At different times of the day (or night) I get very big page load speed variations. They nearly always show 10.1 secs, or 16.2 secs up to 21.0 seconds. This is using the GTmetr
Try Pingdom website speed test. I just checked my website and it loaded a little over 3 seconds. Better than 51% of all websites. The test is free. Speedtest.net requires adobe flash and I'm currently on my smartphone so I was unable to use speedtest.net.
Thanks Ed. The huge variations I have had are confusing - as it only seemed to be the three speeds that I quoted. There was never any speed between 10.1 and 16.2 and sometimes up to 21 seconds. I could have understood it if there were speeds all over the place. This has been for weeks now. However, I have re run my header image through tinypng and believe it or not recorded 4.3 secs this morning.
That is the first really low score so far.
So thanks guys ........I will keep at it.
Tony
Thanks Ed, After a bit more tinkering my fluctuations are now down to 2.7S through to 6.8S .......which is a whole lot better than it was.
I had missed compressing the header image which is controlled from the theme strings rather than my pages. That made a big difference.
Take care,
Tony
Thanks for the info. Don't know why you page load speed varies. I once had to remove large pics and optimize others.
Just wondering what type of downstream speed you are getting. Exit out of all internet programs, go to speedtest.net and run about a dozen speed tests. This will give you an average of your ISP's speed. Test at different times of the day, as the load on the ISP servers will vary. For example, I have fiber optic broadband, my downstream (download) speed will fluctuate between 60Meg-283Meg!
Yes, this is crazy, but as long as it doesn't drop below 50Meg I'm getting what I'm paying for. The upstream will always be low, mine always is around 6-6.5Megs and will not effect you downstream. One more thing to consider is this: when you connect to your ISP, then your site hosting servers and finally your site, it makes it's way relaying off servers. This is called HOPS, if there is heavy traffic along the way, it can slow down things. Not much you can do about that.
Best
Thanks for the input William. I have moved my site onto Cloudflare a few weeks ago as this was suggested as an improvement. Well it did, but only marginally and still had big swings in the speed.
Tony
I agree with Mark he is very experienced in these matters, my pages load at different speeds to
I missed one that had a big impact - I overlooked the header image that was driven from a part of the theme ....rather than one of my pages.
Tony
we need to be like sherlock holmes when it comes to all this weeding out lol have a great weekend
Hi - I get this too - I suspect it's different loads on both the network between your PC and your internet provider, and the all of the other servers in between that connect finally to your site.
There could also be some plugins that request external resources - eg. I found a FaceBook plugin to display a facebook wall on one of my sites, made loads of calls out for files, images, javascript etc - I took that one plugin off my site, and it instantly improved the speed.
I've used GTMetrixs too (yesterday in fact for the first time) - but I am a Google fan, and trust their tools - so I would suggest trying it out on this: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
All the best, Mark
Thanks for your quick reply Mark. I have tried the Google site you recommend and do get a bit more consistent results - however, I tried the GTmetrix one as a few of the training notes written within WA recommended it. I guess it's a case of the old saying "man with one watch always know what time it is - man with two watches never sure".
Google page speed gives me 74% ..........so I still have a lot of work to do.
Thanks again,
Tony
Hi Tony - you're welcome.
Other things I did to speed up page load time - I found a lot of my images weren't as small as they could be. Change the size to what you want it to be before you upload them. I know there are some optimizers built-into some themes - but I would also use a service (I do use this) to compress my images: https://tinypng.com/ - it never fails to reduce the size, without a reduction in quality.
As well as the FB plugin noted above, I also had one of those bars that showed you how many shares, tweets, G+'s etc you have on the social sites. That was taking a good few seconds to populate (GMetrix helped me track that one down) - so removing it, I immediately made my page load faster.
Cheers, Mark
Hi Mark,
I tumbled into this post because I am having speed problems too. I found great information in your replies so thank you for that! I used both GTMetrix and google speed analyzer and although both results are not similar I can see where the problems on my website come from. I used the tinypng for some pictures and I can see a difference already :)
Rodwell, wishing you luck in improving the speed of your website! Let us know you managed to improve ;)
Angelique
See more comments
Why do I get major variations in page load speed?
