Site is so slow to load….

Thanks to you both. I’m continuing to work on this.

1. I disabled the Facebook Like Box plugin that was loading on every page. That caused a decent uptick in ratings on GTMetrix.com (now Page Speed 91, YSlow 82). Too bad, b/c I like that social media presence but it’s not worth the trade-off. I can put a static image there instead and link it to my FB page.

2. I don’t know what “cmsvoteu” is — sorry. Can you please explain?

3. Disabling AddThis did not do much to improve performance.

4. I’ve removed two images from the WP-Cycle slider plugin on the homepage. There are now 6 images at about 50k apiece average.

5. I’ve set up my W3 Total Cache options according to https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-install-and-setup-w3-total-cache-for-beginners/

6. GTMetrix.com Page Speed recommendations:
— Parallelize downloads across hostnames
— Specify image dimensions (lists 7 graphics but all are small)
GTMetrix.com YSlow recommendations:
— Add Expires headers (lists 8 components although I’ve already turned that on in W3 Total Cache; however these 8 are on other domains like fonts.googleapis.com, forms.aweber.com and connect.facebook.net, so I assume I can’t do anything about those)
— Use cookie-free domains (lists 14 image files on my domain – not sure how I can modify that)
— Make fewer HTTP requests

7. It appears that about all the errors found on validator.w3.org refer to missing tags in my upper right header and in the four footer elements. They look fine to me but since I’m not a coder, maybe I’m using old HTML.

8. Re: gzip. I’m using the Smush-It image compressing plugin…..? Should I export from PSD to PNG instead of JPG? Not use Smush-It?

Thanks again for all the assistance. Greatly appreciated.

I don’t know what “cmsvoteu” is — sorry. Can you please explain?

cmsvoteu is a file being loaded (and quite slowly also) – review the source code and search for it, then find out what is loading it.

You can ignore results based on file loading from external sites as you cannot affect them unless you remove the widget, plugin, or link, which may not be a bad idea to test YOUR site. You can also correct improper nested results by correcting the code given for such.

Reducing the # and size of HTTP requests can and will improve site performance as perceived in the browser.

I tried smush it on a shared host and it degraded performance overall (too many database calls), optimize images and remove compression of them as this one fix will greatly reduce server response times. Keep the total initial page load small.

Hope this also helps….

Thanks as always. I now have a Google Page Speed of 96/100 when run in Firefox. I disabled the Facebook Like Box as noted above and also added the two items to my .htaccess as described here: https://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/how-to-add-far-future-expires-headers-to-your-wordpress-site-1533

I still have a 91 page / 82 yslow in GTMetrix, so that will need to be addressed. Not quite as rosy a rating as Google Page Speed, but I’m better than where I was yesterday.

I will try to hunt down that rogue cmsvoteu as I’ve no clue on that right now. Perhaps it’s part of the Genesis theme or AgentPress 2.0 child theme.

Thanks for the tip on Smush It. I’ll go back into Photoshop and try to export smaller, cleaner files and replace the existing ones.

I guess my HTML code is old in my right header and footers – I’ll go back to HTML school and see what the fuss is with my open and closing tags.

I understand about reducing the # and size of HTTP requests, but I need to keep the functionality I have. I may be removing the aweber form on the homepage to the right of the slider and placing an embedded non-autostarting Youtube video in there, but it’s still an external call.

The strange thing that still bugs me, though, is that I have delays even when I’m working strictly in the admin panel, going between posts, pages and stuff. That alone tells me it’s a hosting issue with GoDaddy. Maybe their guy was right in that my shared Linux hosting plan can’t handle my 40ish domains, even if only a few are WP and most are just 1-2 static pages….

Anyway, I will keep pressing along and update here accordingly. Thanks for your assistance.

Found the “cmsvoteup” – it was in the Facebook Like Box plugin that I disabled, so that should be a non-issue as I don’t have any other social media plugins enabled.

Here’s the actual code from the plugin:
$img_live_dir = ‘https://www.cmsvoteup.com/images/power_by_2x2.gif’;
$html = “<img src=\”$img_live_dir\” border=\”0\”/>“;

However, I might try enabling it again and just stripping out these two lines.

Great – now give the site time to be timely…as far as working with GD and admin:

A) Login>make a change>logout>clear domain coookies. Your perception of this is defined by ‘time’. Do not keep a page open at index.php with AJAX admin running on that page (most plugins use ajax)…

B) If you have that many domains, it may be time do realize the limitations of a shared host, upgrade with GD, or move on.

C) To keep FAST_CGI running, use meta refresh of less tha 1.5 minutes…(create a file similar to index.php but add a meta refresh and run that on a non used node) = Keeps Fast-CGI ‘awake’. When GD shuts down FAST-CGI, it can and will take a while for your next site vistor (you?) to load the page(s).

D) Is the new Auth Salt actually supported? (4 y 8 n)

A) Got it. I assume you’re just referring to general working practices.

B) Yes, but I think this domain probably gets 90% of the traffic of all that I have. Most of my domains are just 1-2 page splash sites with few, short duration visitors. However, there are 6 other WP sites that, while getting only maybe 10-30 visitors a day, might still be using resources equally on the shared GD server. Not sure how that works. Maybe if I kill them it would speed up this site.

C) & D) I’m not familiar with these terms or how I’d get my hands on an unused node in my GD hosting plan. I don’t have a dedicated server.