ENC Definitely picked up speed from the changed, even when checking during your downgrade.

There’s no question about it, NewsMag 1.7 has something wrong with it that’s affecting installations on multiple server platforms, types, and configurations.

Looking at the update log for 1.7 I only see one possibility for where the problem could be, and that’s in the lazy loading code. The adjustments to the search function could be causing it, which seems unlikely, but there is no longer an option to enable/disable the search from the main menu.

I know there were instructions for disabling the lazy loading feature, but 2 lines of php and one CSS class do not a comprehensive lazy load make. I can’t think of anything that would cause every entire page to load at half speed, or worse.

I’ve seen the sticky posts about upgrading so I sort of already knew the answer, but wanted to be sure. I used the patch files myself. I’ll roll back my install to 1.6 as well, until someone can identify and safely remove the bug up 1.7’s butt.

There are a lot of optimizations that could be done, but I never get around to doing it. I rely on folks like you – with multiple sites generating primary income – for the optimizations I intend to try. My single site is a side-project that doesn’t pay any bills, so I’ve got much less incentive to pull my hair out (test and re-test various tricks).

That said, time to see about these mods you just mentioned 🙂

Do you use a service or program to minify the stylesheet? Manually compressing more than 20,000 lines is exactly why people procrastinate.

Yeah, got them both open right now in Chrome and eNews is stalling for several seconds before it even starts displaying the next page. Whereas Muse Wire responds instantly on most pages, though a 1-2 second delay occasionally (from the current server load I’d imagine).

When you updated the one to 1.7, did you:

1. completely remove and install the new version fresh
2. overwrite the old version entirely
3. overwrite the changed files from the patch directory with new versions

Curious if something was missed in the patch files that could be contributing to such disparaging results between versions.

Yes it is. I noticed on the first page load after the upgrade. I never worked with 1.6 because of all the issues around the social counter plugin. I planned to set aside some time to work that all out and test things and was looking for an off-peak time to do it, in case there was any down time. Never got around to it until today. So, I patched from 1.5 => 1.6 with updated plugins for that version and then patched again from 1.6 => to 1.7 immediately after.

I know the PHP version compatibility issues were with 1.7 and not 1.6, though maybe that ended up being the issue with the social counter plugin (idk?). But I have no clue how fast 1.6 was.

I thought disabling lazy loading would make a bigger difference than it did. It doesn’t surprise me that your server processes went up so high after reading about the YANDEX issue. I’m going to check tomorrow and see how my GPU usage was affected by moving to 1.7 today. Not showing any increase so far but I’ll know for sure tomorrow.

Not at all useful on the .gif issue since I never use them, but that sure does remind me of how Windows handles the .gif format without the proper codecs and such; converts them to jpegs outside of a browser.

@neotrope Thanks, Chris. As requested, here are the results with lazy loading off.

Zen Cache – Did not Re-Test
Gator Cache – Did not Re-Test

Page Speed Scores With Lazy Load Off – Speed Booster On
WP Super Cache – 56 Desktop, 43 Mobile
WP Fastest Cache – 62 Desktop, 41 Mobile
W3 Total Cache – 68 Desktop, 47 Mobile
No Cache – 62 Desktop

Page Speed Scores With Lazy Load Off – Speed Booster Off
WP Super Cache – 57 Desktop, 43 Mobile
WP Fastest Cache – 57 Desktop, 49 Mobile
W3 Total Cache – 71 Desktop, 51 Mobile
No Cache – 38 Desktop

Apparently, the Speed Booster plugin hurts mobile browsing across the board. The mobile scores with no caching was mid to upper 20s without and without Speed Booster. Speed Booster also seemed to hurt performance for all but WP Fastest Cache.

The lazy load feature actually had a positive effect on page speed when it was turned on.

However, the lazy load feature *looks* slower because of the delayed loading of above the fold content. Lazy loading content below the fold I understand, but above the fold content should always load first. Lazy loading seems to put structure ahead of content and that’s a bad thing no matter how fast things are loading.

Overall, 1.7 loads much slower than 1.5. As I said, my page speed scores for this exact site were all 85+ for desktop and 65+ for mobile with NewsMag 1.5, but 20-30 points lower for NewsMag 1.7. Tells me development is going backwards. No feature is good enough to justify slower loading times, unless you’re running a perfect 100/100 already. The scores I’m talking about include several AdSense ads per page in all situations.

There are two ways of looking at page speed; the most accurate is a page speed test where things are ranked evenly, even though I’m getting charged for Google Fonts that don’t appear anywhere in my theme (I switched it all to system fonts). But the most frustrating is the eye test; how fast the pages appear to load while you’re browsing. I was surprised during these tests to find that WP Super Cache (the good ole basic caching plugin by Automattic) made the content on the pages load quicker. The overall page load may have been slower or negligible, but when I opened any page, the first thing that appeared was the content, followed by the header, sidebar and background, and finally the ads.

I should also note that I was using the built in pre-load feature for the tests on WP Super Cache with lazy load and speed booster on, but I wasn’t using the pre-load feature for the tests included in this post.

Okay, all on the same site listed above, I’ve tried these plugins with 1.7:

Zen Cache – 62 Desktop PageSpeed Score
WP Super Cache – 62 Desktop PageSpeed Score
Gator Cache – 62 Desktop PageSpeed Score
WP Fastest Cache – 62 Desktop PageSpeed Score
W3 Total Cache – 68 Desktop PageSpeed Score
No Cache – 62 Desktop PageSpeed Score

On all tests I had the speed booster plugin enabled. I also ran tests before and after browsing the site to populate the cache.

I find it interesting that the only plugin that gained even a single point on the page speed test was W3TC. I hate this plugin. It’s constantly taking me to the plugin dashboard when I want settings, has annoying popups on the admin, and slows down the back end of any site it’s installed on.