At different times of the day (or night) I get very big page load speed variations. They nearly always show 10.1 secs, or 16.2 secs up to 21.0 seconds. This is using the GTmetr
I have the same problems when loading my page. I deactivated some of my plugins, but the speed of the loading didn't improve.
Hi Alma, I still have speed fluctuations of 2.6s - 6.0s which is a dramatic improvement on what I was getting. As shown in Marcus's training I moved the site to "Cloudflare" and that made around 25% improvement after a few days.
I then went through ALL my images - which I was sure I had already put through "tinypng" and some I put though twice to compress them even further. THEN, I found an image that was not attached to any of my pages and posts, which were driven from within the theme itself.
Now I am quite happy with the speed.
I hope you have similar success.
Tony
Try Pingdom website speed test. I just checked my website and it loaded a little over 3 seconds. Better than 51% of all websites. The test is free. Speedtest.net requires adobe flash and I'm currently on my smartphone so I was unable to use speedtest.net.
Thanks Ed. The huge variations I have had are confusing - as it only seemed to be the three speeds that I quoted. There was never any speed between 10.1 and 16.2 and sometimes up to 21 seconds. I could have understood it if there were speeds all over the place. This has been for weeks now. However, I have re run my header image through tinypng and believe it or not recorded 4.3 secs this morning.
That is the first really low score so far.
So thanks guys ........I will keep at it.
Tony
Thanks Ed, After a bit more tinkering my fluctuations are now down to 2.7S through to 6.8S .......which is a whole lot better than it was.
I had missed compressing the header image which is controlled from the theme strings rather than my pages. That made a big difference.
Take care,
Tony
Thanks for the info. Don't know why you page load speed varies. I once had to remove large pics and optimize others.
Just wondering what type of downstream speed you are getting. Exit out of all internet programs, go to speedtest.net and run about a dozen speed tests. This will give you an average of your ISP's speed. Test at different times of the day, as the load on the ISP servers will vary. For example, I have fiber optic broadband, my downstream (download) speed will fluctuate between 60Meg-283Meg!
Yes, this is crazy, but as long as it doesn't drop below 50Meg I'm getting what I'm paying for. The upstream will always be low, mine always is around 6-6.5Megs and will not effect you downstream. One more thing to consider is this: when you connect to your ISP, then your site hosting servers and finally your site, it makes it's way relaying off servers. This is called HOPS, if there is heavy traffic along the way, it can slow down things. Not much you can do about that.
Best
Thanks for the input William. I have moved my site onto Cloudflare a few weeks ago as this was suggested as an improvement. Well it did, but only marginally and still had big swings in the speed.
Tony
I agree with Mark he is very experienced in these matters, my pages load at different speeds to
I missed one that had a big impact - I overlooked the header image that was driven from a part of the theme ....rather than one of my pages.
Tony
we need to be like sherlock holmes when it comes to all this weeding out lol have a great weekend
Hi - I get this too - I suspect it's different loads on both the network between your PC and your internet provider, and the all of the other servers in between that connect finally to your site.
There could also be some plugins that request external resources - eg. I found a FaceBook plugin to display a facebook wall on one of my sites, made loads of calls out for files, images, javascript etc - I took that one plugin off my site, and it instantly improved the speed.
I've used GTMetrixs too (yesterday in fact for the first time) - but I am a Google fan, and trust their tools - so I would suggest trying it out on this: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
All the best, Mark
Thanks for your quick reply Mark. I have tried the Google site you recommend and do get a bit more consistent results - however, I tried the GTmetrix one as a few of the training notes written within WA recommended it. I guess it's a case of the old saying "man with one watch always know what time it is - man with two watches never sure".
Google page speed gives me 74% ..........so I still have a lot of work to do.
Thanks again,
Tony
Hi Tony - you're welcome.
Other things I did to speed up page load time - I found a lot of my images weren't as small as they could be. Change the size to what you want it to be before you upload them. I know there are some optimizers built-into some themes - but I would also use a service (I do use this) to compress my images: https://tinypng.com/ - it never fails to reduce the size, without a reduction in quality.
