Slow Events Archive Loading

[Matthew]

Hi,

I’ve had a read through old threads and so far have not been able to find a solution. Basically my events page loads really slow. Usually >10 seconds. I have about 2000 events in the database currently as I cleaned out 1000 past events to try and speed it up to no avail (as a side note this really should be an automatic option within the plugin to delete past events).

I’m on managed wordpress with godaddy and the rest of the site is loading very quickly despite my millions of plugins (I’m not a developer so unfortunately I need a lot of plugins).

Here is my events archive page on pingdom timed at around 10s usually:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/RpdgI/https://physiocourse.com/events/

Here is my homepage:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/dg1L2D/https://physiocourse.com/

Here is one of my other pages that loads fairly slow:
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/dZZLqK/https://physiocourse.com/physiotherapy-jobs/physical-therapy-jobs/

As you can see, the other 2 load in <5 seconds where the events archive is >10.

I know from a previous thread that you guys are working hard on performance for you upcoming releases so I’m grateful for your efforts. I’m just wondering if there is any way I can speed things up in the meantime? I’m actually considering switching to wpengine with a fairly heafty increase in my hosting plan (from ~ $70 per year to ~$50 per month) to try and speed up the site. Obviously I’d like to avoid this! My entire site is built around TEC with the events archive being the main focus of my site.

Could someone have a look at those pingdom things and see if there is any way I can speed up the events archive page? It seems like the vast majority of those 10 seconds comes from TEC and all the other plugins are only taking a fraction of the share.

Thanks again for your help.

Mat

[Josh]

Hey Mat,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

I definitely understand that issues like these can be very frustrating. As an initial step, have you tried turning on the month view cache option within the Events Settings? Additionally, do you have any other caching set up on the site? This will allow for your different views to display without having every page load dependent on interaction with the database.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

[Matthew]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for getting back to me. I had seen the advice about the month view cache in another thread but I’m not using the month view so that’s not the problem.

I do already having caching as part of my hosting plan which seems to kind of work in that if I clear the cache the page takes even longer to load 🙂

It’s not that it takes a long time to flick between views, it’s the initial loading of the page – the default view – which I have se to the list view.

Any other thoughts?

[Josh]

Hey Matthew,

I reviewed the network log when loading a few pages on your site and got the following results:

• My Account (https://cloudup.com/cp18mY64OYC)
• Home page (https://cloudup.com/cliSQNLzoAb)
• Main Events page (https://cloudup.com/cC0Rt4LMCpl)

When testing I noticed the site was pretty slow but it was really the entire site that was running pretty slow and the homepage had about 2 second longer load time than the events archive. My suggestion at this point would be to take advantage of the 60 day risk free option from WP Engine to see if upgrading the hosting plan helps out with the entire site load.

Let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

 

[Matthew]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the advice, but obviously changing hosting is a pain and I really dont want to fork out any more money per month if the problem is the plugin not the hosting. I’m afraid I’m having a very different experience to what you describe. I just ran the test again on physiocourse.com and got 8s for the homepage and 15s for the events archive.

To make sure this wasn’t another plugin I pulled my site into a staging environment and ran the tests again. Same results, the events archive tests way way slower than everything else. This mimics the real life experience I get when browsing my website:

Event Archive Page, Staging site, TEC plugin only, cache flushed = 10.34s (I had everything from 6s to 20s!):
https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317861/0kcPC4WmuPlNmWkFAS249aZEq4CRI8Z4

Homepage, Staging site, TEC plugin only, cache flushed = 2.58s:
https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317863/4gZZLgqi4Rit1nXKRyRULkdWA1uNvVm7/

Job Board Page, Staging site, TEC plugin + Job Manager only, cache flushed = 1.87s:
https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317873/ogq42HCqdNy7RAuANb01Ez1q2C5avL4U/

Event Archive, Staging site, cache flushed = 2.40s:
https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317869/W6q44g2aOo9vopS5US5HfQhfkJ1FVzL0/

Homepage, Staging site, cache flushed = 1.71s:
https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317866/3ghl98D1CkaABxuhfQDg2OhPHf6iG1bm/

I have around 2000 events in my database. I expect the events archive to load a bit slower as there is not much else on my site, but it’s really slow.

