Plugins and CPU usage

Thanks Jerry!

I’m almost done for today so I may not work on it until tomorrow (or later tonight) but I will def. test out all of my plugins. Hopefully its just one plugin, and one I can get rid of or change it ??

For my theme I’m using a child theme of Thematic and pretty much its that theme with the main change being the navigation menu. Otherwise, its that theme’s settings on the majority of the site. No comments allowed and posts are there primarily to post pics of their adoptees which works with there slideshow. Otherwise, its a site with static pages. The worst thing is that there are a lot of images as they have a lot of adoptees. I added the Smush.it plugin and the Imsanity to prevent them from uploading large images/compress their images and its using the standard WP image settings (thumb, med, large, original). I really just tried to make it as simple and with the least amount of stuff that I could, but apparently I have a lot of plugins ??

As a “gold standard” I like to test https://twentyelevendemo.wordpress.com/ which is on as optimized an environment (hosting) as possible, and runs no 3rd party plugins.

How they rank in WebPageTest is not too far off from how yours is, when you turn everything off.

Try to narrow it down a bit and find which plugins are being the hogs, and see if you can work around not having them, or find alternatives that offer similar functionality.

At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to treat your site to something other than “basic” hosting either. None of the plugins you list above give me any red flags in terms of quality, but in combination I bet they might need more resources to function properly.

Most basic offerings can barely be described as adequate for all but the most simplistic of WordPress sites, so your just might be pegging the meter, so to speak, even though you’re doing your best to keep it simple.

Hi Jerry,

So… the real hog is my slider. Not really a surprise since that’s when all my images load. And this one I cannot be without. It took me ages to find a slider that did the features I needed and that worked with WP. Plus its already paid for. Sigh.

There are some others that are sort of hogs which are:
White Label CMS
Imsanity

Now I can remove the CMS but as they use lots of images and they are uploading from the full, uncompressed file I do need something to really squish their images.

With that said, running the report with all plugins except the slider and the cache turned on (using my theme) this was my results:
Ratings: F, A, A, A, F, X
First View:
Load Time: 4.630s, First byte: 1.169s, Start Render: 2.747s, DOM Elements 257
Doc Complete info:
Time: 4.630s, Requests: 49, Bytes in: 427KB
Fully Loaded:
Time: 7.803s, Requests: 76, Bytes in: 819KB

Repeat View:
Load Time: 2.857s, First byte: 1.137s, Start Render: 2.335s, DOM Elements 257
Doc Complete info:
Time: 2.857s, Requests: 46, Bytes in: 16KB
Fully Loaded:
Time: 2.857s, Requests: 47, Bytes in: 18K

Now these (above) numbers are LOWER on first view than my test with all plugins turned off. You’d think this number would be higher.

The slider only is:
Ratings: F, A, A, B, F, X
First View:
Load Time: 10.482s, First byte: 1.190s, Start Render: 9.306s, DOM Elements 597
Doc Complete info:
Time: 10.482s, Requests: 93, Bytes in: 1,486KB
Fully Loaded:
Time: 10.482s, Requests: 93, Bytes in: 1,4865KB

Repeat View:
Load Time: 5.274s, First byte: 1.113s, Start Render: 3.419s, DOM Elements 597
Doc Complete info:
Time: 5.274s, Requests: 86, Bytes in: 27KB
Fully Loaded:
Time: 5.274s, Requests: 86, Bytes in: 27K

So… If I move hosts will this allow this plugin to load faster or do I need to do something more with the images?

Thanks again!

I think the variability of your test results points to the fact that you need better hosting. You’re on a “basic” plan now, right? These numbers are significantly lower than yesterday, when you tested the same loads (theme and plugins) if I’m not mistaken, yes?

At the same time, I’d also look to try and remove the number of slides I’m loading, which can be a big factor.

How many slides to you load now? 3-5 is about the max, in my book. Do what you can on your end to reduce load on the server first. There is no such thing as a site that is “too lean” and “too fast” I say! ??

Hi Jerry,

Yep, I didn’t make any changes to the plugins except what was turned off or on when doing the testing. Looking for a new host but not sure what to look for regarding CPU usages. Any thoughts?

Yeah 3-5 slides would be great but they wanted to show all of their available adoptees on the main page … I think they have like 25 pets on the slideshow right now ??

So, is there any code I can do to load the site first then the images? I’m thinking that it’s not loading the site until all the images are loaded first. Does that make sense? I’m not a PHP coder so if there is something that does this can you point me in the right direction on where to look?

Thanks!

I will also ask the slider developer if he has any suggestions too.

Again, thank you, thank you, thank you both for helping me!!

Wow, 25 slides is ridiculous! I’d recommend leveling with your client so they understand the repercussions of what they’re trying to accomplish.

With that many slides, there is only so much that better hosting will get you. The site will need a very fast host, but the user will also need a very fast internet connection on their end just to download all that data. If they’re coming from a mobile device, or on a crowded public wi-fi connection, that site would take FOREVER to load, for example. Hosting can never truly fix that issue.

Every website is a balancing act between speed and features. Your client needs to decide if 25 slides is really worth having a site that is slow, will cost a lot of money to host, will frustrate visitors, and may lead to people bailing before the page has finished loading.

I’m not above “bullying” my clients a bit if need be, just to save them from themselves. This sounds like one of those situations IMHO.

I will talk to them but if I cannot talk them down and other suggestions?

Is there a way to load the page 1st, then images 2nd? Or more specifically a way to load those in the upload file last?

An easy solution will be to show a single image on your homepage (or a link there) and redirect the visitors to a page like this. You can even have more images. But it is built using old style tables and can work well even in your front page with all the images. Have a look at the page. If you like the idea, you can go ahead with it. It is simple and easy.

Marking this as resolved.

Changed slides to 12, same issues, no difference. Turned off slides completely. Same issues, very little difference. Tried it on another version of this family of hosting companies with a new, unvisited, private bare bones basic WP site = SAME ISSUES! Switched to Host Gator and I don’t have these issues anymore.

So this was a hosting problem.

FYI: the hosts with the issues were BlueHost and I also tried JustHost (which is the cheaper version of BlueHost).

What irks me is that www.remarpro.com advertises BlueHost as being a good choice for WP sites. I’d have to very much disagree. Tried on another “BH” site, JustHost, and had the same issues on an unvisited, very basic WP site (with about 3 plugins installed). I’d personally recommend anyone interested in a new hosting company that has a WP site to stay away from this family of hosting companies.

Re: Host Gator I’ve been monitoring three WP sites I have under one account- the one I first brought up in this discussion as well as another one with the same amount of visitors (around 6-7K a month) and a testing WP site. These are all on the same HG account. My first bite averages from C – A. Much better than BH or JH. My CPU usage is non-existent on HG where I was getting throttled on BH and JH. The “C” rating is due to being on a shared server however it is not my account that is causing the slow-down. Whereas BH was telling me I had to upgrade to their PRO version. HG has better settings for a WP site (like memory usage and file size) unlike BH or JH. Anyway, just posting this for those that may have run into the same issue with the BH family of hosting companies. I hope it helps!