Is anyone else having problems with their site load time with this theme?

I already added a super cache plugin that is seemingly functioning, but the site still takes about 5-7 seconds to load on a high-speed connection.

My site isn't finished yet, but I am waiting to start another 4 blogs with this theme until I can hopefully rectify the situation.

Please offer any suggestions you guys have...I'm worried this may later on lead to a loss of traffic.

If you need to review the specific site, it's www.tgots.com

Thanks!!!

Your site: Generated in 1.868 seconds. Look at the generated time. Atahualpa cannot do anything with the speed at which additional and/or external files are loaded, or the speed of the hosting account.

The "Atahualpa slow" posts come up now and then but even a plugin author who dissected the theme quite a bit couldn't say more than that the theme throws a lot of data around under the hood, but he admitted that he cannot complain about the speed.

I improved a few things though, and Atahualpa 3.2.1 is going to be about 0.1 seconds faster than 3.2. Another 0.1 seconds can probably be saved at a later stage but I didn't want to do such a big rewrite right now.

On idle server, 1 plugin installed (Feedsmith), no Super Cache no WP Cache, nginx, PHP-fpm, Xcache:

Atahualpa 3.2.1 - 0.300-0.400 seconds (homepage 0.400, page 0.300, single post 0.350)
Default Theme - 0.280 seconds (homepage, but with less widgets because only 1 sidebar)

Test: http://wpnginx.bytesforall.com/

=============

On a loaded server (THIS server), Apache, mod_php, no Super Cache no WP Cache, 15 plugins installed: This should resemble the average (budget) shared hosting account fairly well.

Default Theme: ~ 1sec.
Atahualpa: 1.3-1.5 (but with more stuff in the sidebars than the default theme = 2 sidebars). First load may take 2 seconds

The server load, and the amount of external files loaded (and the speed of the servers serving the external files) has a much greater impact than Atahualpa vs. Default.

PHP Speedy is another accelerator you can look into, it'll combine external files.

Thanks Flynn!

I love the theme, and was just a little concerned. Maybe it is my connection.

Did you notice if my cache was working or not? I'm not really that advanced of a programmer.

And thanks for the speedy php idea. I'll look into it.

Thanks again.

Some cache is running
Cached by DB Cache

but it should mention "Super Cache" if you have Super Cache running which you don't seem to.

For easiest install I recommend "WP Cache 2" if you have trouble installing Super Cache. It's easier to install and about as fast.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cache/

It should do everything automatically. The description sound harder than it is

Hey flynn,

Appreciate your continued help man.

I tried adding that php speedy and it totally wonked out my blog. The whole right side of the theme was wiped out.

I'm assuming you've used it before. I downloaded the aciddrop 5.2 version. Do you know what setting I should be using?

After reading about the speedy more I think it would help a lot. Just not sure which settings I should choose. Everytime so far its gone wonky.

Thanks again!

Almost forgot...

Right now, YSlow gives me a performance grade of 60 (D).

I get an 'F' for: Use a CDN (no idea what this means!?), Gzip components (although when I do that with php speedy my site won't even load), and for Configure ETags (again no clue).

Sorry to lay all this on you. But I could really use the help.

Thanks.

I have not installed PHP Speedy myself. CDN means content distribution network, such as serving your content from multiple different hosts (not feasible for the average user), ETags tell the browser not to load unchanged files again, Gzip means compressing text/html/js before sending it to the browser, this does not reduce the page generation time but the time it takes the visitor to download the page, this can be done by the web server, by PHP, or by an application but shouldn't be done by more than one of those.

I'd try to get WP Cache 2 running. That alone should make your site fast enough

Gzip (or "deflate" for Apache) is useful too. This used to be a feature that you could turn on in WP but is gone since WP 2.5. A plugin is available http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2008/...s-gzip-plugin/ or better yet, ask your host if Apache's "deflate" can be turned on for you, then everything on your account would be compressed not just Wordpress

It might not be attractive for the host to do that. It'd reduce your bandwidth usage (quite a bit if you have a lot of text/CSS/Javascript and not many images), but increase the CPU usage on the web server a bit.

