I\u2019m using The Events Calendar for the first time and like many things about it, but I\u2019m finding that it\u2019s absolutely destroying my page load times. I\u2019ve read through all the docs I can find, including the knowledge base, and although there are a lot of great suggestions there, none of them help my dev site.<\/p>\n
Background: I\u2019m using a widely-used theme (Total) that I\u2019ve used many dozens of times on other sites, and on the server I\u2019m using (SiteGround) would expect a Home page with the features I\u2019m using to load in about 2.5-3.5 seconds. With The Events Calendar in use, the actual loading time is a gruesome 6.5-8.5 seconds. Ouch!! When I disable Events Calendar and Events Calendar Pro, the page immediately loads in about what I\u2019d expect: 3.25-3.5 seconds in repeated tests. The only action I need to take to get this 50% savings in load time is disabling the Events Calendar.<\/p>\n
I know there are a ton of things that can affect performance, so here\u2019s a description of the server environment, WP config, and the things I\u2019ve tried to fix this element:<\/p>\n
\u2013 PHP version is 7.1.8, which I know is not the recommended 7.2 but is pretty close
\n\u2013 WP_MEMORY_LIMIT is 256M
\n\u2013 there\u2019s some level of caching and CSS\/JS minification happening via the free tier of Cloudflare
\n\u2013 I\u2019ve installed and run WP-Optimize to eliminate database clutter
\n\u2013 I\u2019ve enabled the Month View Cache (under Events > Settings > Display tab)
\n\u2013 I\u2019ve set the Events Calendar to only show two events when clicking a date. not sure if that matters, but trying to keep the query light.
\n\u2013 the current month view (July 2018) only has a couple of events, so it\u2019s not as if there are dozens and dozens of event listings in the query for the active view
\n\u2013 there are a few recurring events in the database, with probably approx 100 total instances (including single and recurring events). all events are pretty light in content, just a sentence or two of description and very few images or anything else beyond the basic commonly used fields.
\n\u2013 I\u2019m using the Events Calendar Category Colors plugin, which doesn\u2019t seem like it should be a resource hog, but I mention it just to leave no known stone unturned
\n\u2013 SiteGround offers its own server-side caching, and I\u2019ve set that up and configured it properly BUT it\u2019s not yet active because I\u2019m running the site off a temporary dev URL and not the \u201creal\u201d URL that it will be running from post-launch. SG support says the SuperCacher is domain-specific, so I guess there\u2019s a chance some server caching benefits might kick in after launch, but I\u2019m sure not willing to bet on that and would love to have a solution before go-live, for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n
Sorry for the long post, but I know if I didn\u2019t lay out all the above, people would (correctly) suggest a lot of stuff I\u2019ve already tried. I\u2019d be extremely grateful for any insights on this so-far intractable problem. . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-1569050","topic","type-topic","status-closed","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n