As well as the FB plugin noted above, I also had one of those bars that showed you how many shares, tweets, G+'s etc you have on the social sites. That was taking a good few seconds to populate (GMetrix helped me track that one down) - so removing it, I immediately made my page load faster.
Cheers, Mark
Hi Mark,
I tumbled into this post because I am having speed problems too. I found great information in your replies so thank you for that! I used both GTMetrix and google speed analyzer and although both results are not similar I can see where the problems on my website come from. I used the tinypng for some pictures and I can see a difference already :)
Rodwell, wishing you luck in improving the speed of your website! Let us know you managed to improve ;)
Angelique
See more comments
I have just done a site check with GTmetrix and the "Total Page Size" is 2.57MB. This is more than double of the average - what have I done wrong?
Oh my, I'm starting to sweat before I even BEGIN to try to build my first site, sounds techie and I am not tech savvy so I guess I will be the next one to be asking questions, the good thing is KNOWING for sure that I have all of you WONDERFUL people who have the knowledge and skills, the experience, but most importantly, THE HEART TO LEND A HELPING HAND ✋. GOD BLESS AND GOD SPEED!
Fear not Julie ...........there are some wonderful people here in the wings ready to help when you need it.
Take care and all the very best,
Tony
Hi Tony, had a look at your site and the number of large graphics you have on the pages can increase page size and slow down loading time.
By compressing the graphics on your Home page alone, which I have done, will save 145KB, and that's without compressing the banner head and footer, which I imagine are pretty large. I can't do much about them, I'd need the originals.
By resizing them all to the same size would also contribute to further savings, You can do this by resizing to the smallest graphic while keeping the perspective of the larger ones. Hope this helps. If you want the compressed images PM me and I'll send them. Best wishes.
Thank you very much Harry. From what you have seen on the website (based on the fact I changed to this new theme) - do I actually have a problem ..........or am I looking too hard for issues ?
All the very best,
Tony
Hi Tony, yes, you may be looking too hard but compressing graphics and images is always advisable as it helps reduce the size of your pages and decreases, or speeds up, load time.
Hi Harry, should that be "decreases" load time ?
And is there something simple like a plug in to do this - or do I have to dig into the foreign language side of things ?
Thanks again,
Tony
Sorry about that Tony, yes it should be decreases load time (I've edited the reply). If you mean to compress image files, no, you don't need a plugin, or learn a foreign language as you put it (I take it you mean HTML and CSS).
There's are many image compression programs on the net but the one I use is called tinypng, it's free, you don't have to install it on your pc, and it's simple to use and will compress png and jpeg images. Just do a search on Google for tinypng. Once on your screen, browse for the image you want to compress, once compressed don't forget to download it.
Will that be done in the editing side of the webpage - or do I have to take the image off to the media library, compress it and then re import it ?
Tony
Hi Tony, no, you can't compress an image by editing the webpage, you will need to compress the originals first as I don't think you can compress them directly from the media library.
Once you have compressed them you will need to delete the existing media library image and upload the compressed one. Hope this helps.
If you just scale them down to reduce the size, you can do this directly in the media library. :)
No need to delete or upload anything.
Thanks Moritz - I found the area to do that. I have also tried out tinypng on a couple. For example one image was 1.5MB. Once compressed it was just under .5MB
All the best,
Tony
That's good!
If you can bring all your images near or under .5MB then this should speed up your site and get a better rating on gtmetrix.
If I keep adding pages and posts with images - will it eventually grind to a halt ........even if I size the images correctly ?
Tony
While the total size of the website will get more and more, it will still load fast enough when all your images are optimized and nothing else takes up too much loading time.
Hi Harry, my major problem is now solved - with the debugging section in the plugin WP Super Cache. Speed went from 19.8s down to 11.5s immediately.
Thanks for all your effort,
I will post my experience gained from you guys.
Thanks again,
Tony
Well it was this morning Harry - thanks very much. However, load time has gone back to 19s from 11.5s
Still a bit more work to be done.