Why are none of the other plugins reporting any difference at all? All of the caching plugins besides W3TC had the same effect as having no caching plugin installed.

I like the lazy loading on the new update, but if I have to entirely sacrifice my choice of compatible caching plugins to have it, I’d rather not. Can I turn the lazy load off to test these again?

Something is wrong if the only caching plugin that has any effect is W3TC. Before the 1.7 update, all of the tested plugins listed above worked to varying degrees with NewsMag. Some were better than others and every single one got my page speed score of the site as it is now over 80. None of them even hit 70 with 1.7.

Sorry to keep going on and on about this but it’s a MAJOR issue. You’ve already got customers ditching the theme above over it. What can be done about this?

Thanks.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, WP Fastest Cache is the highest performing caching plugin for tagDiv themes. I have yet to test the other caching plugins on 1.7, but this new update is no longer compatible with WP Fastest Cache. I only mention that because this plugin works on many themes, meaning it is compliant with WordPress standards and NewsMag now affects the WordPress core somehow.

1.7 dropped my pagespeed score from 89-93 to 62 and below. There were no other changes to the site. I updated the theme plugins by deleting the old plugins and installing the new plugins. As for the theme, I replaced changed files from the patch folder.

I’ll update here when I’ve tested other caching plugins with 1.7.

@Alin_Vlad

I’m getting the same kind of issue after updating to 1.7.

From what I can see, the new version of the theme doesn’t support caching. I don’t the POS overbloated W3TC to cache my site, but what I use worked perfectly before the update. Some features of a caching plugin *might* need some compatibility fixes for each theme, but the theme is disregarding header expiration settings even, so I doubt it’s the plugin. WP Fastest Cache is what I’ve used with NewsMag and Newspaper with no issues.

All images are having to load fresh on every page load, whether it’s a VC template page or a standard single post.

My site background is also only loading once out of every 3-4 page loads. Not sure if that’s related to the slowdown or not, but there it is.

Site in question is http://bluestartimes.com.

• This reply was modified 11 years by Bryson T.

If I’m not mistaken, it looks like he’s wanting a block to show related posts on single.php based on the tags of the single post. The only way I can see doing this with NewsMag is through the standard related posts block at content end and set it to use tags in the settings panel. No option for a sidebar block to work like this that I’m aware of.

Maybe I’ve gone crazy, but I loaded the link you provided and went to another gallery and several other pages as well and they all loaded fully, including all gallery images, within 2-3 seconds. Maybe you have already done something to fix your issues but if not, I’m not seeing the same problem you’re reporting.

Or just delete the social counter plugin folder via ftp – simpler option to fix it.

You can also add your own with a little html and css or via a plethora of plugins in the repository.

Those are like nails on a chalkboard every time. I have to reload the page to get rid of it before I can focus on whatever I was doing before lol.

I go through a custom setup with AdZerk. It pulls AdSense but the code on my site is AdZerk. When I first put it on NewsMag with a TD sidebar ad widget, a 339×339 blank tracking pixel was loading under the actual 300×250 ad covering any menus or whatnot I had in the sidebar. Took me forever to catch the sidebar css on NewsMag .img {width: 100%;} as the cause. I went nuts over that. If it had pushed the sidebar elements down I might have even seen it sooner lol

Works perfectly. Thank you very much for helping with that custom bit. Much appreciated.

That’s awesome, Alin. Thanks! I’ll give it a try this afternoon and post the results back here.

Sure thing. Glad you got it handled. Some of the ads that show up on my pages – even from AdSense – cause weird little layout issues from time to time. Comes with the gig, I guess. Nice site.

If it doesn’t happen every time, then it’s most likely the ads causing the problem. Only makes sense. The only thing that changes when you refresh the page is which ad is loaded in each spot.

I just tried several times and on multiple pages but didn’t get the issue you’re describing, so I can’t say for sure.

And block settings. Other than that, and better organization within theme colors etc., there’s no difference.

You should always upload images over 1920×1080 to guarantee clean quality images in every position with this theme. The appropriate smaller sizes are created when you upload and the 1920×1080 covers the full screen post featured image.

2, 3, 4, 5, and 7. I second these requests.

The only differences are on the front end design/layout and the specific options in the theme panel. The theme panel is the same structure as Newspaper. I moved from Newspaper to NewsMag without any issues. If anything, the panel are so similar (options offered) that you might forget which you’re working on if switching between multiple sites running both themes. Good luck.

Yep, here’s the code – http://pastebin.com/nDRpQgHg

All javascript, loads a lot like an ad. Trying it out where you suggested on header style 4 now. Will let you know how it works.

And keep in mind that since Disqus syncs with WP comments, the counter can take an hour or so to update after a new comment is added. Also make sure you’re setting Disqus to work on all posts, not just new posts are posts with comments closed.

I’m not going to get into page speed scores and whatnot; it’s not my strong-suit. But just from loading the front page and a couple of posts I’m wondering how fast you think the site can actually be? It’s pretty fast on my end, even with the ads.

Those ads will keep your site from getting the page speed score the theme demo gets, every time. Nothing you can do about it except remove the ads.

That said, the site loaded in under 2 seconds for me on my first visit, and each subsequent page load. If you haven’t already, search the forum for Chris’ thread about optimizing your site and follow those instructions. That’s all I can suggest to speed it up, but you’re not going to get a huge difference because it’s already working fine.

Can’t say for sure as I’ve never used 24shells before. I have used Host Gator and my review won’t be all that helpful. They were awesome until 3 years ago when the company was sold, then they began a campaign sucking the life out of their customers through technical issues, bad support, and bad customer service. But that’s just my experience with them; to each his own.