smush_check_for_conflicts cron job slowing down back and front end

Hi @dorianc

I hope you’re well today!

This task isn’t related to or affected by images and only happening “in backend”. It is only checking if certain plugins (that are known to be conflicting) are active on site in order to issue a warning. It shouldn’t be causing any significant load on site, especially not on front-end and not depending on how many images are on site.

But if you noticed that it is significantly slowing down back-end then I’d say it’s a bit unexpected and may mean that there’s some issue with either how transient is handled on your site (maybe some plugin clearing or changing it “in real time”?) or some tolls are affecting core WordPress “get_plugins()” function as even though it can affect performance – it shouldn’t be that significant impact.

However, this cron job isn’t really that “crucial” for plugin functions – it’s only there to help avoid conflicts with other optimization plugins. You could possibly try to disabling it using e.g. free plugin like WP Crontrol but I’m afraid it will get immediately re-scheduled so I’ve asked our Smush developers if we have a better way to disable it.

I or one of my colleagues will update you here about it soon.

Kind regards,
Adam

Thanks Adam. I am not 100% sure if that is what might be slowing down the website. At this point, I’m just trying to reduce all possible options for the same – and as I’m monitoring cron jobs when I get the slow-down periods, that cron job is almost always active.

Hi @dorianc

Thanks for response!

As our developers confirmed, it shouldn’t even be doing those checks (despite being task being scheduled) any more often than once an hour and only in back-end.

However, to fully confirm if this task is really affecting performance, you can try adding this code to the site

add_filter('pre_transient_wp-smush-conflict_check', function() {
		return array();
	} );

You can add it to your child-theme’s functions.php file at the end of it (if you are using child theme) or you can add it as MU plugin:

– create an empty file with a .php extension (e.g. “smush-check-cron-stop.php”)
– put this in the very first line of the file

<?php

– copy and paste shared code right below that line
– save the file and upload it ot the “/wp-content/mu-plugins” folder of your site’s WordPress installation; if there’s no “mu-plugins” folder right in “wp-content”, just create an empty one first.

Since this code will prevent the check – if it really is affecting the site that much, it will also fix it. If it doesn’t help with the issue, it would mean that the culprit is something else.

Kind regards,
Adam

Hello @dorianc ,

We haven’t heard from you for some time now, so it looks like you don’t require our further assistance.

Feel free to re-open this ticket if needed.

Kind regards
Kasia