|
Stephanie Redcross
|
July 13, 2015 at 12:47 pm
We’ve noticed a drag on the site when visitors go through the registration process. The registration pages take anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds to load for each steps in the process.
While visitors are still able to register, if we get a significant amount of visitors on the site, the website processes spike causing the server to shut down. We’ve talked the hosting company and they say we need to optimize the plugins to prevent these spikes.
So, we did some searches to see what could be optimized on the site to make things run faster. Here’s one of the reports
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/2forksconference.com/FgLzIiKc
We’ve tried to use Cache Plugin and Minify, however, with every instance of using the plugin, it prevents the registration process from loading (for example, I get into this loop where it removes the attendee information and says I need to add the first name). We used the following instructions for using Cache ( https://eventespresso.com/wiki/setup-nocache-exclusion-rules-event-espresso/
Regardless of the setting we’ve used, the cache plugin blocks many Ajax strips, which keeps people from registering. After multiple attempts, we’ve deactivated Cache and Minify.
I’m hoping someone in the group can provide some recommendations for optimizing the registration process without preventing registrations. It seems all the solutions We’ve found so far, seems to cause additional issues instead of solve the issue.
|
|
Josh
|
July 13, 2015 at 3:36 pm
Hi Stephanie,
The suggestions on the gtmetrix reports are fine for the most part. Enabling gzip compression should help quite a bit if your server supports it.
If you look at the recommendation for deferring the JavaScript parsing, it lists out the scripts along with their file sizes in bytes. 2 of the 3 heaviest files loading on the page are more than likely not needed (from the slider plugin). You’ll gain a really nice optimization by removing the unneeded scripts (marked with arrows) from the page. You can contact support for the Revolution slider plugin and ask them how to set the plugin to only load its scripts on the pages where a slider is displayed. They may have a tutorial that shows how or a setting, if not, here’s a generic tutorial that shows how to disable specific scripts.
As an aside, you’ll need to continue allowing the jQuery library to load. However, you can install the Use Google Libraries plugin and that will also reduce some load from your server. When you load the jQuery library from Google’s CDN, it will also speed up the page load time of your site because the browser will be able to download it concurrently with the other scripts on your site.
Re: Minify CSS: I recommend the Better WordPress Minify plugin for minifying CSS.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/bwp-minify/
You will need to be cautious when minifying JavaScript though. Instead of setting a plugin to minify everything, it’s better to only load the scripts on the pages where they are needed. Like in the above example with the Revolution slider, you can reduce load on the server by setting the slider plugin so it only serves its scripts on the pages that actually have a slider.
Hope that helps!
|
|
Stephanie Redcross
|
July 15, 2015 at 8:41 am
Thanks for the recommendations. WE’ve seen some improvments for the site, however, the registration pages are still loading slow.
Also, we are seeing another issue…..when someone gets to the check out page the spinning wheel keeps turning and turning….in some cases the wheel will just stop and the full page won’t load. If a person hits the refresh button, the page will load. It’s strange because it is only happening 40% of the time. However, it is hard to trouble shoot, since we can’t constantly replicate it. Do you know why this would happen?
Finally, if there a way to get a copy of the EE plugin version 4.7.4 — we want to see if any of our modification are causing a slow down in the site. However, we don’t have an untouched version to compare it to.
|
|
Josh
|
July 15, 2015 at 8:48 am
The spinning gear on your checkout page may be a bug that was fixed in version 4.7.6. It’s the first item in change log for that release:
https://eventespresso.com/wiki/ee4-changelog/#4.7.6
You can download a copy of the 4.7.4 release tag from our Github repository.
https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/releases/tag/4.7.4.p
Please be advised that customizations should not be made to core. You can use the WordPress plugin API to make customizations without hacking core. This will help you avoid the issues that occur from running out of date software.
|
|
Stephanie Redcross
|
July 15, 2015 at 2:39 pm
Thanks we are making the changes so we can update the plugin in the future…..another follow up questions
Can we override this file https://github.com/eventespresso/event-espresso-core/blob/master/modules/single_page_checkout/templates/attendee_information/attendee_info_main.template.php
I have added a file named attendee_info_main.template.php in wp-uploads/espresso/templates with the necessary modifications, but nothing happens.
Is the path correct?
|
|
Stephanie Redcross
|
July 15, 2015 at 4:10 pm
also, the site is still loading super slow…..spinning wheel on checkout page.
I don’t want to ask for too much, but could you take a look at the live site? I just want to make sure I’m not describing the issue incorrectly 🙂
Click Here To Access The Site
If you click on either city….then select a ticket from the dropdown, then enter attendee information….you still see how long it takes for the check-out page to load. This is our 4th year we have been using EE, so it just seems strange that this version is loading so slow. We never had these issue in the past. So, I just want to make sure we aren’t overlooking something in EE4.
Thanks
|
|
Josh
|
July 15, 2015 at 8:15 pm
Hi Stephanie,
It turns out that attendee_info_main.template.php cannot be overridden from /wp-content/uploads/espresso/templates. We can add some hooks to that template if you’d like, the quickest way to make that happen is a pull request on Github.
RE: the site speed. Normally Event Espresso’s registration steps do not load that slow. There is an error that I saw in the console that if resolved may help speed things up:
Mixed Content: The page at 'https://{yoursite}.com/registration-checkout/' was loaded over a secure connection, but contains a form which targets an insecure endpoint 'http://{yoursite}.com/registration-checkout/?step=payment_options'. This endpoint should be made available over a secure connection.
Are you using a plugin to secure the registration form page? If so, it will help to set the plugin’s filters so any URL with registration-checkout in it will load as https. Since admin-ajax.php is also involved, you’ll need to force https on the WP admin side too.
|
|
Stephanie Redcross
|
July 16, 2015 at 2:55 am
Okay….we will submit a request for the hooks
Yes, we are using a plugin for the HTTPS.
While we were examining the HTTPS, we noticed one thing.
At the moment what I have noticed is that the setting TTFB (Time to first byte) take the most out of the time it takes to process a request. Doe EE4 plugin have an impact on this and if so how it can be improved?
|
|
Dean
|
July 16, 2015 at 3:45 am
Hi Stephanie,
EE4 shouldn’t affect that, we see no noticeable delays when using our test servers.
TTFB is an interesting metric, I wasn’t aware of that one. Cloudflare has an interesting response to it: https://blog.cloudflare.com/ttfb-time-to-first-byte-considered-meaningles/
I didn’t notice any significant drag on your site, barring when the mixed content came up (it wasn’t a huge delay, but noticeable compared to the other steps), so I would definitely look into that aspect of it.
|
