Day: November 12, 2013

People visiting this site may have noticed that it was loading slower than a molasses popsicle.¹ I’ve been aware of the problem, but I hadn’t had much luck tracking it down, despite a couple of tickets open to my hosting provider.  I was just about to do the whole “Disable every single plugin and add them back one by one” routine when they sent me a note that ultimately provided the ultimate clue.

They showed me a load report which indicated that the slowdown appeared, in part, to be related to content that was utilising Google Fastpages.²  The only problem was that I didn’t recall installing anything that made reference to that, so I started going through all my installed plugins to see if one of them tied into that service. Coming up empty, I started searching the web, and discovered that this wasn’t actually a WordPress plugin, but rather an option in my hosting provider’s customer platform.  I had apparently turned it on³

Once I turned this option off, my page load times dropped from 5-9 seconds to around 600ms.   That’s MUCH better.

1. This site being my main site, https://www.autographedcat.com/. not one of the mirrors. ↩

2. The irony of this does not escape me. ↩

3. I don’t recall doing so, but I may have accidentally clicked the checkbox, or else I just forgot. ↩