Site and backend are very slow with no plugins

Have you tried:

– switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

– re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh download of WordPress.

Hello Esmi,

Thank you for the suggestions. I have tried all 3 and sadly they didn’t help. I tried the twentyeleven theme, reseted the plugin folder and uploaded the wp-admin and wp-includes from a fresh download, but the average loading time for the site and the dashboard remained long (15-20 seconds).

I want to mention another thing that might help: a few days ago, after I had slow response for a day or two, i upgraded WP from 3.2 to the latest 3.3.2, and for a few hours the site and backend were very fast. Then, after a day or two, it returned to be very slow as it is now.

Please, if you have any other idea, please tell me, I am kind of desperate here…

Thanks,

How much memory do you have available for PHP? If you’re not sure, ask your hosts for details.

Thanks Esmi, I don’t know so I sent them an email asking that.

Hello Esmi,

I haven’t got a reply from my host yet, but I wondered if you can answer a layman question:

Is it possible to copy the whole wp-content dir into my local computer, and then delete all the WP directory, re-install WP from scratch, and then replace the empty wp-content with my local wp-content?

will that still retain all the posts, comments etc?

Thanks a lot!

Hi Esmi, this is the reply I got:

Thank you for your reply. I understand you are concerned about the amount of memory for your PHP. You can adjust this amount in your php.ini or php5.ini file but your plan is typically limited to about 64MB. Keep in mind with shared hosting plans the resources, such as memory, are shared and there for can be limited. If you need more memory than this for your site, you will want to upgrade to a Virtual Dedicated Server or Dedicated Server.

Is it possible to copy the whole wp-content dir into my local computer, and then delete all the WP directory, re-install WP from scratch, and then replace the empty wp-content with my local wp-content?

Yes – it’s possible.

will that still retain all the posts, comments etc?

No – they are stored in your site’s database.

your plan is typically limited to about 64MB

That should be enough. Since you have access to the php.ini file, add (or change) the line in that file to:
memory_limit = 64M ;

Hi Esmi,

Thanks for trying to help. I will try and edit the php.ini file. From your answer, I didn;t understand if there is some possibility of re-installing a totally fresh instance of WP (i.e., no plugins, no changes), and then somehow put back all posts, my costumed theme etc.

Thanks,

You could re-install WP and then restore a backup copy of your old database but I’m not convinced it would help here.

Hi Esmi,

I didn’t have a php5.ini file so I added on with a single line:

memory_limit = 64M ;

I used php5.ini since I understood that I need that since my server is running php 5.2. However, the site and dashboard still seem to move very slow.

Do you have nay more ideas? What do you think about the fact that upgrading to 3.3.2 made it very fast for a day or two and then it became slow again? I think that it maybe has something to do with all the old plugins that I deactivated.. is that possible?

Thanks

As the slowness has not been resolved yet, I would appreciate any more suggestions.

Thanks,

I have the excact same problems, Slow front and backend. I am running wordpress 3.2.2 with plesk 10.4.4 on ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

I tested with the plugin Debug Queries and it shows my database works fine but PHP takes up most of the loading time.

Average loading times for my worpress websites are now about 5-15 seconds. Also tried without plugins but with no luck. Somehow PHP slows everything down by a lot. I run some sites locally on my homeserver for webdevelopement and everything works fine.

Problem started about a week ago. Before that everything worked fine and i didnt do any strange things afaik. I have this problem posted on some other websites as well. I’l let you know when i know more.

Thanks!

Hi Omanor,

My problem got solved and it wasnt serverside related! My webhoster (Leaseweb) had my VPS on a server that was too busy. So they moved my VPS to another node an now it all works fine!

Perhaps thats also the case for you.

Nick