Slow page loads on live site

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    My blog was using the Rockfield theme. It looked good but the pages loaded very slowly (scoring 25-30 on Google Page Speed Insights). The theme had required quite a bit of CSS modification to make it work the way I wanted, so I decided to try another them that required less work

    I set up a test site and tried a number of themes, finally deciding on Hever. I found it scored between 70 and 90 on Google PSI (a lot seems to depend on time of day and other things).

    So I activated Hever on my actual blog, set the home page up more or less the same as the test site, and my site was still scoring only 25-30.

    I cannot see why there is this difference. I posted a day or two ago asking some general questions about page load times and haven’t had any answers so far, but this outcome is very frustrating.

    I’m hoping someone is knowledgable enough to explain to me what is going on please, and how I can fix it.

    Thanks.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    In case it helps, here are typical Google Page Speed Insights results fo both sites.

    Thanks. Help really appreciated.

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    More info for anyone who can help please:

    Pingdom gives the following results:

    Test site:
    Score = 85
    Page size 968 Kb
    Requests = 32

    Live site
    Score = 68
    Page size = 2.3 Mb
    Requests = 144

    How can there be such a big difference in requests and size?

    Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    I am really desperate to resolve this problem, so I’m really hoping someone has an answer for me here please.

    How can the same page have 4 times as many requests on one website as on another? There must be an explanation, but it is beyond me.

    Thanks for any help.

  • ryancowles · Staff ·

    Hi there! I see that your main site is now returning a score of 92 through Google’s Page Speed tool.

    Were you able to resolve this issue on your own? If the issue persists, can you let us know the exact steps that result in the current issue?

    Please let us know about the above and we can go from there!

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    Hi Ryan,

    “I see that your main site is now returning a score of 92 through Google’s Page Speed tool.”

    I just ran Google Page Speed Insights and I got the same sorts of figures I have reported:

    The Way (main site) = 30
    Speed Trials (trial site) = 77

    I also have a self hosted site which I have been more able to optimise and it scored 90 when I just tested, but I presume you aren’t referrring to that.

    So I’m curious to know which site you tested, and if you tested ther site I’m concerned about, how you got such a good score.

    “Were you able to resolve this issue on your own?”

    So no, I haven’t been able to resolve the issue. I removed 4 out of 6 footer widgets to try to speed things up, but otherwise I have left the site without finishing the styling I want to do, so anyone answering my post here would have something constant to look at.

    I appreciate your interest and any advice you can give me. Thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    Hi Ryan, I have just received your support email (it went, unfortunately, to my spam folder so I was delayed in seeing it).

    I will pursue this matter there if that is more convenient for you.

  • Unknown's avatar
    unklee · Member ·

    Just for the record, I have resolved this matter.

    It appears that the slow page loads were caused by literally hundreds of redirects (outside links) set up mostly by advertisers. There wasn’t any advertising on the trial site. It wasn’t anything to do with the theme.

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Thanks for letting us know :)

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