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Serious performance issues

Hi. I was on chat but then the connection dropped. I believe you are looking into it, but we really need help here please. The website is running very slow and it’s a simple WordPress site. Our other sites all run well. https://ironbunker.us is way too slow. Thanks.

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 6:55:50
  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hi Uri

    I hope you’re well today!

    It seems we’re dealing with two issues here. Our devops checked the site and it seems it’s been under botnet attack.

    There was DDoS attempt run against the site, targeting SSH. Our devops put additional limits on that so at the moment over 120 IPs got automatically blocked and it seems it slowed down but it still is going on.

    There’s not much that could be done about that other than letting server keep blocking those attempts and they should eventually stop.

    I would, however, also strongly recommend putting the domain through CloudFlare. While the free plan won’t fully mitigate attacs it’s still an “additional step” to pass through and since it’s doing additional caching it would also slightly lower the load on server caused by legitimate visitors’ visits.

    Here’s more information about how to do this:

    https://wpmudev.com/docs/hosting/dns-and-domain-management/#cloudflare

    The second issue is that even despite that there’s still some code on site that’s causing high server load. I know that my colleague during the chat confirmed that disabling all the plugins at once significantly lowers resource usage but we’d need to narrow that down as much as possible and then see what should be done next – whether the plugin should be replaces or fixed or plan upgrade would be necessary.

    That being said:

    – would you consider putting the domain through CloudFlare?
    – and could you enable support access to the site for me? To do so, please go to the “WPMU DEV -> Support -> Support Access” page in site’s back-end, click on “Grant support access” button there and let me know here once it’s done.

    Best regards,
    Adam

  • Uri
    • Flash Drive

    guys this is very urgent. We specifically put this site on your hosting so that we would have the performance benefits we see on our other sites, but this one is barely running now and we are going to lose this client. Please can you assist urgently. We tried deactivating all plugins and that didn’t work. We have it on cloudflare and that isn’t working. Something is very wrong here. We’ve never had this issue before.

  • Adam Czajczyk
    • Support Gorilla

    Hi Uri

    Thanks for responses!

    Our developers checked server again and it seems that the “attack” is either over for now or at least “paused” so that’s a good thing. The average server load is not really hight (actually is very low) so it “should” all be fine.

    However, I did some more tests and also asked my teammates to check the site “from outside” (from different parts of the world) and we did find something surprising:

    – for me and some of my colleagues the site loads pretty instantly, with no significant delays, TTFB in about .05 second or even less and full load between about 1.5 to 2.5 second (that’d be including all background requests so visitor seeing the site in about a second or less)

    – for some other of my colleagues the first load was as long as even 10-13 seconds

    So that would confirm that there is “some” issue but it would also seem to be somehow related to either localisation or specific browser/os. Would you mind telling me where (“geolocation” wise) did you test the site from and what browers/OS using?

    I have also noticed two “factors” that seem to be very “heavy” on site:

    1) there’s a /uploads/2020/04/back-bg.jpg image that’s used as background on site; it seems it’s set via Customizer but also somewhere in CSS directly; the CSS version is not being processed by Smush so it’s not served from CDN and not properly optimized/resized; it weights about 3.5MB and takes a long time to load;

    I suppose that this might be related and e.g. due to browser/internet connection it might take way longer in some cases.

    Would you be able to, just for testing, remove it from CSS then clear all caches on site and server and check if it changes anything?

    2) according to GTMetrix there are some ajax-calls ongoing related to Instagram feed, that are also taking long to complete – for testing, could you also disable that (along with that background images), clear caches and see if it changes anything?

    Kind regards,
    Adam