5 seconds?  so poor to begin with?   of course, since SP is installed on top of WordPress, it will add some processing time on top of normal WP page loads… but it tends to be very small…  usually it comes down to your hosting… is this shared hosting?

have you disabled the w3tc caching for the forum page in all modes of w3tc that you are using?  you cannot cache the forum page since all sp content appears on the single wp page (and this is dynamic in nature) – which use internal caching for performance…

if w3tc is not configured properly (talking wp site here not sp), it can severely slow down your site too…

How do I know if w3tc is configured properly?

How do I disable the w3tc caching for the forum page in all modes of w3tc that I’m using?

Thanks.

First, please keep in mind that anything I say here is my experience and my opinion… Ask 100 people about wp caching plugins and you will get many, many different opinions… and my opinion is irrespective of simple press and from my experience on using with other sites…

If you are not using some sort of opcode caching (ie memechached, apc, etc) with w3tc, its probably not helping your site but may be hurting… yes, a caching plugin can hurt your site performance… I have no idea if this is the case for you site, but 5 seconds normal response time is pretty poor to begin with… I have tried w3tc, super cache and other plugins on many of my sites, and generally speaking have seen little to no improvement…. your mileage may vary of course… so when I say configured properly, just meant have you run some performance testing to even see if its helping or hurting your site – I would not assume automatically that its helping…

as to how to disable it for the wp page the forum appears on, on each of the different cache types of w3tc (ie page, db, etc), there is an exclusion or ignore list that you can set… you need to add your wp page the forum appears on to that exclusion list… the caching plugin incorrectly assumes that the wp page the forum appears on is static in content.. it is NOT… all the appearance of many forum pages is simply url rewrite black magic and all the display is on that single wp page… so you cannot cache it reliably…

Okay, I deactivated my w3tc plugin but site’s loading time is still 17-20 secs.

I dedided to delete w3 total cache plugin and installed the “DB Cache Reloaded Fix” plugin.  The latter works wonder, decreasing my 5 min site loading time (without simple press plugin enabled) to less than 4 minutes.  However, it seems to crash instantly with simple press.  Looks like simple plug plugin is just refusing to cooperate with WP cache plugins, period.

What to do?  Please explain it in laymen’s term since I’m not a computer expert. THANKS.

I temporarily deactivated the simple press plugin so my site will load faster.  When you’re ready to help me resolve this issue, I can activate it again for you. Thanks.

how did you delete w3tc?  remove advanced-cache.php in wp-content?  and turn off caching in wp-config.php?

what is the error?? what happens?  what is in the error log?

we have a large number of users that use w3tc, super cache and db cache reloaded…  you just cannot cache the wp page the forum is on (as previously explained)… but they use it fine for caching the truly static pages…

5 mins and 4 mins as stated in post #6?  really time for a new host…  did you mean seconds??  still long…  you never did answer what kind of hosting you have (shared, vps, dedicated, etc)…   sorry, but it without w3tc your site loading in 17 seconds would be unacceptable?  how many page views and online visitors at same time do you get?

I’m sorry, I meant 4 and 5 seconds, not minutes.  Site takes 20 secs to load with simple press plugin activated.  I deleted the w3tc plugin by removing the WP-cache line in advanced cache.php (or whatever line the plugin requires me to remove before the plugin could be deleted).  

So I decided to deactivate both w3tc and db cache reloaded and went with hyper cache.  I tried to specify “/forum” in the advance option of hyper cache under “URl to reject” but it still doesn’t improve the load time.  What else should I do?

I don’t recall this ever been an issue 6 months ago. 

As a WordPress plugin Simple:Press has to be loaded on top of the WP core. This does require more data to be transferred. At the same time the data needs to be dynamic which is why it can not be cached in the same way that a blog post can – people want to see new posts when they are made not wait for them to appear later.

The main factor determining performance comes down to hosting. Steve (Mr Papa) has asked a couple of times now what sort of hosting you have. While shared hosting is generally adequate for normal WP blog based sites when you start to add more heavyweight tasks like forums, membership managers, e-commerce etc., then you will start to see some strain on the system. Shared hosting means you are in contention for server resources with – sometimes – a large number of other web sites. So – I ask again – what sort of hosting do you have?

A couple of other ‘slow-downs’ can occur if you have a large number of forums. The more the slower basically. We always recommend the use of sub-forums if you really do need a lot. And using Gravatars as the primary avatar setting can really dramatically slow down forum display although this can be remedied by using our Gravatar Cache plugin.

By the way – a link to your forum page will also mean we can take a look at it and advise if we see anything unusual.

I think I have shared hosting. THere was a message that went out from my site host in July that informed me of a shared migration of all data from my current shared server to a brand new hardware.  Not sure if that might be the cause for the clash with SP forum.  

Here’s a link to my site’s forum: http://filmgamesetc.com/forum/

Not sure what to say really. Yes – I see slow page loads but I also see some very quick page loads. But if those non-forum pages are cached then that isn’t that good. So yes – I would think there are contention issues with your host. You will note that most of the time is spent ‘waiting’. Once the transfer of data starts then it is pretty responsive. I don’t know who you are with or what your hosting fees are but maybe you need to cnsider an upgrade…

Oh – and many of your pages are making quite a number of calls to third-party servers (like Google) all of which will slow things down a little.

Is there a way to prevent my pages from making calls to third-party servers like Google? I just talked to hostgator about this issue and they’re looking into it.  Do you really think this issue is related to hostgator because all the pages load fine when I deactivate SP plugin?

Using third party sites for components will usually be done by your WP theme or by a plugin. Even the ‘share this’ Simple:Press plugin needs to talk to third party sites (Google for example) and access their servers. Your site seemed to be making quite a few calls.

As we have said numerous times – running something like a forum on top of WP is always going to have a performance cost. In your case I think there may be something else as well and our best guess is shared hosting. Not really sure what else to say…

Yellow Swordfish said
Using third party sites for components will usually be done by your WP theme or by a plugin. Even the ‘share this’ Simple:Press plugin needs to talk to third party sites (Google for example) and access their servers. Your site seemed to be making quite a few calls.

As we have said numerous times – running something like a forum on top of WP is always going to have a performance cost. In your case I think there may be something else as well and our best guess is shared hosting. Not really sure what else to say…

I just resubscribed for the silver membership at $39.99 so that someone from SP can help me resolve this issue. My host doesn’t know whats going on either and doesnt think it’s a problem caused on their end.  They’re blaming it on lack of optimization of my page’s contents and suggesting for me to clean up my CSS code, and using compression algorithm for javascript. CSS, HTML, jpeg, png in my nit-so-easy-to-find .htaccess  file. 

Can i request for a refund of $39.99 if no one at SP can help me?  

Thanks.