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Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [W3 Total Cache] Scheduled Posts Fail to PublishSure. How will I know if it’s causing the error? Will I receive some kind of warning, or do I need to schedule a test post after each one?
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [W3 Total Cache] Scheduled Posts Fail to PublishI’m just using the native WordPress scheduling, no plugins.
For settings, the following are enabled:
Page cache
Validate timestamps
Object cache
Browser cacheForum: Plugins
In reply to: [W3 Total Cache] Scheduled Posts Fail to Publish@vmarko I tried this just now, and with W3 Total Cache disabled, the test post published as scheduled. So it does seem the issue is related to the plugin.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: How to Publish Scheduled PostsThank you. Yes, I’ve always had the warning in site health about “a scheduled event has failed,” but the scheduled posts have always worked anyway.
I’m now seeing a new warning that says “outdated SQL server,” which seems to have appeared within the last few days. This is also when scheduled posts stopped working, so I assume they’re connected. It says I need to contact my host so I’ll do that.
In the meantime, is there any way to manually publish my scheduled posts from the past week, short of copy/pasting all of them into a fresh post?Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [W3 Total Cache] Improving image load timesAh, so the image you’ve linked is the “featured image” for my theme. Every time I post a new post, this image automatically changes to display an image from my most recent post.
Sounds like that means the lazy loading issue is within the theme? I’ll try reaching out to the developer to see if they can help.Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [W3 Total Cache] Improving image load timesThank you! All of this is a little bit over my head, so if you don’t mind a few follow up questions…
Largest Contentful Paint image was lazily loaded – I can see that the Lazyloading is not enabled in the W3 Total cache, so this means that the Lazyload is enabled somewhere, and this may be some other plugin or a theme.
How would I check which plugin uses lazy load? In trying to improve speed I’ve deleted all but the essential plugins so I only have a few. I’ve already deleted Jetpack and Smush, which were the two I thought were causing the conflict, but it must be something else?Largest Contentful Paint element – This image (the same one for lazyloading) is the LCP element and therefore should not be lazuloaded
Is this one specific image on my entire website? Or one per post? How would I determine which image is the largest contentful paint element?
Serve images in next-gen formats – This means converting the images to webp format. This is also available in the W3 Total Cache and you can enable this option in the General settings
I already have this box checked in settings, do I need to do something else to enable it?Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: What changes can I implement to speed up a very slow site?Thank you! Yes, I’ve deleted Smush. I also removed Jetpack and all other non-essential plugins, so I’m down to the bare minimum. I also used Site Health in troubleshooting mode and as far as I can tell the issue is possibly W3 Total Cache related. Bluehost told me to use this plugin, but now that it’s installed, activating/deactivating doesn’t seem to make much difference. Images do seem to load a little bit faster if I disable lazy loading, but Site Kit is still telling me that my page load time is around 4.5 seconds, or “poor.”
I’m going to work on scaling down my images, and actually just heard back from the theme developer with the best sizes to use. But something else is definitely still at play, because even with the large images the site has never taken this long to load. @vmarko, could it possibly something related to something I need to change in W3 Total Cache settings?Yes, I think moving to a new hosting supplier might be in the cards. Short-term I just want to get the site speed back to where it was, but longer term it’s something I need to investigate.
Between chat and phone I think I spoke to five different people yesterday, and really accomplished nothing. I’ve been with Bluehost for more than a decade, hosting multiple sites for business and personal projects, and their customer support used to be truly top-notch. Sadly that’s no longer the case. I got better advice for free from these forums and Reddit than from the company I’m paying to help me.
I’ve now been upgraded to “level two” and am supposed to receive an email from a technician today, so maybe that will be more productive!
Sigh. Still on the phone with them. They just keep saying they can’t replicate the issue and there is nothing they can do but clear the cache again.
Just got off the phone with them. They told me to hire a developer to fix it, but unfortunately that isn’t in the budget right now.
I was then placed on hold for about 30 minutes while they tried to troubleshoot. They cleared the servers, and told me to wait 1 hour and then call back if nothing changes. Currently waiting 1 hour but not overly optimistic, considering this is what was tried earlier this morning and it didn’t fix anything.
