Persistent unbelievably slow loads and stall errors, esp while in admin - HELP!!!
 

Hi,

I've used Atahualpa for a few years now and it ran fine for quite a while.

I've had for some time really serious problems with the admin pages and sometimes the site itself loading v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y (like, over a minute - and no, I'm not on dialup!).

Sometimes it just stalls altogether, or after ages and ages will tell me I am looking for something that isn't there.

Often I open the pages or posts list and it says there's nothing there, no pages or posts. Then I hit reload and they are there again.

The site is also sporadically slow loading.

A common pattern is that the site *might* load OK, then when I try to enter wp-admin it just stalls altogether.

Sometimes I can get into wp-admin but it will take ages for me to get anywhere, e.g. to see my list of pages or posts.

I have removed any widgets I thought might be heavy duty.

I am using Wordpress 3.3.2 and Atahualpa 3.7.7.

I usually use Firefox 12.0 but am having the same problems in IE 9.0.8.

Having said that, tonight I managed to delete a couple of unused pages and some widgets and it ran fine on IE for a while, then started stalling on me again.

Firefox has been more consistently bad.

I have tried clearing the cache.

The site is http://RealEvaluation.com

Can anyone help me? I've been trying to work this out for months and have got nowhere!

TIA ...
Jane

site loaded fine for me.
1) have you tried another computer?

Do you have a caching plugin installed?

It's the same problem on my brand new desktop as it was on two previous laptops, and from different locations (web connections) ...

I don't have a caching plugin, I don't think! What's recommended?

And, can either of you think why the problems should be so much more serious in the admin pages? I'm just baffled by this.

Thanks so much for responding! :)
Jane

Just as an example,. right now I went to the site, it loaded fine, then I accessed wp-admin, it loaded straight away, I clicked the All Pages button and it took 20 seconds to load (I counted) and showed "No pages found". I hit reload and the list of pages appeared instantly.

I then went to one of the pages (book) and edited something out; it seemed to update fine. Then, to check it, I clicked Visit Site, which loaded fine, then the page I'd just edited, and that has been loading for a minute now and still hasn't made it. This is in Firefox. [I just tried IE and the page loaded fine, with the new edits - but of course, this isn't consistently so.]

Sooo frustrating!

Thanks again,
Jane

if you want to send me a PM with an admin ID/PW I'll take a quick peek

One other thing - GoDaddy...

I have seen this exact symptom on GoDaddy - you are doing things and suddenly 5 minutes go by before you get a response. This has happened while in the GoCaddy back end and in WP.

My gut feeling is that GoDaddy throttles sites. Using domaintools.com it shows that there are 2,055 other sites on the server you are on.

It could be that when one of those other sites goes active, you are paged out for a while or something like that.

I recommend users DO NOT use GoDaddy - If a customer of mine is on GODaddy and wants me to work on teir site, I explaine this and tell them that I have to charge for any time I am twiddling my thumbs waiting for GoDaddy to respond.

juggledad, I'm not on godaddy; I bought my domain name through them but the site itself isn't hosted on their servers - would this still be an issue?

Did you get the PM with admin login for the site?

Thanks so much for the suggestions so far :)
Jane

Nope no PM - click on me name and select send a pm

OK, did that again and this time there's a sent message showing, so I think it worked.

Meanwhile I've added a caching plugin after pingdom tools suggested this would make the most difference ("Leverage browser caching"), not sure how much that has helped ...

Next thing they suggested was "Combine external JavaScript", not sure how to do this, suspect it's the inner workings of WP/Atahualpa that will be unfathomable to me.

pingdom also tests the DNS servers and gives me this diagnosis for both servers:

Name server ns1.iserve.net.nz (202.191.33.129) does not answer queries over TCP.

The name server failed to answer queries sent over TCP. This is probably due to the name server not correctly set up or due to misconfgured filtering in a firewall. It is a rather common misconception that DNS does not need TCP unless they provide zone transfers - perhaps the name server administrator is not aware that TCP usually is a requirement.

I presume that's worth passing on to my web hosting service ...?

Anyway, juggledad, look forward to any insights you may have - thanks!

Jane

see my PM back to you

You are going to have to talk with your host's support about this issue. It seems to be a hosting issue and because there is so much variety between hosts and how they do things, I can't offer much help...now if you were running on the same host as I use that would be a different story.

Be persistant with the support people and if someone says they can't help you - ask to speak with their manager and if the manager won't help, ask for his manager.

If this doesn't work getting help, I'd suggest moving to a new host that is willing to help you out.

Note: I activated ServerBuddy with no problem

Thanks, juggledad, I will try that and post here if we figure the solution out.

Thanks for having a look for me!
Jane

Very quick update ... I am still in limbo really ... my web hosting provider has given me a link to point to a different database host server and clear my browser cache. Things seemed a bit quicker initially, but when I went to pingdom I am still getting a real range of load times, anything from 3s to 8s+

I'll keep asking until someone makes some sense to me.

I asked about the pingdom message re TCP and they didn't respond to that, so that is still a mystery, am not sure if it matters or why.

Cheers!