I’ve been having a problem with my website. I had switched the type of my hosting service with Go Daddy, and after that switch the problem started. While the site was fast enough, my admin login was slow to the point of not even loading the page.
I got on the telephone with Go Daddy service support and they did a couple of things and then told me the server was just fine. They surmised that one or more of my plugins was causing the PHP files to load really slow.
The suggestion was to deactivate all of my plug-ins and delete the ones I was not using. Then to reactivate my plugins one at a time to make sure there was no problem. I tried deactivating my plugins, but the webpage was so slow that it kept timing out.
I found a support article on Go Daddy that suggested I rename the plug-ins folder so that WordPress wouldn’t know where the plugins were located. I named it plugins_test.
This certainly allowed WordPress to load quickly and I was able to navigate within the admin section, but I got an error because WordPress couldn’t find the plugin folder. Once I renamed the plugin_test folder to plugins, everything was back to its normal speed. I deactivated all my plugins, then activated those I thought essential, and deleted the rest.
The biggest problem was solved when I renamed the plugins folder to allow WordPress to run unfettered.
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“The suggestion was to deactivate all of my plug-ins and delete the ones I was not using. Then to reactivate my plugins one at a time to make sure there was no problem. I tried deactivating my plugins, but the webpage was so slow that it kept timing out. ”
Hi. Go Daddy is notorious for overloading their servers resulting in slow load performance. They are also notorious for giving customers the run-around, making it appear that it is your problem when the problem is with the overloaded server.
I had this same experience 6 years ago and I left and found a real web hosting company.
Even on an overloaded server static content may load fine as it requires very little server resources to send static files. Dynamic content like PHP code and database queries is where you will notice severe performance issues on an overloaded server.
One more thing: I notice you are using WP Super Cache to cache your pages to static HTML. WP Super Cache is outputting an error message in your HTML as a comment. View the source HTML of your homepage and you will see this:
WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed!
You might want to take a look at what is causing that error.
Thanks for the tip about WP Super Cache.
What “real web hosting company” are you using?
Hello, Gregory. My web host is A Small Orange. They are great and I would recommend them to anyone. If you are ever in the market for a new hosting company, you can check them out. Another hosting company that gets rave reviews is HostGator. HostGator is one of those “unlimited” resources companies that when you read the fine print you find out is not really unlimited. But they do get excellent reviews for their hosting quality and support. Trouble is that on the hosts with “unlimited” resources or huge amounts like that which Go Daddy offers some customers actually try to use it. That can and often does negatively impact server performance resulting in slow loading and other issues. Anything is better than Go Daddy though.