Why is my wordpress so slow on a powerful dedicated server?

It loaded very quickly for me when I tested the site.

Can you show me some examples of pages that are loading slowly for you?

I ran the homepage through a test:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/azerothshard.ga/2CyTfTgU

It took a little while to load, but then you have a lot of images, adding up to ~2mb…

The Discord app widget took over 1.5 seconds to load.

As i said in post, it’s a problem that regards logged in users.

However you can check it on a page like forum that is not cached by w3tc: https://azerothshard.ga/forums

I’m NOT mainly warried about the time that client took to load js widgets etc.

Instead i’m warried about the time the server thakes to process the php and sending the response. It’s extremely slow for its specs.

UPDATE:
i’ve done gtmetrix for my sites:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/azerothshard.ga/Z82ICO9E -> wordpress on dedicated server

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/azerothshard.altervista.org/3aV6P0jD -> simple forum machine on shared free vps

wordpress is 6 time slower to “response”: 2.81s vs 500ms with single user connected.

Instead i’m worried about the time the server takes to process the php and sending the response. It’s extremely slow for its specs.

Most servers are leased unconfigured, and as a result don’t perform very well out of the box. You need to use different utilities to measure loads and adjust PHP (php.ini), MySQL (my.cnf) and Apache (httpd) away from their default settings. WordPress can be database-intensive with concurrent users; MySQL configurations will be one of the bottlenecks.

And, W3TC is a buggy and complex cache plugin that often conflicts with server settings for caching, etc. Use WP Super Cache.

Beyond that, I see that you don’t even have browser caching and expires headers set up: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/azerothshard.ga/2CyTfTgU

And your page weight should be less than 1 meg, or use a CDN like CloudFront.

While you’re diagnosing I’d consider disabling plugins you don’t need. For example, I’m guessing WordFence doesn’t provide functionality that your users need. I have no specific complaints about WordFence, but multi-purpose plugins that try to do it all can be a drain on resources.

I’d also reconsider JetPack if you’re just using one or two features and instead go with dedicated plugins that do the same thing. Again, during the diagnostic process. If JetPack ends up not being the problem then by all means go back to it.

I agree with songdogtech’s recommendation about WP Super Cache over W3TC.

> i’ve done gtmetrix for my sites:
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/azerothshard.ga/Z82ICO9E

This is very very telling.

I was looking through the code @ https://azerothshard.ga/forums/ and wow – 270 different resources – in particular there are dozens and dozens of different javascript, css files in the Head area etc… that is the first thing I would sort out personally.

There are also resources that are 404ing, and around 10 that are redirecting – all these things will be slowing down your response time.

Hi guys

sorry for the late reply.

In this topic i’m not talking about the problem of “retrieving resources” from the server, i mean, not about js, css, pictures etc that can be slow down the “connection/bandwidth”. It’s an issue that i can ( and have to ) solve later of course.

I’m talking about the process of server “response time”. The php execution time in few words.

However i’ve done multiple personal experiments regarding this kind of performance. Comparing my new wordpress + simple:press community , with my old joomla + simple-machine forum community

With a clean wordpress install , the response time is as fast as joomla more or less ( 200 ms on average ). However not comparable to smf that is extremely fast ( 50ms on average ).

As soon as i enable the template, buddypress and some other “suggested” plugins, everything become really slow without cache ofc.
Huge CPU and RAM usage. Using all needed plugins it reach the 3s of only php response time for each user! )

So i’ve installed “plugin organizer” and i’ve selectively disabled a lot of plugins on pages that doesn’t require them and now the site seems faster than before ( about 1.2s … However still slow and not comparable to joomla and smf ). However i still have cpu that reach very often 100% on quad core 3.2ghz xeon, and ram that reach 6GB with just apache processes and about 20 online users ( terrible… )

I’ve tried to disable plugins and theme one by one and i’ve noticed that buddypress, simple:press , woocommerce are really heavy …
Most of php work seems to be done by shortcode parsing and , of course, by a lot of code loaded also when it’s not needed ( maybe there’s also some problems with heavy db queries ).

Maybe wordpress need to integrate the “plugin organizer” settings by default? ( this is a not perfect plugin but the idea is very nice and can be improved in wp )

About shortcode, maybe would be nice to allow disabling parsing in wp settings…or just limit the parsing to specific site parts? ( I’m not very pratical in this field )

thank you all

I actually have same theme. I believe the theme is the biggest thing holding the website back. Lack of Optimizations towards their CSS and JS, I worked hard on adjusting the settings on MySQL,PHP and Apache along with optimization plugins to finally make it at least workable.

As soon as i enable the template, buddypress and some other “suggested” plugins, everything become really slow without cache ofc.

@joseph, you seem to already have your answer: it’s your theme (and plugins).

It doesn’t matter how “strong” your server is, every website will still be slowed down by such a huge number of PHP scripts and javascript even when ignoring your “remote scripts” for a moment… this is due to the way that web pages are loaded.

You say that PHP parsing is particularly expensive; in that case, you need to reduce the amount of PHP scripts (plugins) and consider enabling Opcache to avoid having to parse scripts on every page load.

Nginx + PHP-FPM (CGI) is better than Apache for such a setup.

Javascript is especially harmful to loading speed because its a blocking resource which browsers must “wait” for and evaluate in order of appearance. If you really want to understand the technical aspects see:

https://www.nateberkopec.com/2015/10/07/frontend-performance-chrome-timeline.html

You already have a ton of other good advice in this thread too.

@jesse: self-linking is frowned up in these forums; your link was moderated. Try to keep support in these forums.

@mark,

I only link to whatever the best resource is, if you want to censor my replies then please delete the entire post above and not parts of it. Actions like yours only scare away those who are trying to help, I could easily remain anonymous instead.

@jesse: it’s not censorship; it’s called Forums Rules, which are for the benefit of everyone. See Forum Rules. It’s your choice to participate and/or delete your own posts.

@mark,

It’s most definitely censorship, and now, thread-jacking.

I’m not able to delete my “censored” post above as the time limit has past, so please delete it for me as I don’t appreciate being censored.

@jesse thanks for your help

however i’ve enabled the op-cache and it’s much more faster now.

However not enough. I’m trying cloudflare and apache optimization right now

FYI: azerothshard.org took me 10-15 seconds to load just now. 200/200 connection where I am

second attempt

This site can’t be reached

azerothshard.org took too long to respond.
ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT