Check if caching is active on the site
There are several ways you can verify that your page is indeed being cached by Batcache
Multiple factors can affect how long a website takes to load, including improperly sized images, uncompressed JavaScript files, and lack of caching—all of which increase Time to First Byte (TTFB). In this article, we’ll walk through various steps to test and optimize your website’s performance.
Understanding Time to First Byte (TTFB)
Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures how long it takes for a website to start loading after you click a link or visit the site. It includes steps like finding the website’s address (DNS lookup), connecting to the server (TCP connection), and the server preparing the data (server processing time).
Interpreting TTFB Metrics
- Good TTFB (< 200ms): Indicates a fast server response, efficient backend processing, and minimal network latency.
- Acceptable TTFB (200ms – 500ms): Generally considered okay but may suggest some room for optimization, particularly in server processing.
- High TTFB (> 500ms): Suggests potential issues with site performance, and lack of effective use of caching.
High TTFB is not related to Presable server performance, but rather to how the site is built. This includes the theme, plugins, custom code, and how resources are managed. These elements can significantly affect how efficiently your site processes and serves content.
Monitoring TTFB can help identify bottlenecks in your website’s performance. Tools like WebPageTest and GTMetrix can provide insights into your site’s TTFB and overall load times.
Identifying Cookies That Interfere with Batcache
Batcache is designed to cache pages to enhance website performance. However, certain cookies can prevent Batcache from caching pages effectively—particularly those with prefixes like wp or wordpress.
Common Scenarios Affecting Batcache
WooCommerce Multilingual & Multicurrency and WPML: These plugins sets cookies such as wcml_client_currency and wcml_client_currency_language to manage currency and language preferences. These cookies can interfere with Batcache, preventing pages from being cached.
To address this, you can customize Batcache to recognize these cookies, ensuring that caching functionality is restored while maintaining the necessary multilingual and multi-currency features on your Pressable site. See – Allowing Caching for WPML and WCML on Pressable
WP Rocket Compatibility with Pressable
WP Rocket is a popular caching plugin; however, the caching features it’s not supported on Pressable and can interfere with the platform’s native caching mechanisms like Batcache. To ensure optimal performance:
- Disable WP Rocket’s Page Caching: This prevents conflicts with Batcache.
- Refer to WP Rocket’s Documentation: For detailed steps on disabling page caching, consult their guide: Disable Page Caching.
By configuring WP Rocket appropriately, you can leverage its optimization features without compromising Pressable’s caching efficiency.
Mailchimp for WooCommerce:
Mailchimp for WooCommerce plugin cookie like mailchimp_landing_site can interfere with caching and prevent it from working to speed up your site. This can be resolved by turning off the landing site cookie as described here.
You can inspect your browser to check for cookies that may interfere with Batcache using browser console under Network tab > Header cookies. If you have confirmed that caching is working effectively on your site, you can then follow the steps below to further identify any bottlenecks.
Check if Edge Cache is Enabled
Edge Cache provides performance improvements, especially in terms of your site’s Time to First Byte (TTFB), by serving page cache directly from the closest server available to a site’s visitors.
Learn more about managing and testing Edge Cache in the feature’s dedicated documentation.
Update your Theme and Plugins
A slow response time can also be caused by outdated plugins and theme files. Not only that, outdated plugins can also be a source for malware to infect your website – another great reason to stay on top of updates. Make sure that everything is running on the latest and greatest versions.
Also, take a look at the number of plugins that your website is using and try to keep that number as low as possible. The more plugins that you use, the higher the chances that one of those plugins will negatively impact your website or will conflict with one another. The fewer plugins, the better.
The Query Monitor plugin can be used to troubleshoot a slow website and identify bottlenecks that affect performance. Read more about using Query Monitor to troubleshoot slow-loading website.
GTMetrix
GTMetrix is a free tool that analyzes your page’s speed performance. It generates reports about the load time and size of your website. Additionally, it provides recommended actions to better improve speed and rates your website against those recommendations. When trying to analyze what might be affecting the load time of your site, this tool is very informative.
