Very slow backend for posts, pages and media library

Hi there at TagDiv,

The backend of our WP-theme Newspaper 8 has slowed down to a 40 seconds-plus loading speed when editting or creating post, pages or opening the Media Library. Also starting up TagDiv Composer on a (new) page is extremely slow. We have tried everything we could find, like disabeling all the plugins and enabeling them one for one again. Allocating more memory through wp_config.php according to TagDiv specifications, etc. Nothing seems to work. Frontend of our site is flying (well, fast loading). Restored backups of website and database a few times also. We don’t know what we can do to fix this problem. Checked PHP memory: fine, Server specs: great, so we realy need some help here.

Our newswebsite http://www.regioonline.nl is online since January, 14th 2017 using the WP Newspaper theme. We have about 1.100 post to date and approx. 4.500 images. With the theme we use the following plugins: Akismet Anti-Spam, Autoptimize, Better Delete Revision (deactivated), Contact Form 7 & Contact Form 7 add confirm, Cookie Bar, HTML Import 2, Image Watermark, Oypo (deactivated), Physical Custom Upload Dir for Real Media Library, Really Simple SSL, Yoast SEO.

We have used WP Supercache several times, but that did nothing for us. Yesterday installed and used Better Delete Revision and cleaned out redundend revisions (and set max revisions to 2 in wp_config). WP_Memory is set to 64M (even tried 512M with was possible acoording to our webhost One.com). We have a large amount of space (500GB) for our site and 8xCPU from the server. Only thing we can think of is maybe a corrupted database, but we don’t know how to check that of fix it. Enabeling repair in WP_Config did not work.

Any help is much appreciated in advance!

Hi Bogdan. Indeed, using a different default theme doesn’t solve the problem, but what limitations of our host do you mean? What kind of limitations?

Would be nice to know, if I want to ask my host if they can do something about this.

Thanks in advance!

a) check the system status in the theme panel
b) check php settings in your hosting panel
c) increase RAM allocated to WP in wp-config.php and php settings in hosting panel
d) consider optimizing site for https via proper server side redirect for http > https queries, add https admin required in wp-config.php vs using plugin for https
e) try disabling plugins that load CSS/js onto admin panels and pages/posts, even if not actually used on those pages (e.g., Contact Form 7 doesn’t need css/js on pages without the form actually being used)
f) test one of your post pages with GTmetrix.com to see if you need to optimize server settings for gzip/deflate, expiration headers

For images
A) better to optimize in Photoshop prior to upload to site (e.g., 40kb image vs 124kb image — slows down system if server has to do that for you)
B) better to set the WP default compression level to 50 in functions.php than use plugin to do that, this will make thumbs uploaded more optimized

Thanks all for your replies. IWith help of great support of my host, I finally tackelled the problem. Indeed, it was a plugin: Slider Revolution. Strangly enough it came packed with the theme as I recall.

Chris, thank you so much for your additional tips. I will proces them according to your advice.

Hope this post can help some other users too.