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[Hummingbird Pro] Hummingbird breaks sites regularly

So the problem is, that either because of updates to the theme, or the plugin it seems to break the site. It looks like some css and maybe other resources arent loaded (fully) – see screenshots attached.

This happens with multiple different themes and hosts as well.
I have then to clear the cache and sometimes even TWICE to fix it. Not warnings about changing homepages although they are obviously broken…

Thu, 28 May 2020 7:25:45
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  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hello Tim

    I hope you’re well today and thank you for your question!

    Issues like this are indeed usually related to Page Cache and, if enabled, Asset Optimization and are not really a sign of a bug or “glitch” in a plugin.

    A “page cache” essentially creates “static-like” version of the site and when a browser requests the given page, WordPress first checks if a cached version of that page – which is basically a static HTML file stored on server disk, as a file – is available and if so, it serves it.

    Such file contains all the references to e.g. CSS and JS files as they were at the moment of the cache file creation. If those resources are changed and page is not “refreshed”, it may cause issues.

    Additionally, with some themes/plugins there’s also a case of dynamically generated CSS. On a screenshot I see that you seem to be using DIvi and I’m pretty sure it’s has “Static CSS File Generation” option enabled in advanced “Builder” settings in “Divi -> Theme Options”.

    That means that whenever you make any changes using Divi that can change site layout/design, Divi generates new CSS files. Those files would be dynamically included into pages but if the pages are served from cache – the cache is not altered and may either not include these files or include old, non-existing already, versions of them.

    If, additionally, Asset Optimization is enabled, CSS and JS assets are additionally cache internally as in other way they couldn’t be processed to get optimized.

    Please note that whenever you manually enable/disable/add a plugin on site or switch theme to other one – Hummingbird issues a warning that it’s recommended to re-check files in Asset Optimization and clear cache.

    Those are exactly the reasons for such warning and that’s quite closely related to how caching works.

    If you update themes/plugins manually then clearing the cache might have to be done manually as well. However, if you are using Automate on site (and let it update things) it should clear cache and you also can enable “Safe update” check. If using Hub 2.0 you are able to set it to check homepage and other pages and set “threshold” which it considers as “alarming” – it would do a screenshot of defined pages before and after update and if the differences are more than set “threshold” it would notify you about issues.

    In most cases this should do the trick, unless there’s some additional cache (e.g. server side or from other plugin – common case if there’s e.g. Hummingbird and Autoptimize running together or with some themes that additionally cache their own files) to which Hummingbird doesn’t really have any access to and can’t control it.

    Since I’m not familiar with your sites affected by this and there’s no access granted to them, I can’t tell much more details but I’d suggest checking that

    – with Divi – if it works better for you with Static CSS File generation disabled
    – and if there’s any kind of cache whatsoever, other than Hummingbird’s Page Cache (so any server-side cache, any caching options in themes and/or other plugins, a CDN like CloudFlare that’s not connected to Hummingbird etc).

    Kind regards,
    Adam

  • Tim
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    I see – the whole cache thing is a pain in the ass like no other. I understand the underlying principle of caching, but it seems to always make trouble.

    Do you guys have any tipps in context with the divi theme for performance or general your plugins? No matter what i do, performance is always between 50 and 80. SEO plugin always says i have no index active, though i dont know why it would say that, cause i dont. Any idea why that is?

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Tim,

    I’m afraid that there was no site selected for this ticket so I’m not sure which of your domains you’re referring to.

    Could you tell us what is the site in question and grant support access so we can have a look at your settings and see what could be done about improving the site speed?
    You can enable support access from WPMU DEV > Support > Support Access panel in your WP admin.
    You can find more details about granting support access here:
    https://wpmudev.com/docs/getting-started/getting-support/#chapter-5

    Best regards,
    Predrag

  • Tim
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    I have activated support access for:

    abmahnung-ansbach.de (divi – 84/100), finanzkonzepte-deutschland.de (divi – 73/100) and dc-carconsult.de (divi – 68/100)

    For good measure i threw in “energiekonzepte-bayern.de” (60/100) cause its not Divi but “jupiter” theme, just to have a comparison here.

    Let me know what you think. Oh and in case you wanna respond with “take our hosting, its faster” – i tried that already one time and it didnt change anything. :wink: Just sayin.

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Tim,

    Let me go over the sites one by one and talk about the reports they have.

    abmahnung-ansbach.de
    The score of this one is over 80 and that is actually quite good, the most reports are related to files that are hosted outside of your server, YouTube, Google Analytics, Typekit, Fontawesome, and since they are not hosted on your server you don’t have further control over them in order to address the browser caching and optimization further.
    You would need to find a way to serve those from your server in order to address the reports for them further, but this also depends on what they are used for and how.

    There’s also “Ensure text remains visible during webfont load” and you can find more informaton about addressing that here:
    https://web.dev/font-display/?utm_source=lighthouse&utm_medium=unknown

    finanzkonzepte-deutschland.de
    There are few assets loaded from external sources here as well but the biggest impact seems to be coming from the redirects and it adds around 2 seconds of load time, this should be something your hosting provider can look into further and check the redirects set for that domain.

    There are also 3 images that don’t have Lazy Load applied and since they are added as background images from CSS this is not something that Smush can process at the moment, although we’re looking for further improvements between Smush and Elementor in future.

    Next thing that seems to have the biggest impact there is the file optimization and that is something that can be further configured from Hummingbird > Asset Optimization panel.

    Asset Optimization option in Hummingbird requires a unique setup for each site as it completely depends on the theme and plugins used on the site.
    Some of the plugin or theme files don’t handle optimization properly and can cause the site to misbehave due to the way they are coded.