WebPageTest
WebPageTest is another tool for measuring webpage performance. It provides a filmstrip view of all assets being loaded by your website, how long those take to load, and what assets might be causing rendering issues. It is also useful for testing your website’s time to first byte (TTFB). Ideally, you would want your TTFB to be 0.50 seconds or less.
Browser Dev Tools
We recommend using Chrome’s “dev tools” to troubleshoot connection times.
To open Chrome’s “dev tools” press ctrl + alt + J on Windows, or cmd + option + J on MacOS. see – How to Inspect network activity.
The “Waterfall” shows all times for all the connections between the browser and the server that’s hosting your website. By looking at the waterfall, you can get an idea of whether there’s an issue with the cache or any of the requests on the page.
A debug bar will open at the bottom of the window. Click on the “Network” tab then reload the page. As the page loads, you will see entries filling up the “waterfall”. Each of those is a single request for the page, javascript, css, images, etc. and they are shoring in order of request time.
The topmost row should be named the URL of your website, and will be the first that hits the server and you can see the time the request took to fulfill the request.
A properly cached request should take no more than 500ms (half a second). Keep in mind that this could vary based on the size of the page and the components that are loading on it. If the request is taking longer, there may be a problem that needs to be addressed. In most cases TTFB can easily add up due to render blocking elements or static files which are taking longer to load up, in cases of render blocking issue caused by JS/CSS the files can be Differed using a plugin like Autoptimize
Jetpack settings
It is not recommended to utilize multiple CDNs on a single site. The Jetpack Site Accelerator CDN options and Pressable CDN should not be used together.
If you are on the Personal plan or greater, it comes with a free Jetpack Security Daily plan for each of your websites. The Entry plan only comes with the Jetpack Free license. Not only does Jetpack Security Daily provide automatic backups, malware scanning, and activity reports, it also offers site optimization. Enable the Site Accelerator to run static files and images through Jetpack’s CDN. Enabling image lazy loading is usually particularly effective at decreasing the load time of your website.
How to activate Jetpack Security Daily »
Performance plugins
Sometimes you may need a little more help in optimizing your website images and static files. The following plugins may be useful in that regard:
WP Smush is an image optimization plugin that allows you to compress and optimize your website images quickly and easily without loss of quality.
This plugin reduces HTTP requests by merging CSS & Javascript files into groups of files, while attempting to use the least amount of files as possible. It minifies CSS and JS files with PHP Minify.
Autoptimize makes optimizing your site really easy. It can aggregate, minify, and cache scripts and styles; inject CSS in the page head by default (but can also defer it); move and defer scripts to the footer; and minify HTML. Plus much more! The best configuration for Autoptimize will vary depending on the site, but it’s recommended that you first try enabling the following settings: Optimize JavaScript Code, Aggregate JS-files, Optimize CSS code, Aggregate CSS-files, Aggregate inline CSS —see info on Ideal Autoptimize Settings.
Disable plugins
It is extremely common to find that a plugin has been the culprit in a slow loading website. The quick way to test if a plugin is causing performance problems is to disable them all. If you see an immediate improvement then you know at least one of those plugins is to blame. Reactivating them one at a time until you notice a problem again will help you identify which one is the source. This conflict testing can be done on a clone so it does not impact the live site.
Another way to identify a problem plugin is to test your website using either GTMetrix or WebPageTest, and then deactivate those plugins one at a time, retesting the site speed each time. It can be a time-consuming but very productive experiment.
Please make sure you back up your database before performing this test. Occasionally, deactivating plugins can also reset their settings.
Learn more about how Batcache works »
How to prevent Batcache page caching »
Extend the time Batcache caches your site »
Query Monitor
The Query Monitor plugin is a free debugging tool that helps assess the performance of your website. It gives an in-depth analysis of all of the requests being made to the server including database queries, HTTP requests, hooks & actions, and so much more. It can be used to help identify a plugin, script, or database query that is negatively impacting the load time of your website.
If you are experiencing performance issues with your website and have already checked obvious possibilities, the Query Monitor plugin can help you dig deeper into the functionality of your site to identify problems. Read more about the features and how to use the query monitor plugin.
Note that the Query Monitor plugin should only be active when testing and should be deactivated when not being actively used.
Conclusion
With a little effort and assessment, an improvement in website performance should be seen if the suggestions and guides above are implemented.