@stevenw123 Here are a few possible reasons off the top of my head:
- You’re testing different pages, some which are already cached and some that are being cached the first time. When a page is cached for the first time, that visit is going to be slower than subsequent visits. (The Auto-Cache Engine can help resolve that.)
- You’re using a shared web host where other sites on the server may affect the performance of your site from moment to moment.
- Your web hosting company is experiencing network issues.
- The network route between the GTMetrix testing server and your server is experiencing issues.
- GTMetrix is experiencing issues with their testing servers, resulting in differing results. You could try using other speed testing services to confirm this isn’t the issue.
- Your WordPress site has a lot of active plugins and/or custom code running—in certain cases, this could negatively affect performance.
- Comet Cache isn’t actually running. See How do I know if Comet Cache is working?
Thanks for the reply, Raam.
With so many variables that are completely out of a user’s control, it makes it seem pretty pointless to test speeds.
Without the plugin, I got speeds of 1.8-2.8 seconds (yes, all the same page).
With the plugin, I got 1.3-2.7 seconds.
I had hoped to see a much more pronounced and stable difference.
@stevenw123 The reality is that there are a lot of variables that affect the speed of your site and it’s impossible to ensure a consistent speed.
Comet Cache is a WordPress caching plugin that helps improve the speed of WordPress, but that’s just one small piece of what determines how long it takes your site to load. There are lots of other things that a WordPress caching plugin has no effect on, such as the web server where your site is hosted, the network the web server is connected to, the overall size of each page as the result of a combination of theme+plugins that you’re using, etc.
If you can provide a link to your site, I can run a speed test to see if there are any obvious ways to improve the speed.
Hi Raam,
It’s very kind of you to offer to take a look at my site. It’s still in development, but here’s a page:
test page
I’m using Autoptimize to try to help speed things up, but some of its settings screw-up my site, so I’m really only using it to combine CSS.
The only things I am not using that gtmetrix recommends are: Enable gzip compression and Leverage browser caching. I’ll sort out browser caching later, but my host said there’s no need to use gzip, so I’m not – can’t remember the reason now.
Thanks again,
Steve
