Why is my wordpress so slow?

January 22, 2009 10:29 AM

Why is my Wordpress blog so slow in loading? Not just the blog itself, but the dashboard and every action I take on it? It takes up to 4 minutes, sometimes just coming up blank. I have checked with my host, they say that part is fine. I have upgraded a few times (but not to the most recent 2.7). I have been on different computers. Currently on MacBookPro OS X 10.5.5

This has been happening ever since I started my blog 2 years ago. I am mystified. Every action, from logging in, creating a post, going to the blog itself, every aspect takes a minimum of 30 seconds, up to 4 minutes, and sometimes (like now) it takes 4 minutes and then when done, I just get a blank page.

I have googled endlessly, but can't find anything that addresses the whole problem. It is not just the dashboard, not just the site, that loads slowly, but every single aspect of my wordpress.

(I have also used different themes, different computers, different versions, etc.) Again, my host machighway, said there is no problem on their end. And when this is happening, I can get to other websites just fine.

You can get to my blog from my profile>website>blog

After taking up to 4 minutes to load this morning, of course now it is on the faster side (actually faster than I have ever seen it only about 5 seconds), as I go to post this, so I am not looking for "it comes up just fine for me" answers.

Thanks! This has been crazymaking.

posted by Vaike to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Have you tried using Wordpress on a different server -- a friend's, perhaps? That's a good benchmark. If it's fast elsewhere, then it's not your computer, your Internet connection, or Wordpress, and likely the server your copy is hosted on. There may be nothing technically wrong with the server (like your host says) but it may just be slow or not have enough resources to handle whatever load it has.
posted by nitsuj at 10:54 AM on January 22

Wordpress is a bit notorious for being slow. You may wish to try using the WP-Cache plugin, which may well help you. There are also several MySQL Optimizations that can help, depending on your access level.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:04 AM on January 22

Firebug tells me that it took 3.32s to load the blog page, with 1.7s consumed by an image call to petharbor.com.
posted by rhizome at 11:05 AM on January 22

It's loading really quickly here, too, in the UK.

Try running a traceroute to the server, and see if you can see any issues.

Also, do you have anything running on the blog that is only activated when you're logged in as Admin?
posted by Solomon at 11:21 AM on January 22

The backoffices of the weblogs I run on Wordpress have become unusably slow since I went over 2.7. Problem is, they're not always slow. After testing different settings, with other themes as well, and completely without any plugins, I've narrowed the problem down a bit, without solving it completely.

The slowness can be repaired sometimes by some tricks described in this forum posting. Which basically comes down to starting a cron job manually from time to time [ by demanding your browser to show the address http://whereyourbloghaswordpress/wp-cron.php , and yes I advice you to make that address a bookmark]
posted by ijsbrand at 11:51 AM on January 22

Disable all your WP plugins temporarily. Does that solve the problem? If so, you can reactivate them one by one until you isolate the problem.
posted by chrisamiller at 12:28 PM on January 22

Wow. Murphy's Law. This is the fastest I have ever had my blog run. It has never even been close to this fast. I would be so very happy if it was like this all the time!

Thanks for your input so far. So far I am going to:

-Ask my host to test it on another one of their servers (they are wonderfully helpful). I can't imagine their servers cannot handle wordpress, as many of their customers use it, but I wonder if it is just a glitch in one server? And the rest of my site, on the same server is super fast, never had a single problem.

-Add the WP-Cache (I just did). But will that increase Dashboard speed? The site and the admin are uniformly slow.

-try the link suggestions form ijsbrand, and ask a friend to help me with the traceroute testing (I am not that computer savvy).

-I have tried disabling the plugins, makes no difference.


Thanks so far, and any other suggestions would be awesome. One thing that puzzles me is why it sometimes runs fast and fine, sometimes at acceptable speed, and sometimes at a painfully slow crawl. What would be causing the extreme variety of times? Somehow I think that would be a good clue to understanding the problem. I could be totally off...

p.s. I don't believe I run anything that is only activated when I am logged in.
posted by Vaike at 1:51 PM on January 22

p.p.s For clarification,these speed variations happen when the rest of my site, on the same computer/host/ip/server, is working just fabulously.
posted by Vaike at 1:55 PM on January 22

If you have a Mac running 10.5, you can use the Developer menu in the Safari menu bar to 'Show Network Timeline', which can tell you all of the things that it takes to draw a page, and how long they took to a) be transferred to you and b) be rendered by your local computer.
posted by Wild_Eep at 2:10 PM on January 22

A few things:

The various feeds on the dashboard can really slow things down

Install WPTuner and turn it on. At the bottom of each page, it will show logged in users (ie You) a breakdown of the time required for various operations involved in generating the page. This applies to both the public pages and the dashboard. Checking that during the slow periods should tell you a lot, and if you post the results here, it will help us figure things out.
posted by Good Brain at 7:51 PM on January 22