[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Still having load time issues

It’s really hard to provide a useful answer without a link. Also I believe the test you are using dumps its cache after every run. Try this test: https://www.webpagetest.org/ and post a link to your results.

Ooops, youre right. The page that Im using as an example is:
https://www.usbmemorysticks.net/lacie-key-flash-drives

Here’s the result from the link you gave me:
https://www.webpagetest.org/result/100821_3BK6/

Looks like this tells me as well that minify and gzip isnt working very well. How can that be when I have most of the “best” options set in the minify and cashing tab of W3? Also, what is this “Cache static”?
Thanks a lot!

from the source of your page it looks like you haven’t done everything needed to get the CSS and JavaScript minified and combined.

You need to enable the minification on the first tab for W3TC, and also to select the files you want minified and combined in the minify tab, and remember to ‘export’ the final settings you’ve chosen (I can’t remember what the phrase actually used in the button to commit your changes to the site was – I got so confused as to what I had or hadn’t fully enabled that I disabled the two phase approach). There’s a link for a ‘help’ wizard near the beginning of the page which gives you a list of the files you might want include, and their most appropriate page types.

similarly for browser caching there are things to set on the browser caching page as well as on the first page.

I hope that makes sense!

@dennis8 Your site actually loads pretty fast for me (1.743s) but there are some settings you need to fix.

Cache Settings: Turn off database caching and just use page caching with disk enhanced and minify with disk(your on a shared hosting and db caching with disk can slow your site down)

Gzip: Your host (HostGator) has mod_deflate turned off on its shared servers so nothing you can do

Minify settings: Use the help wizard and combine and minify your css and js and make sure you set js to embed before </body>

Browser Cache settings: for css, js, and media files set expires headers lifetime to at least 3 months (7776000s) and for cache control policy use: cache with max-age

Get the yslow plugin for Firebug and test everything yourself to make sure it’s working.

Also make sure your logged out of your site when evaluating performance because that is how your visitors will be viewing your site.

Great support guys. @dennis8 you can try to enable HTTP compression for minified files on the browser cache settings file and see if it works out.

Thanks so much for the support guys! I’m not sure if I fully understand where exactly I should put these recommendations into action so please allow me to paste in my W3 settings I currently have. Please tell me where I should change something, especially regarding the time/interval settings.

General settings:
Everything enabled except CDN. Page caching is enhanced disk. Minify is disk. DB caching is disk.
*** I’m only able to use disk because the other options (Dedicated/Virtual Server, Multiple server) don’t seem to be available to me. However, I am on a level 3 VPS plan with hostgator.

Page cache settings:
Enabled: Don’t cache pages for logged in users
Enabled: Cache the home page
Enabled: Cache RSS / Atom feeds (site, categories, tags, comments).
HTTP compression: Gzip and deflate.
Maximum lifetime of cache objects: 6600 sec.
Garbage collection interval: 6600 sec.
Rest is default.

Minify Settings:
Enabled: Rewrite URL structure.
Enabled: Automatically upload modified files.
HTTP compression: Gzip and deflate.
HTML minify settings: Enabled + Don’t minify HTML for logged in administrators
JS minify settings: Enabled
JS file management: Default
CSS minify settings: Enabled
CSS file management: Default
Maximum lifetime of cache objects: 86400 sec
Update external files every: 86400 sec
Garbage collection interval: 86400 sec

Database Caching Settings:
Enabled: Don’t cache queries for logged in users
Maximum lifetime of cache objects: 180 sec
Garbage collection interval: 3600
Ignored query stems: gdsr_

Again, I’m on a VPS level 3 with hostgator so I’m a bit mystified why c3mdigital says I’m on a shared server? How can you tell? Are their VPS plans actually on shared servers? (Well, I guess thats the whole point of VPS, huh…) So does that mean some settings just dont go into effect even though I have them enabled? (db disk caching, deflate)

Also, I notice when Im logged in as an admin and browse around my site or actually edit things in WordPress the site often loads pretty slow. Sometimes forever, like its “hanging”. I had this even before I had any W3 installed. Is there anything I can do about that? I know I had contacted hostgator about that a few times and they changed some settings for me (increase of process limit and server memory) but it didnt seem to do much. Maybe I should contact them again about the deflate option.

