Blog - Page 10 of 10 - GeoDirectory

In the coming days we will be writing a series of articles on how to keep you WordPress site lean and fast but as a pretext to those articles, we thought we would write a much shorter article on how to make your WordPress site slow. (we see these mistakes made over and over…)

Please don’t follow any of these steps!

Hosting

There are a few tricks to getting the slowest hosting but i am here to let you know them.

Firstly many people over look this one on a quest for cheap hosting but hosting location can play a big part, for example if you are building a website for a mainly United Kingdom (UK) audience then you are definitely going to want to look for hosting on another continent, the USA or even somewhere like Australia would be great, there is no point in looking for hosting in Europe it would deliver the fastest response times.

Our test site is hosted in the Netherlands (EU), its a fresh install of 2016 theme

This is the site speed tested from a Swedish (EU) location (very close),

We can see the speed above is far too fast but we can do something about that, if we test the same site from a USA location as a USA based user would experience:

That’s better we have managed to almost double the loading time on to the site just by having our hosting on a different continent and we have already pushed it over the magical 1 second load time.

Next you will need to look for shared hosting, these are often not labeled as shared hosting but you can spot them easily.

They are usually the cheapest type of hosting, less than $10-15/month and their pricing tears will increase the number of email addresses or domain/sub domains you can have on the account and mention nothing about server specs like RAM, processing power or the type of hard drive (because we all know 1000 email addresses is what counts).

With hosting like this you usually have anywhere from 400-800 websites running off the one server, you should avoid Virtual Private Servers (VPS) which give you a significant slice of a server resources or even a dedicated server these will be no good for creating a slow site.

Choosing your theme

After you have installed WordPress your next important decision is your theme.

A lot of people think a theme is a theme and they will all load at the same speed but in fact the theme can make a big difference to the loading time of your site, it’s the foundations of your website and everyone knows the foundations have to be right.

The rule of thumb I find is: themes that try to do it all end up with the slower load times, there are some really slow examples out there, below are some baselines, i am sure you can find slower loading themes very easily.

Twenty Sixteen (default WordPress theme)

JS and CSS loaded by default: 89.12kb (9 requests)
Server memory used: 4,356kb

Directory Starter (Our own free theme we recommend)

JS and CSS loaded by default: 72.96kb (11 requests)
Server memory used: 4,340kb

Top selling theme on themeforest (multi purpose theme)

JS and CSS loaded by default: 285.31kb (12 requests)
Server memory used: 15,777kb

These are very non-real world stats but the main takeaways we get from these very basic stats from a multipurpose theme vs a built for purpose theme is that with the multipurpose theme you would only be able to serve around one third the amount of concurrent users and would use up almost 3x the bandwidth and have almost twice the page loading times.

Adding plugins

To coin a phrase “This is where the magic happens”… When it comes to a WordPress website speed this is where you make or break it.

The first thing you have to understand is not all plugins are built equal, it’s not always about the amount of plugins (though that can be a problem in it’s self) it’s about what plugins.

To prove a point i added 562 pointless plugins that do nothing to our test site and activated them all.

And the result…

Yeah nothing happened, basically the same as it was before, so it must be related to the sort of plugins.

If you really want to slow down a site you need to install plugins that are heavy on server resources and add lots of CSS and JS files this will slow down the time it takes to server the webpage and the time it takes the user to download and load the CSS JS in the browser.

We won’t get very far if we install lots of “Hello dolly” plugins that don’t add any CSS/JS and are not very resource hungry

What we need is more of a web application sort of plugin, things that are big and resource hungry and are usually the main point of a site in it’s self like a forum or a shop or a directory, on a shared hosting account with WordPress if you wanted to keep things fast you should onyl ever consider one web application type plugin but here we will install a few to really slow things down 🙂

Our test site is a fresh install of WordPress running the 2016 theme and one active plugin for monitoring a few server specs “Query Monitor” it is running off shared hosting in the Netherlands (EU), we will be running all our speed tests from Sweden (EU), lets remind ourselfs of the baseline benchmarks:

The numbers in black refer to the server resopnse time, memory usage (RAM), database query time and the number of queries run.

Let’s install a few of WordPress’s most popular plugins, remember we will only be installing and activating we will not be fully setting it up and there is no data on the site so it really is best case scenario.

Lets install some basic plugins first:

Contact Form 7 (used for setting up a simple contact form)

Yoast SEO (most popular SEO plugin)

NextGEN Gallery (a image gallery plugin)

Jetpack (connects to WordPress.com to use some of its features)

Wordfence Security (a security plugin for WordPress)

Now we have only 5 basic plugins installed and we are now over double the original load time, now lets install some web application type plugins to really slow things down:

BuddyPress (a social network type plugin for WordPress)

WooCommerce (a shop plugin for selling anything)

bbPress (a forum plugin)

(orange indicates slow database queries)

Easy Digital Downloads (sell digital products)

Advanced Custom Fields (Custom Fields for WordPress)

Conclusion

We now have just 10 active plugin on our site and it has went from about half a second to over 3 seconds to load, this test site has no data installed and even the homepage is not loading any images, it really is the best case scenario, in the wild i have seen some professional “website slower” with over 120 active plugins and load times of over 30 seconds.

Each one of the web application type plugins like WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress and bbPress usually require other addon plugins to add extra functionality, if you actually wanted to run a site like this you would probably end-up with over 50 plugins and load times of over 10-20 seconds.

