Clicking on a Post takes 10+ seconds for the server to respond, Pages will respond immediately

I recently changed the theme and added https//: to a blog I'm managing. Since then I have found that when I click on a link going to a blog Post, the website takes about 10+ seconds to begin loading the Post which then only takes a few seconds to finish. When I click on one of the static pages the website responds immediately and takes the same couple seconds to load.

I rolled the theme back to the previous one but was still experiencing the same delay on Posts but still none on Pages. Tested on multiple browsers and on different machines with the same results.

I recently changed the theme and added https//: to a blog I'm managing. Since then I have found that when I click on a link going to a blog Post, the website takes about 10+ seconds to begin loading the Post which then only takes a few seconds to finish. When I click on one of the static pages the website responds immediately and takes the same couple seconds to load.

I rolled the theme back to the previous one but was still experiencing the same delay on Posts but still none on Pages. Tested on multiple browsers and on different machines with the same results.

• posts
• pages

Share Improve this question asked Oct 4, 2018 at 17:51 A BrownA Brown 111 bronze badge 3

• Sounds like it could have to do with recently switching to HTTPS. Did you use a database search-and-replace plugin to make sure all the HTTP URLs in the database were updated to HTTPS, even serialized ones? That might be one place to start. Also double-check any CDNs and go to Developer Tools (F12) > Network and reload one of the slow pages to see which types of assets are bogging you down. You may also want to install a query monitor plugin to find out if it's db queries that are the issue. – WebElaine Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 18:17
• I didn't use a database search-and-replace plugin to change all the HTTP URLs to HTTPS, I'm open for suggestions of good ones. I wasn't sure initially if I'd need to go to that step since the topbar showed the lock symbol with no mixed-content warnings. I did some tests with the Network tab open in the Dev Tools and the TTFB for Pages was under 1s but when I'd go to load a Post the TTFB would be getting into the 12-14 second range. – A Brown Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 19:46
• Plugin recommendations are off-topic so I would just suggest searching the wp.org plugin repository and finding a database migration plugin that's been recently updated and is used on a large number of sites. It could be that your server is struggling to handle all the redirects and updating the URLs may help. – WebElaine Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 20:41

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It could be that the posts in the database have too many revisions, so the posts table is a bit large. And it could be inefficiencies in your hosting server's database service.

I'd first try a 'database optimizer' program to get rid of revisions: I've used this one with success: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-optimize/ ; there are others available.

It is also possible that your theme is not 'efficient'. You could quickly test this by doing a temporary change to one of the 'twenty' themes. Although you mentioned that you rolled back to a previous theme version, that won't verify that it is not a theme issue. Changing to a 'twenty' theme temporarily as a test might provide useful information.