Hi,
We’re running into a problem on one page on our site. It is loading very slowly. It uses Search and Filter and the Advanced Custom Fields plugin on WordPress.
Page in question:
certara.com/resource-library — production
certara.jkstaging.com/resource-library — our staging and testing environment
Information:
(1) Server, multiple (exists across all environments):
(a) Local: PHP7 / MariaDB
(b) Staging: PHP 5.4.45 / MySQL 5.5.37
(c) Production: PHP 5.6.24, MySQL ??? (can’t find version)
(b) Site:
(a) WordPress, multiple post types (11 post types) and several taxonomies (authors [~2200 terms], solutions [~11 terms], therapeutic areas [8 terms], publications [~170 terms]
Troubleshooting steps (all failure):
(1) Cache plugin addition. This made it a little better, but load times are still poor.
(2) Updating all WordPress plugins to latest version locally and on staging.
(3) Disabling all custom code, disabling all plugins except Advanced Custom Fields and Search & Filter, and placing the S&F shortcode on a new test page. Thereafter, disabling the custom Underscores-built theme, and testing with Twentyfifteen (default WordPress theme).
(3) Running P3 Performance Profiler – could not get the page to load. [09-Aug-2016 18:45:38 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 72 bytes) in /www/wp-content/plugins/search-filter-pro/public/includes/class-search-filter-taxonomy-object-walker.php on line 170
(4) Increasing PHP’s allocated memory from 128M to 256M.
(5) Ran WP Optimize (DB optimizer plugin): Started 101 MB, went to 78 MB… and made zero difference in speed.
(6) Changed options on S&F plugin: Changed “Use Background Processes” under Settings as it warns about site slowdown… no change.
(7) Installed Query Monitor and used information for debugging.
(8) Continually checked WordPress debug.log files.
Troubleshooting steps (success):
(1) Deleting Author terms until there were only 400 of them. This made the page significantly faster. But deleting content is obviously not a solution that will work for the client! Here are some Query Monitor results:
Page generation: 0.8506 (2.8% of 30s limit)
Peak memory: 23,649 kB (4.5% of 524,288 kB limit)
DB query time: 0.0996
DB queries: SELECT: 489
Object cache: 88.4% hit rate (External object cache: false)
Staging and test environment information:
(1) Theme is set to default Twentyfifteen. Only difference is a custom template we built for the Resource Library.
(2) WordPress, plugins fully up-to-date.
(3) Database copy taken from production yesterday.
(4) All plugins fully up-to-date. WordPress up-to-date.
(5) All plugins EXCEPT Advanced Custom Fields and Search & Filter disabled.
(5) Pages to test are:
(a) http://certara.jkstaging.com/resource-library-test-page-sf-593/ — just the search form
(b) http://certara.jkstaging.com/resource-library/ — search form & template
(6) WordPress login to test is attached in private reply
(7) NOTE: If the Resource Library page “seems fast enough” please note that with all of the default stuff enabled etc., we are still seeing variable times of between 2.5 to 4 seconds loading time on the Resource Library. Other pages on the site are loading in <500 ms… there is definitely something wrong here, and the load time shoots up to 5-7 seconds when all other plugins and our custom theme is active.
Thank you!
