According to http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com/, it seems like 40% of my load time is on CSS images and another 40% on javascript. Any clue what I can do to get these times down? Seems crazy slow considering I don’t have THAT much on my front page
Pre-loading as in the embedded youtube posts? Do those really take all that long to load?
No idea – but it’s easy enough for you to test.
You might be an amateur, but handclap for your attention to performance!
I’m not an expert, but I picked up on GTMetrix as a monitoring tool, and also very good analysis/suggestions from it.
I’ve used Smush.it to compress images having followed their advice.
And Nic is very aware of performance – he withdrew some Developer tools in 3.1.5 to minimise performance issues.
Removed the YT embeds but still having the same issue. Interesting.
And thanks rdell…I may be an amateur website builder but I’m damn near professional at browsing them and these load times definitely kill the site. I’m going to add Smush.it and see if that helps at all.
Just got a 43% page speed grade on GTMetrix…yikes
Quick and easy test: see if it takes the same amount with twentytwelve. If it does, then at least you know where to focus your attention.
In my experience, the hosting provider is normally the first port of call. Followed by images and fonts (and any other calls to external sites).
Using the tips given by rdell I got my GTmetrix speeds from 43% up to 90%. Everything looks A LOT better when I do the speed reviews. The strange thing is that sometimes there is a 10+ second delay before it starts loading the site…and then the speed review still gives me a 90%. So I’ll get a 90% score but the load time was like 11-14 seconds. I’m guessing that’s a hosting issue since the review is based on the scripts/coding of the site?
I think that in some cases, your page needs to go somewhere fo a resource (e.g . Google fonts/analytics/maps) and your path to the resource may be tied up for whatever reason, while your speed site’s link is faster than yours. Then of course, there’s your own connection to take into account. We can never know what the user will see. But I think Customizr is reasonably fast enough for most people’s needs.
Honestly at this point I think it’s something to do with the combination of plugins I’m using. It seems noticeably faster with all of the plugins deactivated. I thought I narrowed it down to WooCommerce being the problem earlier today but now it’s acting pretty slow again…who knows
It seems ok now I just looked at your site 1.97 secs not bad.
Plugins will effect things particularly if there are compatibility issues.
Many things effect the load times and WP can be a little slow at the best of times however things that will help are caching plugins like W3 total cache or wp super cache, something else I have found useful to speed just about any site up is cloudflare (not the plugin but cloudflare itself)
Also using p3 performance plugin will tell you what plugins are using what resources so you can configure them properly
As I loaded the site the first time, it took hours and I skiped. The second time, it was normal, fast. Your first image isn’t high enough. For this images, you need 270 x 250 px.
Maybe you want to try th plugin WP Super Cache.
@doug2523: thanks for the feedback. I get times less than 2 seconds sometimes and then sometimes I will get 15-20 second times. It’s bizarre. I’m running W3 Total Cache, Cloudflare and have used P3 to check out the plugin situation. Can’t seem to find anything in particular that is causing an issue.
Ypanesa: thanks for checking it out. Confirms the randomness of it all. I’m still getting results of 90%+ on my page load performance using GTmetrix and Pingdom, so the slow load times are almost entirely based on the “waiting” portion of the load.
I just started a one month hosting account through a different provider. It may not be the issue at all but for $7 I’m willing to give it a try.
Nothing against cheap hosters. But include in your calculation, that you use also the time of people here – if it is a hoster issu. It is an interesting question, but nevertheless. Just in case you need a good hoster, I could give you an advice. 😉
Did you already change the theme and tried a standard theme like twentytwelve? Do you use a child theme?
I did change themes and tried twentythirteen I believe. Same issue. I’m using the Customizr theme right now…couldn’t find many people having issues with it.