Once again thanks, I really appreciate it!

minify still seems not to be working well from looking at your source and the webpagetest.org output
From both its clear that the js and css files have not been combined – given the number of such files that you have, getting this right should give significant benefits.
What do you mean by ‘JS file management: Default’ and ‘CSS file management: Default’? The initial state for both these is that no files are combined, and you need to combine the files into groups for each page type; there’s a help wizard that will indicate for you which files appear to belong in each group for your template. (and gets it right for me! ?? )
The button for ‘help’ is near the top of the minify page.

(I don’t know about db or object caching – I haven’t bothered to try either of these as I’m using shared hosting)

Ok, an update. I just opened a ticket with hostgator and they denied that Im on a shared server, like I said. Im on a VPS.

However, they did confirm that gzip is turned off (and gzip test tool states so too) but they offered me to recompile the Apache webserver for my VPS to enable it. From what I understand the benefits of using gzip are quite dramatic so I guess I should let them do that, huh? He said though it would take a couple of hours to recompile so it would need to be done during low traffic hours.

They also confirmed that I should turn off database caching as a VPS Level 3 does not have enough RAM memory to really make effective use of that. Im wondering though if that memory couldn’t be increased? What would be a necessary size?

Btw, I was till on version 0.8.5.2 so I upgraded to the latest and thus was able to enable these recommendations and some more enhancements (after reading the FAQ). I still have a few questions after ploughing though that FAQ but will post these later.

As I’m still familiarizing myself with the new version Im trying to figure out what the best minify settings from the help button are. It detects 7 javascripts and 5 CSS on my site.

On the js, it sets some of them as “all templates” and some of them as “single”. One (addthis widget) as “index”. Is that ok? And should I embed all of these before </body>, as non-blocking? And if I do that do I also still need to enable “Combine only before </body>” in the general minify JS settings?

As for the CSS, they are all detected for “all templates”. Im not sure if I should minify my WordBay CSS because as you may know that plugin pulls and displays current Ebay listings. Could minification cause any problems here?

Sorry, but I feel like this is all a bit over my head…but I would really like to learn and understand. Thank you for your help and time!

Its much easier to set up the minify stuff on 0.9.x than the 0.8.5.x series, and it can make a big difference in performance. (It was for this potential that I switched over to W3TC.)
I’d say yes to getting gzip enabled, but have no experience of VPS systems – not currently needed for my small blogs!

For configuring JavaScript, I just include them all before </head>. Technically some might be able to be put in the footer, but that requires knowledge of exactly what they do, and (in my opinion) little gain unless all can be moved there, or you have lots of large JS files. Use ‘combine only’ only if things don’t work without it! (Its a compromise for poorly written js.)
I don’t know about WordBay, sorry.

So efkim says to embed them before </head> whereas c3mdigital says before </body>. What is really better?

</head> is safe!, </body> is better if they can be safely deferred until then. I don’t know which can be safely left til the end of the page and which can’t, and can’t be bothered to try to test! Probably most can be left, so for optimal performance c3mdigital is probably right!
I just go for the ‘easy’ wins!

So @dennis8 are you fully optimized now?

Yes and no. Hostgator turned on mod_deflate this morning for my VPS though it still says “gzip not detected” when I do the compatibility check in W3. I will do more testing about that later.

I still need help with the settings regarding what templates to choose for the CSS and JS detected. Does W3 automatically give the right one to choose? (See my third last post or 5th from top) Thank you!

If you use the help wizard it will discover the files for you and you can prune the settings.