Thanks Flynn,

I was using DB Cache just because on the plug-in homepage, it looked like it was the next generation of cache (more effective than Super Cache or Cache 2) and because it was more recently updated than the others. But I switched it to Cache 2.1.2. I don't notice too much difference but I also don't know how to run the test.

My host says that apache is already enabled on their servers...so that's good news. He also said probably best not to mess around with the ETags and I'm pretty sure with my level of technical ability, he's right.

I'm going to try and configure a Gzip as well. Hopefully that will help out as well.

I just want a user to see the webpage in 2-3 seconds instead of the current 5-6 seconds. I think it's a huge difference for maintaining traffic.

Let me know if you have any other good ideas. You've been super helpful so far.

Hmmm,

FYI, that link for the gzip plugin won't activate with WP 2.7. It won't even load in the admin page, saying that the form of compression won't load - saying there is a content encoding error.

Sorry man...I feel like I'm spamming your thread..lol.

After much research, I've come to the conclusion that it is a WP 2.7 issue. There are numerous similar reports with very little ability to adjust. Sort of sucks. I honestly think that if everything else is equal, a page that loads in 4-5 seconds will lose huge amounts of traffic compared to a similar site loading in 1-3 seconds.

Hoepfully WP will come up with a solution sometime soon.


On a funny side note, I removed all caching, and it seems to be running faster now. Weird eh!?

Hi
I have the same issues on my website.
I wonder if it would be hard to put the CSS formatting in a separate file, and to do the same for the javascript (from var $bfa = jQuery.noConflict()...) : that would reduce page size by 40% on my site.

That is unlikely to reduce your page load time by 40% if you count the time it takes from clicking a link until your page has loaded. You can put the bit of jQuery into an extra file but that's an extra hit to the server.

As for the CSS, once you're done with the customization, you can copy the CSS from the source code of a browser-rendered page, then append that at the bottom of style.css, then delete the whole dynamic CSS/PHP section from header.php

Thanks for the answer.
I mean that any user navigating my site would have to upload the CSS file just once, instead of re-downloading it every time if the CSS code is embedded in every page.

I understand what you're saying and Atahualpa had a fully working style.css.php in a former version but IE6 was not rendering that file every now and then if it took the web server too long to deliver, and Wordpress (as a company) didn't like the fact that I was directly grabbing options from the WP database instead of going through the regular get_option. But get_option is not available from a non-standard file like style.css.php. I also looked at the code of another established theme from an author who is a better PHP coder than me and he was doing it the same way and also had the IE6 issue. I will be looking for something better in a later version, it bugs me too, but it's not as easy as it may seem.

And as mentioned, the CSS can be pasted into style.css after customizations are done. Not elegant but it does the job for those who are concerned about the amount of inline CSS.

If you're using gzip or deflate as you should, the extra markup shrinks to about 3-4 kbyte, but I know, not everyone can enable that.

Hello
I greatly improved the loading speed of my pages by :
- enabling page gzip (can be done via .htaccess or via PHP.ini, parameter zlib.output_handler) : 70% reduction on my text-no images page
- applying Flynn's advice herebefore on CSS cut from the template/paste in a separate file and compress the CSS - 15 K shaved off every page
- eliminating almost-useless plugins
- look for huge javascript files in useful plugins (such as the horrendous 120 Kbytes prototype.js) and trim them down with online JS compressors : 30 K of gain

I went from a 6 sec rensponse time to 1 sec
(I already had a page caching plugin)

Originally Posted by nello

Hello
I greatly improved the loading speed of my pages by :
- enabling page gzip (can be done via .htaccess or via PHP.ini, parameter zlib.output_handler) : 70% reduction on my text-no images page
- applying Flynn's advice herebefore on CSS cut from the template/paste in a separate file and compress the CSS - 15 K shaved off every page
- eliminating almost-useless plugins
- look for huge javascript files in useful plugins (such as the horrendous 120 Kbytes prototype.js) and trim them down with online JS compressors : 30 K of gain

I went from a 6 sec rensponse time to 1 sec
(I already had a page caching plugin)

Sounds amazing Nello,

Can you walk me through the page gzip process? I previously tried, but it wouldn't let me compress certain aspects. Are you using a gzip plugin?