After my own Googling, I actually suspect it’s a caching issue—I found quite a few posts from people saying W3 Total Cache caused slow image loading and slowed down the backend, which I’m also experiencing.
If I enable W3 Total Cache, all of the warnings above disappear and my site health is “good,” but the images barely load. If I disable it and use the Bluehost cache instead, I see a slight improvement in image loading but get a critical issue: “Page cache is detected but the server response time is still too slow” and a recommended improvement: “You should use a persistent object cache.” And with either method, it’s still taking several minutes for a page to fully load.Thank you. Unfortunately this didn’t seem to change anything. I kept seeing the same issues regardless of which plugin I checked.
However, I had already removed the Smush plugin (which I suspect was the one which caused the issue) so I couldn’t test it. Other than that and W3 Total Cache, the other plugins are all things I’ve been using for months/years without any problems.
I’m wondering if I changed something when I set up the Smush settings and that change “stuck” even though I’ve disabled the plugin? In addition to speed, the images load differently now (they sort of “click” or “unfold” one section at a time) so I’m thinking I changed this somewhere but have no idea how to change it back.And yes, Smush was just installed yesterday. I kept seeing the recommendation to optimize images as a way to improve speed, and this plugin had great reviews so I thought it would do the trick.
However, before yesterday my site was on the slower side, but fully functional, and all images loaded just fine. Now half of them don’t load at all, or they load strangely (wrong size, only half of an image, etc.) despite looking fine in the backend.Yep! I actually already have that plugin. It currently says:
1 critical issue
Critical issues are items that may have a high impact on your sites performance or security, and resolving these issues should be prioritized.
Critical issues are items that may have a high impact on your sites performance or security, and resolving these issues should be prioritized.WordPress update available (6.4.3) Security
A new minor update is available for your site. Because minor updates often address security, it’s important to install them.
3 recommended improvements
Recommended items are considered beneficial to your site, although not as important to prioritize as a critical issue, they may include improvements to things such as; Performance, user experience, and more.
You should remove inactive plugins Security
Plugins extend your site’s functionality with things like contact forms, ecommerce and much more. That means they have deep access to your site, so it’s vital to keep them up to date.
Your site has 24 active plugins, and they are all up to date.
Your site has 3 inactive plugins. Inactive plugins are tempting targets for attackers. If you are not going to use a plugin, you should consider removing it.
A scheduled event has failed Performance
The scheduled event, epc_purge_request, failed to run. Your site still works, but this may indicate that scheduling posts or automated updates may not work as intended.
You should use a persistent object cache Performance
A persistent object cache makes your site’s database more efficient, resulting in faster load times because WordPress can retrieve your site’s content and settings much more quickly.
Your hosting provider can tell you if a persistent object cache can be enabled on your site. Your host appears to support the following object caching services: APCu.
Just since yesterday morning. It happened after installing Smush and W3 Total Cache.
When I asked my host about restoring from a backup, they said there is no need because the site works fine on their end, and to contact the developer of the plugins. However, I’ve deactivated both plugins and the problem still persists, so I’m not sure how to proceed.Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: What changes can I implement to speed up a very slow site?Thank you. I just contacted my host and they weren’t much help, basically said to contact the developer of the plugin. I do use shared hosting and you’re definitely right about changing hosts in the long-term. I’ve had a big increase in website traffic over the past few months and am hoping to monetize, but I really need to get the speed issue resolved first.
Fairly certain it’s Smush (possibly interacting with Jetpack?) which is causing the issue at the moment—I might make a fresh post to see if I can get the developer’s attention. I see there are quite a few older posts from WP users with similar problems, so it seems like a known issue.
In terms of the image resizer plugin, how do I know what size image to use? I’ve been resizing my images (before upload) to max 1500px wide and 72 dpi, but clearly this isn’t small enough. The other comment mentions something about resizing to the width of the page, but I’m not sure how I’d determine that, either?