    So my suggestion when using Asset Optimization is to enable optimization in bulk of 10 files at once, and after every 10 files check your site frontend.
    If everything is working fine then you can proceed with the next 10 files.
    If you do, however, encounter some issues then go back to Asset Optimization and disable the optimization in last 10 files until you find which one is causing the issue, and then leave that file unoptimized and continue with optimizing rest of them.

    dc-carconsult.de
    This site is giving me a score of 80 and there are couple of images that need to be optimized and serving them from CDN with WebP format should also help with further score improvement.
    I see that you don’t have Smush installed on this site yet so I would suggest starting with setting up that first :slight_smile:

    energiekonzepte-bayern.de
    Biggest impact here seems to be coming from file optimization, similar to what I mentioned above that can be configured further from Hummingbird > Asset Optimization.

    And there’s also a thing of the page size itself, it’s a bit on a larger size with the video and couple of files coming from 55vod-adaptive.akamaized.net that also seem to be related to the video itself.

    Oh and in case you wanna respond with “take our hosting, its faster” – i tried that already one time and it didnt change anything. :wink: Just sayin.

    While we do love our hosting we wouldn’t do that without some investigation and evidence of hosting related issues :wink:

    Best regards,
    Predrag

  • Tim
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Alright i have to say this is helping very much. Im having troubles with page speed optimization. I spent probably hundreds of hours trying to fix page speed on client sites, but due to different themes, hosting environments and plugins, i never seem to get it right or it gets too technical for me.

    So even though it says to me its http2, i should look into asset optimization? With that i have my troubles cause i cant wrap my head around how i should approach it. Would you say then, just clicking optimize one by one and see if the site still works is enough? What about the advanced mode? Is there a way to read up on what best to do here? Or is it basically impossible for a “simple webdesigner” to do the right thing here?

    Another thing with images seems to be, that even though i use the cdn and click “serve next gen formats” the pagespeed still tells me i should serve next gen formats. Do you have an idea why that is?

    As for the other stuff i need to have a look at it.

    One thing i

  • Predrag Dubajic
    • Support

    Hi Tim,

    Alright i have to say this is helping very much. Im having troubles with page speed optimization. I spent probably hundreds of hours trying to fix page speed on client sites, but due to different themes, hosting environments and plugins, i never seem to get it right or it gets too technical for me.

    Optimization is usually tricky as pretty much each site is unique and it depends on the theme and plugins that it has running, how their files are coded and what kind of optimization can be done.
    Unfortunately, there’s no one solution that fits all and it would require tweaking each site based on the reports.

    So even though it says to me its http2, i should look into asset optimization? With that i have my troubles cause i cant wrap my head around how i should approach it. Would you say then, just clicking optimize one by one and see if the site still works is enough? What about the advanced mode? Is there a way to read up on what best to do here? Or is it basically impossible for a “simple webdesigner” to do the right thing here?

    HTTP2 will handle some parts of the optimization but in order to get most out of your site it’s suggested to use Advanced Mode in asset optimization and optimize most of your files.
    While the process might look scary at first it’s not really complex but rather just trial and error so it’s mostly time consuming.
    Pretty much it consists of optimizing files one by one and checking front end of your site for any console errors and reverting the last change when errors pop up, until you go over all of the files and have them all optimized.
    You can read more about Asset Optimization on our docs page but we’re also looking into explaining this process directly in the plugin in the future, you can find the docs here:
    https://wpmudev.com/docs/wpmu-dev-plugins/hummingbird/#asset-optimization

    Another thing with images seems to be, that even though i use the cdn and click “serve next gen formats” the pagespeed still tells me i should serve next gen formats. Do you have an idea why that is?

    Can you tell me on which site this happens and could you grant support access to it so we can have a closer look?

    One thing i

    Seams that the message got cut here, is there anything else you wanted to add?

    Best regards,
    Predrag

  • Tim
    • Site Builder, Child of Zeus

    Hey Predrag,

    thanks for your help. This helps me get a better understanding of things. In regards of the image optimization thing i dont recall which sites it where. Having so much makes it hard for me to remember which site had what problem. :disappointed:

    I will get back to you once i have a concrete instance of the problem.

    Well actually i just checked one page – seems like going through the bulk smush had 3 instances of bad gateway, then google pagespeed gave me 2 images that werent optimized – resmushed again and 2 of them were able to get smushed after which the page speed test didnt flag those images anymore. So i guess its just a matter of making sure all images are properly smushed maybe.

    And with the cutoff sentence: no idea what i wanted to say there. Prolly just forgot to delete. ;D

    Take care

  • Adam
    • Support Gorilla

    Hi Tim

    In regards of the image optimization thing i dont recall which sites it where. Having so much makes it hard for me to remember which site had what problem.

    We can get back to it at any moment so just get back to us if you notice it again n any site and we’ll continue from where we stopped.

    (…:wink:So i guess its just a matter of making sure all images are properly smushed maybe.

    Yes, I agree with that. I’d also say – enabling Smush CDN might help too. Just a note on that though: in case of testing with GTMetrix it might still complain that images are not served from CDN even if they are. This is because GTMetrix just doesn’t recognize Smush CDN as a “known CDN” (known to them), so it’s a “false alarm”.

    You can ignore that or you can register with GTMetrix (free account would suffice) and in User Settings add

    *.smushcdn.com

    line to YSlow CDN Hostnames setting.

    And with the cutoff sentence: no idea what i wanted to say there. Prolly just forgot to delete. ;D

    Happens to me all the time :smiley: Anyway, we’re working 24/7 all year round so don’t hesitate to get back to us if you find out what that was. Or if anything new comes up :wink:

    Best regards,
    Adam