Is the hosting really the problem? I think I’m on a pretty good plan with managed wordpress from godaddy. Do other people with around 2000 events have similarly slow loading times?

Thanks again for your time,
Mat

[Josh]

Hey Mat,

Thanks for following up with these! I did have one quick question, was this 2.4 second load with cache enabled https://nimbus.everhelper.me/client/notes/share/317869/W6q44g2aOo9vopS5US5HfQhfkJ1FVzL0?

The number of events can definitely have an impact. However, I can say that I have seen sites with 1,000 events that loaded terribly slow while I’ve also seen sites with 5,000 events that loads quickly like the rest of the site. Naturally though, if there are thousands of events in the database, a good cache set up and quick hosting will be required or you will definitely see much longer loading times.

One thing that would concern me personally though would be the 8 second load on the homepage that you noted on the live site. I believe this may be a sign that the current configuration just may not be able to support faster load on a site with several thousand events.

Thanks!

[Matthew]

Hi Josh,

No that was after I flushed the cache. I just did it again on the staging site with no other plugins active and got 1.61s for the homepage and 7.38s for the events archive.

I ran the live site tests again, 5s for the homepage and 13.38s for the archive.

So, I just want to clarify your opinion, with around 2000-3000 events and no other plugins active you would expect the events archive to load reasonably quickly. With a blank canvas staging site it’s 1.61 for the homepage and 7.38 for the events archive, you think that is slow and it is down to the hosting.

If that is the problem, I may need to look at other hosting, >7 seconds to load my most important page is way too slow. I’m just concerned I will move and find the problem is with The Events Calendar plugin. I’ve discussed it with Godaddy and they say it should be fast and the problem is either your plugin or a plugin conflict (which it is not as I’ve deactivated all the others).

You definitely think this is a hosting problem?

[Josh]

Hey Matthew,

One last thing before we fall completely back on the hosting issue. Would you be willing to revert your plugins back to version 3.11? You can do that by downloading version 3.11 from your account on this site of PRO and version 3.11 of the core plugin from the WordPress.org repository here. Once doing that, do you experience the same sluggish behavior from the site?

Thanks!

[Matthew]

Wow,

That actually seems to have speeded it up quite a lot. It loads much quicker now when you click on it and I confirmed it with pingdom. With 3.12.4 (not on 3.12.5 due to filter bar conflict – waiting for the fix) it was 9.5 sec and with 3.11 it was 4 sec.

I performed both in the staging area where I have left it for now.

What is the difference between 3.12.4 and 3.11? I can’t stay on the old versions as community events does not work without the latest version of TEC.

What should I do now?

Thanks,
Mat

[Matthew]

Hi Josh,

Actually I just retested staging (3.11) vs live (3.12.4) and there was no difference – did it without the cache too it was still very similar. I’ve deleted some other plugins and the site seems to be running a bit better now although the archive is still taking > 5 seconds to load most of the time.

So I guess if I want it <4 seconds I will have to look at better hosting. Would you agree?

Thanks again for you help,
Mat

[Josh]

Hey Mat,

It couldn’t hurt to give a different hosting environment a try. Particularly one that does boast performance for WordPress sites like WP Engine was mentioned earlier.

Also, take a look at http://www.coolrunning.com/eventcal/events/list. This site does have thousands of active events and still does seem to perform with relatively good speed. You will have some performance issues when dealing with such massive amounts of data, however you still shouldn’t expect to see 10 second load times.

Thanks!

[Matthew]

Thanks Josh,

Mat

[Josh]

Hey Matthew,

No problem. I’ll go ahead and close this thread for now. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to open a new thread.

Thanks!

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