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Performance issues with XStore WordPress Theme

This topic has 14 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 1 years ago ago by Rose Tyler

Antonis

Participant

January 27, 2023 at 17:44

Hi, I would like to share with you that I’m issuing many 500 errors – Connection timeouts using the XStore Worpress Theme. Our demo is uploaded here:

The speed is very poor and very often it needs 2 or 3 refreshes to load all elements with the correct style.

It feels so heavy that drains all our server’s resources.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Please, contact administrator
for this information.

#345259 Copied Theme version: 8.3.8 WooCommerce version: 7.1.1

13 Answers

Tony Rodriguez

Support staff

January 28, 2023 at 06:08

Hello, @Antonis,

We have recently tested your website on GTMetrix and the results can be found here: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo01.coreit.gr/6vMrlJu5/. The top issues identified by GTMetrix are listed in the report.

Reduce initial server response time (Keep the server response time for the main document short because all other requests depend on it. Consider using a plugin like WP Rocket to significantly reduce server response time » https://gtmetrix.com/go/wprocket-general)

Avoid chaining critical requests (The Critical Request Chains show you what resources are loaded with a high priority. Consider reducing the length of chains, reducing the download size of resources, or deferring the download of unnecessary resources to improve page load) https://postimg.cc/CZ7FY8g5

Avoid an excessive DOM size (A large DOM will increase memory usage, cause longer style calculations, and produce costly layout reflows. https://gtmetrix.com/avoid-an-excessive-dom-size.html)

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) CDNs can give an equally fast web experience to your users across the globe.

Further, you can read our theme documentation on speed here: https://xstore.helpscoutdocs.com/article/100-how-to-speed-up-my-website & https://xstore.helpscoutdocs.com/article/128-how-to-improve-wp-rocket-settings-with-xstore

Kind Regards,
8Themes Team.

#345280 Copied

Antonis

Participant

March 28, 2023 at 13:59

Hello again! We optimized as much as we could our server in order to achieve better performance.

We resolved the timeouts and the broken layout styles but the speed remains very slow unfortunately and the eShop we created is just for demonstration, almost empty.

Can you please suggest me a solution to this? We chose the specific theme because we read everywhere that its speed is great but we just can’t make it run even in average/acceptable speed. I guess we are missing something major here.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Please contact administrator
for this information.

#351525 Copied

Tony Rodriguez

Support staff

March 29, 2023 at 05:23

Hello Antonis,

We apologize for the inconvenience. We have conducted another test of your site on GTMetrix and the results are still not satisfactory: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo01.coreit.gr/Kq6LypKz/.

There are several steps you can take to improve the speed of your WordPress website based on the GTMetrix suggestions:

There are several steps you can take to improve the speed of your WordPress website based on the GTMetrix suggestions:

1. Reduce initial server response time:

Optimize your server configuration and hardware, or consider upgrading to a faster server.

Minimize the number of plugins and scripts running on your site, and remove any unnecessary ones.

Use caching plugins like WP Rocket to reduce the server load and speed up the response time.

2. Avoid an excessive DOM size:

Minimize the number of requests your site makes to the server by reducing the number of scripts and plugins.

Defer loading of JavaScript and CSS files using plugins like Async JavaScript or WP Deferred JavaScripts.

Use lazy loading of images to reduce the initial page size.

3. Avoid chaining critical requests:

Minimize the number of requests made by critical resources like CSS and JavaScript files.

Use minification and compression of CSS and JavaScript files, we have a CSS minification option under Theme Options >> Speed Optimization.

Load essential resources inline and defer non-essential ones.

4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN):

Use a CDN to serve your site’s static assets from multiple server locations to reduce the load time for users in different locations.

5. Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy:

Set the cache control headers on your static assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files to enable browser caching.

Use a caching plugin like WP Rocket to enable server-side caching and improve the load time of your site.

By implementing these steps, you should be able to improve the speed of your WordPress website and achieve a better score on GTMetrix.

We hope this issue can be resolved soon.

Best regards,
8Theme’s Team

#351575 Copied

Antonis

Participant

March 29, 2023 at 10:19

My main concern is that right now, we have only your quickstart demo installed without many changes, with many of its plugins uninstalled.

Even this way, it is by far our slowest eShop (both the frontend and the administration panel) and it just can’t be published like that… Shouldn’t be running smoothly on its own since we didn’t change your configuration and tools?
Consider that we only created about 10-15 products and 8-10 categories. What will happen if we have 500 products in 30 categories later?

1. Reduce initial server response time
We contacted our web server provider and we checked together the available resources which are more than enough and we were told that there is no point on updating it. It will make no difference.

2. Avoid an excessive DOM size
We installed Async JavaScript and chose Defer excluding JQuery. If we have to input anything in the fields, please let me know. Also installed Smush for lazy loading and compressing images.

3. Avoid chaining critical requests
Done Minify CSS -> Theme Options >> Speed Optimization. Load essential resources inline and defer non-essential ones.

