John Davidson

Message:

I have a strange situation : I updated a website to Wordpress 5.9 and suddenly the page loading time increased from 1-2 seconds to 15+ seconds. Looking over the network tab i see that the TTFB is increased to 11+ seconds.

I created a test domain and installed WordPress 5.8.3. Added the same theme with no content - just the "hello world" post. The loading speed is 0.6 seconds . If i update to 5.9 the loading time becomes 11+seconds.

Here are 2 screen captures from query monitor
5.8 -0.6 seconds

5.9 -11.6 sec

The server details are

Version 7.4.27

SAPI fpm-fcgi

max_execution_time 600

memory_limit 512M

upload_max_filesize 128M

post_max_size 128M

Server Version 5.5.5-10.3.32-MariaDB-0ubuntu0.20.04.1

Extension mysqli

Client Version 70427 (7.4.27)

I start disabling portions of code and i think i can tie the big loading times to get_header and wp_head() functions but i could not pinpoint the problem. I also disabled all the hooks and filters but with no luck.

I checked the database queries and the load is not coming from there - you can see from screen captures also.

I disabled Gutenberg styles on front end

I read the release log for 5.9 but i did not saw something that could affect the website.

Any advice will be appreciated since i'm running out of ideas.

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My Answer:
One possible solution could be to try disabling any plugins that were recently updated or installed around the same time as the WordPress 5.9 update. Sometimes conflicts between plugins can cause slow loading times. You can also try switching to a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Two to see if the issue is related to the theme.

Additionally, you can try increasing the PHP memory limit and max execution time in your server settings to see if that helps improve the loading times. You can also try optimizing your website's images and assets to reduce the overall page size and improve loading times.

If none of these solutions work, you may want to consider reaching out to WordPress support or hiring a developer to help troubleshoot the issue further.