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Blog very slow and not displaying correctly

  1. jjlibrary
    Member

    We are a library with a WordPress.com blog. We have two pipes to the Internet. Since last Wednesday our blog has been loading slowly and not been displaying correctly when delivered over our Verizon T1. The same blog, viewed over our cable provider's service at the same time is displayed correctly. I have spoken with other libraries in our geographic area who also use Verizon and they are having a similar problem. Specifically the problem is very slow page loads -- 1 min. - 3 mins. -- and/or sometimes complete failure to load. If the page does load, it looks like plain HTML with no theming or CSS applied.

    The blog I need help with is itsgermane.johnjermain.org.

  2. thesacredpath
    Member

    I just checked the page load time using pingdom.com for your main page, and it took 6.4 seconds.

    You need to talk with Verizon about this as it seems obvious the issues are on their end.

    Are sites other than your blog hosted here slow as well?

  3. shoreacres
    Member

    @thesacredpath -

    I hadn't heard of pingdom.com, but just gave it a try. 6.3 seconds with a cable connection. I'm going to clean up the side bar a bit and see if I can't drop that a little.

    Thanks for the reference. It's in my toolbox now.

  4. thesacredpath
    Member

    You're welcome. The time is independent of your type of internet connection. It is just between your blog and the pingdom servers, so it is always consistent, but might not always reflect actual load times for a visitor. It just gives you a good baseline. I generally try and keep main site load times to under 5 seconds via pingdom. The three latest sites I set up for clients are using highly optimized themes/templates and they all load at about 3.5 seconds

    One thing that would make a big difference on your site would be to reduce the number of posts shown to around 5 (settings > reading). See what that does for load times.

  5. shoreacres
    Member

    @thesacredpath -

    I should spend a bit less time writing and a bit more blog - tending. Never had noticed the option to set the number of posts on the main page.

    I did reduce the number to 5 but the load time only dropped from 6.3 to 6.1.

    However, the images clearly were an issue, so I went through and reduced their size by 10 per cent across the board and that brought the load time down to 5.2.

    It didn't particularly affect the look of the page and the images still were effective, so I'll pay some attention to that from now on.

    Again, thanks!

  6. thesacredpath
    Member

    You're welcome. Changes are incremental, but you dropped load times by nearly 20%, which is good.

  7. jjlibrary
    Member

    @thesacredpath:
    In answer to the question in your first post in response to my problem, yes other sites on WordPress.com that use the same Verizon frame-relay conncection as we do are also experiencing similar problems. And, as I said, it's not just slowness, but often complete failure to load -- I cannot load the wordpress.com home page at all from my computer that goes through this connection. Other libraries in my area that also use this pipe are having similar problems viewing wordpress.com sites.

  8. thesacredpath
    Member

    There were some cases where firewall/security software was blocking some aspects of wordpress.com at some companies. You might check with the IT people and see if they have recently installed or updated any security software. If they have, then see if they will whitelist wordpress.com.

    Are all the libraries under one IT department or perhaps they are all tied under one department that might have pushed out some new software to all locations?

  9. jjlibrary
    Member

    @thesacredpath: The answer to your question is yes and no. There is a library consortium that provides ISP services for those libraries that wish to use them. They have an IT dept. that controls this service and others that they provide. On the other hand, each library also has its own IT dept. for running the LAN and other internal activities. In any case, after going over this with the consortium's IT dept., and having them contact their Internet providers, we traced the problem to one specific provider among the three that the consortium uses. Basically, all our traffic to WordPress.com was traveling through one gateway. The provider denied any problem on their end, so the consortium's IT dept. set up a filter to catch traffic to wordpress.com sites and route it through another provider. This workaround fixed our immediate problem, even though the underlying issue remains.

  10. livinghopecolorado
    Member

    I am having a similar issue, but I know it is not my internet connection because I am connecting across our LAN. Also, I am running another PHP site via Joomla on the same server, and it works just fine. When I try to load the WordPress site, it hangs and hangs, and the CPU spikes for a significant amount of time. It worked fine when I first installed it, but then it started to slow almost immediately.

    You can access the Joomla site via https://www.livinghopecolorado.org and one of the WordPress sites via https://www.livinghopecolorado.org/blog

    Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

  11. livinghopecolorado
    Member

    I am having a similar issue, but I know it is not my internet connection because I am connecting across our LAN. Also, I am running another PHP site via Joomla on the same server, and it works just fine. When I try to load the WordPress site, it hangs and hangs, and the CPU spikes for a significant amount of time. It worked fine when I first installed it, but then it started to slow almost immediately.

    You can access the Joomla site via https://www.livinghopecolorado.org and one of the WordPress sites via https://www.livinghopecolorado.org/blog. Make sure to note that both are httpS and not http, which sends users to a completely different server.

    Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

  12. livinghopecolorado
    Member

    I also forgot to mention that when I try access the admin panel via blog/wp-admin, it just sends me back to the root WordPress folder.

    Sorry about the double post on my last comment.

  13. airodyssey
    Member

    @livinghopecolorado: You also appear to have forgotten to read the sticky post on top of this forum ;-)
    http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/7-things-to-know-before-posting-in-wordpresscom-forums?replies=1

    It looks like you have a self-hosted WordPress.ORG blog and are in the wrong forum. Please ask your question on http://wordpress.org/support

  14. livinghopecolorado
    Member

    Sorry about that! I did miss it. Thanks!

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