Tony
Nathanielle or Foxelaw should be able to answer your question on page size as they build websites
Hi Tony, have you seen this training by Marcus? It helps a lot. I Have Update My Training About How to Speed Up Your Website
Hi Van, Thanks I did follow that exactly, and still could not speed things up - in fact it slowed the pages down. I have backed out most of my plugins and still playing around.
GTmetrix says something about "Defer parsing of JavaScript", "serve scaled images" Leverage browser caching"
However, that to me is like I spent two years trying to speak "Bahasa Indonesia" and then everyone now is speaking "Martian"
I will battle on,
Tony
Hi Tony, yes I did face the same problem. Feedback on gtmetrix sounds like Martian to me :)) did you install a cache plugin? Try disabling it to see if it gets better. I had to switch back and forth between different cache plugins for WordPress until I finally settled with WP super cache. Another thing you can try is to Google the errors lol, ie. Defer parsing of Javascript WordPress plugin etc.
Great work Van. I installed WP Super cache and it hardly changed the speed. HOWEVER, I read through the settings section a day later and found an automatic DEBUGGING section. Flicked that switch and BINGO - speed went from 19.8s down to 11.5s.
Yabba Dabba Doo..........I am happy now.
Thanks for that,
Tony
Hahaha. That's great to hear! You probably still want to look at the deparsing of Javascript though, your site can speed up a lot more. Try some of the WordPress forums, they may help if someone had the same problem :)
Thanks Willafay, I have gone through all images and sizes are all around 450 wide .......I believe this is within the recommended specs.
Tony
Do you have many large images on your site?
You should either reduce the size of your images manually or with a plugin like "EWWW Image Optimizer".
If it's not the images it could be a plugin, but that's not very likely.
Or have you uploaded videos to you site instead of embeding them?
If the images are already on the site do I have to take them off, resize them, and then re import - or can I do them in situ? and will this cause the original to hang up in the software ?
Tony
No need to take them off. You only have to edit and scale them down in the media manager of your wordpress dashboard.
Moritz
Actually Moritz - I did upload a video that I took of us on a dog sled. I cut it to around fifteen seconds and it was an effort to get it to play. It played on the desk top computer - but not on an iPad or mobile phone. I removed it and it brought the page size down a very small amount. I want to put it back in but guess I will have to check out training to do it properly.
I think I have problems with the images.
Tony
The easiest way to embed video on the site is to upload it on youtube and then embed link to your video on your site.
Also i would consider big pictures that you have uploaded and made them resized to smaller e.g. using "on the fly resize" inside WP editor (embeding as smaller image)
Though "Defer parsing of JavaScript" looks like real culprit here...
The video will be the issue here. You never want to upload videos to your website, rather you want to upload them to Youtube or Vimeo and then embed them into your website from the code that those respective services will give you.
You never want to host your videos on site by uploading them, that will slow down your website, hurt load times and ultimately your rankings.
Thanks Kyle, although when I took it off it only reduced the page load time from 20.6s to 20.3. GTmetrix note that the bit about "defer parsing of JavaScript, Serve Scaled images, and Leverage browser caching" are having the most impact ???
Regards,
Tony
Visited your page and i didn't notice slow download time, looks pretty neat imho. Neither 2.5 MB page size much (nowadays), when you have more that 1-2 pictures there.
Unfortunately java & javascript is mostly used in plugins and animations, fetching real-time data from servers... so mostly automation part.
I would be worried about deferred parsing and javscripts when you will notice 15+ seconds loading times (when whole page is blank and then shows up) and it doesn't happen in your case.
Maybe someone with more experience will spot something there :D
P.S. sometimes that software that measures... when it can't find anything i'm sure it will try harder to come up with something to justify it's usefulness ;)
Thanks a lot Jerry. I am heading off to put my video clip through Youtube and then re import it. I might get a bit more info as things progress.
I guess it's one of those things - when you have no reference point .....it does not concern you. As soon as someone shows you a tool to check things out ........it creates more problems than you knew you had. It's sometimes better off to wait for issues - rather than go out and dig for them.
I appreciate your input.
Tony
Have you decreased the size of the images yet?
The easiest and fastest way would be via the "EWWW Image Optimizer" plugin.
Especially when you already have loads of images.