So there you go, you now know how to make your WordPress site slow. Just in case you want to have a fast website, over the next few weeks we will be releasing blog posts on how to have a fast website with counters to all the points here.

Google announced on Wednesday Updates to Google Maps APIs Standard Plan. Here you can read the full article.

For all new applications created on or after June 22, a Google Maps API Key will be required. Existing applications will continue to work without a key, but the new limits will be applied to everyone.

Before this announcement, Google Maps API would return up to 25,000 keyless requests per day and would require an API key and payments only after exceeding the 25,000 limit for 90 consecutive days.

Now the API key is requested for all new applications, but the limit is 25,000 free map loads per day without grace days.

Webites and apps admin can purchase extra daily map loads at $0.50 USD for 1,000 additional map loads, up to 100,000 daily extra map loads. Billing must be enabled to be able to purchase extra API requests.

If your website or applications has more than 125,000 daily map loads, you will be required to upgrade to a Premium Plan license.

For those not willing to deal with API limits and for countries were Google Maps is restricted, we extended GeoDirectory few weeks ago to optionally use the OpenStreetMap API.

Today we released version 1.6.4, where we added an option to add the Google Maps API key, you can find the documentation here).

While we were at it, we also created a wee plugin that can solve the Google Maps API key for any theme or plugin that has not been updated to include an API key: Google Maps API KEY plugin.

Just install the plugin and activate it, go to Settings >> Google API key and add your API key. If the Google Maps script has been enqueued correctly, our plugin will add your API key and fix any loading issue.

Google Maps has been completely free of charge for most of us for over 10 years, it will remain free for websites with average traffic, but it will start charging higher traffic websites.

Let us know what you think about this move from Google in the comments down below. Will it push users (you) towards the competition or nothing will really change?

This post will tell you how to fix the “This page didn’t load Google Maps correctly. See the JavaScript console for technical details.” problem with Google Maps.

If you are using GeoDirectory please see our documentation here.

If you want to read about the problem see our blog post here: https://wpgeodirectory.com/google-maps-api-key-and-new-limits/

If you have seen the message “This page didn’t load Google Maps correctly. See the JavaScript console for technical details.” or any of the following messages:
“Esta página no ha cargado Google Maps correctamente.”
“Google Maps ne s’est pas chargé correctement sur cette page.”
“Google Maps non è stata caricata correttamente.”
“Google Maps wurde auf dieser Seite nicht richtig geladen.”
“При загрузке Google Карт на этой странице возникла проблема.”

The chances are you need this fix, if you are using WordPress then we have created a plugin that should fix this for most users who’s plugin or theme is causing this, you can find it here: GOOGLE MAPS API KEY FIX

If you are not using WordPress you will need to find your call to google maps in your source code and add the api key, you can find instruction on creating an API Key here. Once you have your API key you add it to your call to the Google maps file maps.google.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR-API-KEY-HERE

I hope you found this useful, feedback is always welcome.

The GeoDirectory Team.

We are delighted to announce support for Snazzy Maps in our Custom Google Maps addon (1.0.5).

What is Snazzy Maps?

Snazzy Maps is an online resource that enables users to customize the colors, saturation, and other styling options of their Google Maps.

The customization options are provided in the form of different map styles designed by various authors across the web.

In addition to editing maps with Snazzy Maps, users can create their Snazzy Map styles for use within their websites or apps.

All customized maps also offer high-resolution satellite imagery and vector support for both web and mobile devices.

With these features, businesses and developers alike can create visually appealing maps for their projects without relying on coding skills.

Why did we add support for Snazzy Maps on GeoDirectory?

Just over a week ago, one of our Members `Pieter Ravelli` brought the website to our attention, and it struck a chord with the team here, so it was pushed to the top of our development tasks.

This defines our ethos here at GeoDirectory. If a member can suggest something that will benefit all members, we will happily add it.

Importing Snazzy Maps Styles into GeoDirectory

Adding snazzy maps to the Geodirectory Custom Maps add-on is relatively simple.

First, go to snazzymaps.com and find or create a style you like.
Once you are on the page you like, you will see a copy button. Click that.
Next, go to your GeoDirectory settings and go to GD>Custom Google Maps>Manage Styles and click to edit the map you want to change.
On the edit map styles screen, click the “import styles” button, paste your styles code from Snazzy Maps, and click the “Import & Save Styles” button.
Now your new map styles will be used on your site.

Are you using Snazzy Maps with GeoDirectory? If yes, which style are you using? Let us know in the comments down below.

Even if we don’t have Breadcrumbs on this website, we consider them very important, that’s why GeoDirectory has breadcrumbs on all its pages.

They allow your visitors to always know where they are at, while navigating your website. We would never suggest to hide them, but several of our users asked how they could remove them because they were not looking perfectly with their theme layout, so we created an hook that will allow you to do so, with just 2 lines of code.

add_filter('geodir_breadcrumb','geodir_breadcrumb_remove',10,2);<br />
function geodir_breadcrumb_remove($breadcrumb, $separator){<br />
return ";<br />
}

Adding the above code in your active theme’s functions.php file, will remove the breadcrumb from all GeoDirectory pages and you wont have to worry about them again. This code snippet is update safe like all other that we publish here.

Developers, find more info about this filters here: geodir_breadcrumb | geodir_breadcrumb_separator.

The original function can be found here: function geodir_breadcrumb

If you have any question about this, please leave a comment and we will try to reply as soon as possible!

If your question is support related, please submit it in our forums.

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