Long waiting time on WordPress website

2 comments

1. Sounds like it is a PHP issue. have you tried bypassing PHP to see if that is in fact the issue? To test this, I would recommend installing a caching plugin like Cache Enabler and then implementing the advanced snippet on your origin server to bypass PHP when retrieving the cached HTML that was generated by the plugin.

   Advanced snippet for Apache:

   # Start Cache Enabler
   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
   
    <IfModule mod_mime.c>
    # webp HTML file
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin/.*
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !=POST
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} =""
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author)_
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept} image/webp
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index-webp.html.gz -f
    RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index-webp.html.gz [L]
   
    # gzip HTML file
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin/.*
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !=POST
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} =""
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author)_
    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index.html.gz -f
    RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index.html.gz [L]
   
    AddType text/html .gz
    AddEncoding gzip .gz
    </IfModule>
   
    # default HTML file
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} /$
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin/.*
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !=POST
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} =""
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author)_
    RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index.html -f
    RewriteRule ^(.*) /wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}index.html [L]
   </IfModule>
   # End Cache Enabler
   

   Nginx:

   server {
   
       set $cache_uri $request_uri;
   
       # bypass cache if POST requests or URLs with a query string
       if ($request_method = POST) {
           set $cache_uri 'nullcache';
       }
       if ($query_string != "") {
           set $cache_uri 'nullcache';
       }
   
       # bypass cache if URLs containing the following strings
       if ($request_uri ~* "(/wp-admin/|/xmlrpc.php|/wp-(app|cron|login|register|mail).php|wp-.*.php|/feed/|index.php|wp-comments-popup.php|wp-links-opml.php|wp-locations.php|sitemap(_index)?.xml|[a-z0-9_-]+-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml)") {
           set $cache_uri 'nullcache';
       }
   
       # bypass cache if the cookies containing the following strings
       if ($http_cookie ~* "comment_author|wordpress_[a-f0-9]+|wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in") {
           set $cache_uri 'nullcache';
       }
   
       # custom sub directory e.g. /blog
       set $custom_subdir '';
   
       # default html file
       set $cache_enabler_uri '${custom_subdir}/wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/${http_host}${cache_uri}index.html';
   
       # webp html file
       if ($http_accept ~* "image/webp") {
           set $cache_enabler_uri '${custom_subdir}/wp-content/cache/cache-enabler/${http_host}${cache_uri}index-webp.html';
       }
   
       location / {
           gzip_static on; # this directive is not required but recommended
           try_files $cache_enabler_uri $uri $uri/ $custom_subdir/index.php?$args;
       }
   
       ...
   
   }
   

2. You should apply these certain rules to have some luck:

   1. Use the W3 Total Cache plugin (it’s the best in its niche) or any other cache plugin.
   2. Use optimized images if your theme has some.
   3. Compress all your CSS and JavaScript files.
   4. Use a lazy load plugin to load text quickly but images in background.
   5. Make sure you are not using any framework which slows down page load time in most cases.
   6. Use a content delivery network (CDN).
   7. Add an Expires header to static resources.
   8. Use static HTML where possible as it loads fast.
   9. Make sure there is no unnecessary extra code or files in your theme.
   10. Apply all these mentioned steps and further read about page optimization techniques to have good and long term results.

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