you tomorrow.