I tried that plug in a couple of days ago Moritz and it made hardly any difference. I followed Marcus's instructions on his training page and ticked the boxes indicated - but it seemed to only do the images in the media library .....even though I ticked "do Bulk Changes"
Is it possible that the plugin is not compatible with my theme ?
Tony
Maybe this plugin makes new re-sized image copy?
Did you notice more images after operation (with similar names) or did this plugin remove big ones and switched with new smaller ones ?
If this plugin makes new resized pictures, probably you need to remove and add new images to your post.
When you go to media library you can check the size of your pictures by clicking "edit" on your image and it will show the size on right side of screen
Strange.
It worked great for me.
The images in the media library are the same that are displayed on yiur pages and posts. So when they get edited the changes apply for the ones on your pages, too
How big are the images in your library. Each image should usually be way below 500 kb.
It could be incompatibility, but the plugin works with most themes, as far as I know.
Only if you had other plugins that alter images could there be a problem.
Moritz
See more comments
Why is my "total page size" so large ?
I have just done a site check with GTmetrix and the "Total Page Size" is 2.57MB. This is more than double of the average - what have I done wrong?
Oh my, I'm starting to sweat before I even BEGIN to try to build my first site, sounds techie and I am not tech savvy so I guess I will be the next one to be asking questions, the good thing is KNOWING for sure that I have all of you WONDERFUL people who have the knowledge and skills, the experience, but most importantly, THE HEART TO LEND A HELPING HAND ✋. GOD BLESS AND GOD SPEED!
Fear not Julie ...........there are some wonderful people here in the wings ready to help when you need it.
Take care and all the very best,
Tony
Hi Tony, had a look at your site and the number of large graphics you have on the pages can increase page size and slow down loading time.
By compressing the graphics on your Home page alone, which I have done, will save 145KB, and that's without compressing the banner head and footer, which I imagine are pretty large. I can't do much about them, I'd need the originals.
By resizing them all to the same size would also contribute to further savings, You can do this by resizing to the smallest graphic while keeping the perspective of the larger ones. Hope this helps. If you want the compressed images PM me and I'll send them. Best wishes.
Thank you very much Harry. From what you have seen on the website (based on the fact I changed to this new theme) - do I actually have a problem ..........or am I looking too hard for issues ?
All the very best,
Tony
Hi Tony, yes, you may be looking too hard but compressing graphics and images is always advisable as it helps reduce the size of your pages and decreases, or speeds up, load time.
Hi Harry, should that be "decreases" load time ?
And is there something simple like a plug in to do this - or do I have to dig into the foreign language side of things ?
Thanks again,
Tony
Sorry about that Tony, yes it should be decreases load time (I've edited the reply). If you mean to compress image files, no, you don't need a plugin, or learn a foreign language as you put it (I take it you mean HTML and CSS).
There's are many image compression programs on the net but the one I use is called tinypng, it's free, you don't have to install it on your pc, and it's simple to use and will compress png and jpeg images. Just do a search on Google for tinypng. Once on your screen, browse for the image you want to compress, once compressed don't forget to download it.
Will that be done in the editing side of the webpage - or do I have to take the image off to the media library, compress it and then re import it ?
Tony
Hi Tony, no, you can't compress an image by editing the webpage, you will need to compress the originals first as I don't think you can compress them directly from the media library.
Once you have compressed them you will need to delete the existing media library image and upload the compressed one. Hope this helps.
If you just scale them down to reduce the size, you can do this directly in the media library. :)
No need to delete or upload anything.
I have the same problems when loading my page. I deactivated some of my plugins, but the speed of the loading didn't improve.
Hi Alma, I still have speed fluctuations of 2.6s - 6.0s which is a dramatic improvement on what I was getting. As shown in Marcus's training I moved the site to "Cloudflare" and that made around 25% improvement after a few days.
I then went through ALL my images - which I was sure I had already put through "tinypng" and some I put though twice to compress them even further. THEN, I found an image that was not attached to any of my pages and posts, which were driven from within the theme itself.
Now I am quite happy with the speed.
I hope you have similar success.
Tony
Glad you resolved your problems.