4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
We rather avoid that at this point for small projects. All other installations are working fine so we don’t want to use a CDN for just one of our themes

5. Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy
Can you suggest a free plugin for this job? We don’t want to spend more than the theme’s cost for this installation

Surprisingly, the results are even worse after all the above as you can see here: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/demo01.coreit.gr/mNXGq02q/

Thanks a lot for your help and the detailed answers and I really hope you can solve our issue and make it possible to use it!

#351617 Copied

Rose Tyler

Support staff

March 31, 2023 at 07:49

Hello, Antonis,

We apologize for the extended delay in responding.

Please provide us with temporary wp-admin access so that we can investigate what can be done to assist you.
To provide wp-admin access, you can create a new user account with administrator role via the Dashboard, and provide us with the username and password via the Private Content area.

Kind Regards,
8theme team

#351834 Copied

Antonis

Participant

March 31, 2023 at 08:52

Sure!

Thanks a lot for your help!

Please contact administrator
for this information.

#351842 Copied

Rose Tyler

Support staff

March 31, 2023 at 10:52

Hello, Antonis,

Thank you for the response, but we can’t open your site https://prnt.sc/B2lnafKdwaCo Please check it.

Kind Regards,
8theme team

#351866 Copied

Antonis

Participant

March 31, 2023 at 12:34

Can you try again please?

I guess that Wordfence’s firewall blocked you so I uninstalled it.

Thanks.

#351879 Copied

Rose Tyler

Support staff

March 31, 2023 at 13:39

Hello, Antonis,

Thank you for your response.

We opened your site after activation VPN.

We’ve updated the theme and XStore Core plugin.
We disabled Wishlist and Compare plugins because now you can find this functionality on Theme Options > WooCommerce.

Also, we enabled XStore Ajaxify in settings of elements on your Home page, for example – https://prnt.sc/RkniFUX5OhTB

Please check descriptions of all plugins that are activated on your site and disable plugins you do not really use because every additional plugin slows down the site a bit.

As mentioned here https://xstore.helpscoutdocs.com/article/100-how-to-speed-up-my-website , the most important part of optimizing your site is caching, so we would recommend you use cache plugin. Contact support of cache plugin to find out guidance about the best settings configuration.

Reduce initial server response time – for this contact your hosting provider.

Kind Regards,
8theme team

Please contact administrator
for this information.

#351881 Copied

Antonis

Participant

March 31, 2023 at 15:40

We enabled W3 Total Cache plugin which messed up our CSS at some points (even this caused it or your updates, no clue about it but no bid deal, we will try and fix them).
First visit on the website with the plugin enabled takes about 20 seconds and from the second it takes about 6.
Still, even if we keep this configuration, we cannot settle with the huge first visit loadtime.

We contacted our server provider and they responded that they had already optimized it and the resources are more than sufficient to support it.

Could you please inform us what is the standard load time of your theme for the first visit, even without caching, image optimization and css/js minification?
We just want to understand when should we stop trying to make it faster.
If there is nothing else we can do to reduce the loading time significantly we should find an alternative as quick as possible to catch up with all our deadlines.

Thanks a lot in for your time and effort and looking forward for your response.

Please contact administrator
for this information.

#351895 Copied

Rose Tyler

Support staff

April 1, 2023 at 10:31

Hello, Antonis,

Thank you for your reply.

First of all, you have our default video on the first slide which was created for our demo and I think it is not needed for your website -> https://demo01.coreit.gr/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/XStore-default-opt.mp4 but it takes 1/2sec to load -> https://prnt.sc/6vXjG1I8SY5U

Some images could be optimized from your side -> https://prnt.sc/JgiG4_xsRGlK (100kb is too much) https://tinypng.com/

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the standard time to load. Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this question as the page load time is dependent on a variety of factors such as the server location, page content size, and the client’s country. To put it another way, this question is akin to asking “How much food does a person need to not be hungry?” – the answer to which will vary from person to person. In our demos, we use caching and correctly configurated CDN, and recommend the same to our customers.

You should know that page speed tools are just programmatically written testers with many different conditions which mostly are not needed to be perfect for many customers who goes to your website. If you check the page and it is ok optimized for you as a customer then you may skip those code-written testers. If you still want to improve site loading, we can recommend you to test your website on other testers. GTmetrix shows in detail what is taking too much time and what could be improved. (which images, litespeed style files, js files etc.)
It is required to mention that each extra plugin installed on your WordPress loads its own scripts and styles which could add a few seconds of page loading time and that’s why you have bad results.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Kind Regards,
8theme team

#351948 Copied

Antonis

Participant

April 3, 2023 at 09:34

I think we lost the point here (my bad maybe) but thank you for your detailed answer.

We will do our best to optimize it further and I really hope it will be usuable in the end. Although I have to say that this seems to be the slowest theme we ever worked with.

It just feels abnormal that in order to make a commercial theme run in acceptable speed, we need to pay for another two subscriptions of speed optimizing tools.

I still feel that we are missing something here on our end…

Anyway thanks again.

#352053 Copied

Rose Tyler

Support staff

April 3, 2023 at 12:12

Hello Antonis,

Thank you for your response.

Private Content.

Kind Regards,
8theme team

Please contact administrator
for this information.

#352098 Copied
Tagged: issues, optimization, performance, themes, woocommerce, wordpress, xstore
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