And when you say huge javascript files in plugins, how do you know which files to compress? And would you use a program like this " http://javascriptcompressor.com/ " to do that?

I think the CSS cut is way over my head, but I would be super happy with getting these two things done!

Thanks!

Gzip module must be enabled by your provider, you don't have to install anything. Once your webpage is generated, it will be compressed on the fly and sent to the web browser, which will automatically de-zip it. Users won't know that the transmission was compressed.

Easy config : check your php.ini file and look for zlib.output_compression and ob_gzhandler : comments in the ini file will explain how to modify it. In case of doubt, check http://uk.php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.php. Important : if your browser cannot read a page you generate, you forgot a parameter and your header is corrupted. Test to see if pages are compressed or not : http://www.gidnetwork.com/tools/gzip-test.php

Other config (alternatives, I did not tested it) :

http://viralpatel.net/blogs/2009/02/...rformance.html
it proposes a few methods for enabling gzip.

Complete reference:
http://uk.php.net/manual/en/book.zlib.php
____________________________

For javascript : search all the JS files in your plugins, find the biggest and compress them with a tool such as http://javascriptcompressor.com/

For CSS compression : same as per JS: use a tool such as
http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/

for my site http://www.chevitadimerda.it I used the CSS trick as well.
Cheers
___________
Che vita di merda, CVDM !

Grazie Mille!

Hey Nello,

Thanks again man!!

I had to fight with my host for awhile...they refused to let me manipulate this through .htaccess. And then I couln't for the life of my find the php.ini file. But I finally found it, did just like you said, and my site is loading wayyyy faster. Like 3 seconds max throughout the site after hitting landing page.

Funnily enough, out of the 10 plugins I use, only one has a .js file, so that didn't exactly pay off.

But still...I appreciate the help! This theme is the best...especially now that it displays this fast!

Find out that .htaccess and PHP gzip compression work for .php files, not for CSS and Javascript.
The easiest way to activate that is to use the PHP Speedy plugin :

http://aciddrop.com/2009/02/02/php-s...p-052-bug-fix/

Beware, it has some issues if used with caching plugins

Originally Posted by nello

For CSS compression : same as per JS: use a tool such as
http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/

Ok. So I want to make sure I am doing this the right way FOR CSS Compression. Please guide me.

Under "Apperance" and then "Editor" I click on my "Style Sheet" which brings up the css.

I then copy all text.

I paste it into the window provided by: http://www.cssdrive.com/index.php/main/csscompressor/

There are options for "Compression Mode" , "Light, Normal, Super Compact."

There are options for "Comments Handling" I left this in default at: "Strip Comments at least ..." Not sure what this does.

I then hit "Compress It" and this is what I got.

Original size: 56007 bytes
Compressed size: 22175 bytes
Savings: 33832 bytes (60%)


Should I now proceed to take this newly compacted code and put this into my "Style Sheet"?

Yes, what you obtained is the compressed CSS : you have to use it instead of the original "fat" CSS: delete the initial CSS (well, keep a backup somewhere...) and copy/paste the compressed CSS in the same place.

"Strip comments" : it deletes the CSS comments. If you don't need to read the CSS code or to manually edit it, you can strip (=>delete) all comments

The three compressions are different since they apply different sets of rules. You can try to use the strongest compression, but the compressed CSS can be damaged (=> the compressed page does not display the same as the initial one). The lightest compression is quite safe : the final result looks the same as the initial page. I usually go for the strongest and I check if the output is ok; if there is an issue with the look of the page, I try the lightier.

Cheers

Nello