WordPress Admin Slow Due to Excessive HTTP API Calls

  • Hello,

    I have an issue with my WordPress back office, which has become very slow. The back office takes 13 seconds to load, and this is due to HTTP API calls (I was able to verify this with Query Monitor).

    On each back-office page load, there are many API requests, some coming from WordPress Core and others from plugins like WooCommerce, WPML, WP Rocket, etc. Each request takes on average between 0.3 to 0.8 seconds to load. These are mainly update checks, notifications, and so on.

    Here is a screenshot of all the requests (link) :

    What I don’t understand is why each back-office page triggers all these requests. I have checked other WordPress sites I manage (including WooCommerce sites), and there are not nearly as many HTTP calls. Typically, there is only one HTTP request or none at all.

    I have tried many solutions to prevent these requests from being generated, but none have worked. I have switched to the default theme, deactivated plugins, and tried different caching solutions. I even reset the site with WP Reset, but these calls continue to be triggered. When I add this line to the wp-config.php file: 

    define('WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', true);

    the loading time drops to a maximum of 3 seconds. However, this is not a good solution because updates and HTTP calls related to WooCommerce (such as for payment gateways) are blocked. The HTTP Requests Manager plugin also allows me to limit these requests, but it doesn’t solve the root issue.

    I have tried other solutions, but nothing works. Does anyone have an idea or a potential solution for the origin of these HTTP calls on each back-office page load? Thank you.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Of the 15 in your screenshot, only 7 are going to www.remarpro.com.

    The rest are from plugins, specifically WP Rocket (3), WP Bakery (3), WooCommerce (1), and SitePress (1).

    While they do take 0.3 to 0.8 seconds to load, they should be loading simultaneously, in other words it should be about 0.8 seconds total for everything.

    I do see some 30-second timeouts in there from both WP Bakery and WP Rocket, which isn’t great. I recommend contacting their support about it.

    Overall, I think one of the plugins is to blame here. Please attempt to deactivate all plugins. If the problem goes away, re-activate them one by one to identify the source of the problem.

    If you can install plugins, install Health Check. On the troubleshooting tab, you can click the button to deactivate all plugins and change the theme for you while you’re still logged in without affecting normal visitors to your site.

    Thread Starter Alexandre Gaboriau

    (@mcurly)

    I know it’s not just about WordPress Core, but my main point is that I didn’t understand why these requests were being made on every page load, while on my other WordPress websites, they weren’t.

    Finally, I found the root of the issue:

    For unknown reasons, the object cache (object-cache.php in /wp-content) was caching and never updating the transients “update_themes,” “update_plugins,” and “update_core” (and possibly other transients, though I didn’t check). After disabling this file (object-cache.php), everything sped up significantly, as the update checks (for core, plugins, and themes) were no longer being triggered on every page load.

    Here’s what I did:

    1. Checked the transients using the “Transients Manager” plugin.
    2. Noticed that “update_themes,” “update_plugins,” and “update_core” had a “last_checked” property with a very old timestamp (months ago).
    3. Disabled object-cache.php.
    4. Checked again, and Query Monitor showed that those slow HTTP requests were gone.

    I hope this helps someone in the future!

    Moderator James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    What caching plugin are you using?

    Thread Starter Alexandre Gaboriau

    (@mcurly)

    I’m not very familiar with object cache, I saw that object-cache.php is related to Redis. But the strange thing is that on my hosting (it’s not a dedicated hosting, there is a cpanel) the Redis Manager was not installed, maybe I tried to install it some time ago, honestly I don’t remember. I started it, now it’s running on the server, but it didn’t help to solve the problem, so I removed the file.

    So I’m doing without the object cache for now. I’ll come back to it later.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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