Performance problems in 7.* versions

  • Resolved mishash

    (@mishash)


    6 years, 7 months ago

    I have been using WordFence for almost 4 years and performance penalty of this plugin (on page load time) has been slowly increasing. Yet, the latest update from 6.* to 7.* versions has been the worst.

    If I have WF Firewall enabled, the WF plugin loading time has doubled as compared to the 6.* version and it become really noticeable. I have 20+ sites with shared hosting (using different hosts) and WF plugin v7.1.3 load time there is anywhere between 0.25 and 0.45 sec. It is almost 80% of total load time for all plugins (i.e. all other plugins take 20% of total) and it is almost 50% of total page loading time. This is a lot! See screenshot from one of my sites here

    However, if I disable the firewall then the load time drops to under 0.1 sec…

    I am really upset about performance issues here – page loading time is critical for Google SERP, so if things don’t change I will be switching away from Wordfence. Yes, security is certainly important but I don’t want to lose my clients due to the drop in search index and high bounce rates as a result of slow page loading.

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by mishash.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • I personally never had any issue with WF interfering with performance.

    Here’s the same test run on my setup – https://imgur.com/a/CO06Rqn

    Zero impact whatsoerer. And the site loads under a second ?? – https://imgur.com/a/wj0NVEP

    Running scans is the only thing that eats CPU resources when operating.

    So, what I suggest is you disable the automatic scan and do periodic manual scans yourself. And optionally, disable the Live Traffic option too ’cause it keeps the server busy to report back to WF (you can see the script added to the frontend + sending requests if you audit a WF site).

    Other than that, it’s probably your hosting server doesn’t have enough resources to cope with WF’s activity ?? which is undertandable when shared hosting is involved.

    Thread Starter mishash

    (@mishash)

    Hi @dahmaniadame,
    Your first snapshot shows that P3 plugin on your site is malfunctioning, something there is clearly corrupted. Uninstall the plugin (deactivate and delete), reinstall it again, and run auto scan. You will see different results. I don’t know what other plugins you are running on your site, but on most of my sites WF takes most of P3 pie chart.
    Speaking of your second snapshot, besides Google Analytics, the only reliable measuring tool is webpagetest.org and you should run at least a dozen of test from each of major location to get an idea of loading times. For example, Pingdom speed tests usually give you less then a half of real load time (tested many times and compared with Google Analytics page load time results per browser/location).
    Have a look at this blog to read about measuring techniques: https://researchasahobby.com/best-free-online-tool-check-website-speed-2hosting-tested-600-times/

    The whole plugin is corrupt ?? and you shouldn’t use it for performance monitoring.

    But you know better ??

    Good luck!

    Hi @mishash

    Thanks for your feedback, upgrading Wordfence from 6.x to 7.x didn’t encounter performance issues for millions of users who are running the plugin, I agree with you that sometimes you might notice such performance problems you have right now, this is most likely due to your server resources are way too low to run your website along with all installed plugins/themes, or the server environment isn’t optimized enough, here you can find some suggestions that might help in running Wordfence smoothly on your server, I suggest spending some time trying them.

    Thanks.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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