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Best page load speed for BP dynamic content pages, what to expect?

  • Participant
    Level: Yogi
    Posts: 1105
    calu on November 9, 2020 at 11:48 am #34400

    Hi there, in my search for best optimization and caching of my BP site, I would like to know, which page load speed to expect on dynamic content pages like loading members directory, and members profiles.

    The best load speed for profiles I can achieve is 2,5 seconds, for own profile it’s, strange enough, at least a second more, more like 4 seconds. Caching of these pages is not an option.

    I’m really interested in hearing what is the best benchmarks for BP, on a shared server.

    I’m a little reluctant to use a VPS, because of the disadvantages, and I’m not sure if this will improve load speed.

    Last, I like to know, if the whole structure of BP database just is not good, when it comes to load speed, or why BP is slow compared to other social networks?

    Any major updates in the pipeline, with focus on load speed?

    Regards
    Carsten

  • Keymaster
    (BuddyDev Team)
    Posts: 24190
    Brajesh Singh on November 9, 2020 at 6:45 pm #34407

    Hi Carsten,

    The BuddyPress plugin by itself is not slow. The speed depends on many factors(theme, media, assets, and other plugins etc).

    I do not see any issue on shared server if you have a few thousand users(and only few of them are online).

    There are multiple ways to optimize it
    1. Use a lightweight theme
    2. Minimize assets and enable browser cache
    3. Optimize media
    5. Use an object caching
    6. Try disabling on lowering heartbeat time(for live check of new activity etc)
    7. Not applicable to you(since you do not use VPS), using a in memory cache like redis can improve significantly

    8. If it is still not around 1 second, Try disabling some of the plugin(except BuddyPress) to find your bottleneck and remove it.

    BuddyPress doe snot have any scalability issue on a default install. If someone starts using too many meta queries(profile meta query, activity meta query etc), they are bound to slow it down and create issues.

    Regards
    Brajesh

  • Participant
    Level: Yogi
    Posts: 1105
    calu on November 9, 2020 at 7:39 pm #34418

    Hi Brajesh, thanks for your feedback,

    2. The problem with using browser cache is, like page caching, that the dynamic pages are not updated, eg when updating user profiles, deleting messages and so on. Users think that their update does not take place, because the changes are not displayed to the user right away.

    5. I have tried Memcache object caching, without any effect. Real object caching is not possible on a shared server, as far as I know.

    8. All of the above suggestions have been tested, clearly that the plugins are the bottleneck.
    Not one single plugin, but the total amount of plugins affects the load speed.

    Unfortunately you can’t run a decent social network on BP, without using at least 30+ plugins.
    WooCommerce is one of the bottlenecks, but is difficult to get around, if you want to monetize your work. Also the core Activity component creates substantial server calls.

    How many active plugins do you run, to achieve a page load around 1 sec?

    Regards
    Carsten

  • Keymaster
    (BuddyDev Team)
    Posts: 24190
    Brajesh Singh on November 9, 2020 at 8:10 pm #34422

    Hi Carsten,
    2. Try caching only the assets(css/js/images) using browser cache.
    5. Most probably your traffic is not enough to measure the impact currently.
    8. Number of plugins is not an issue. It is simply a misconception that large number of plugins will slow down the site in general. It is what are these plugins that matter.
    A tiny plugin like bp-activity-shortcode or similar has almost very low impact compared to if you use a behemoth like WooCommerce or some LMS etc. You can use 100+ smaller plugins and they will still be fast.

    For activity, I suggest disabling WordPress heartbeat to improve the performance.

    Regards
    Brajesh

  • Participant
    Level: Yogi
    Posts: 1105
    calu on November 9, 2020 at 8:34 pm #34423

    Hi Brajesh, I have heard this stated before, and I hope you are right, that the number of plugins is not an issue. My experience is that it makes a difference.
    I have deactivated my plugins one by one without being able to isolate one particular plugin, which is causing the bottleneck, the speed just decrease as the plugins is activated, one by one.

    But of course it also depends of the quality of the code, and how many server calls the plugin makes.

    In GTMetrix one of the recommendations is to “make fewer HTTP requests, this page has 54 external Javascript scripts”, which I interpreter comes from the plugins.

    Regards
    Carsten

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