Title: First byte queries
Last modified: October 2, 2017

---

# First byte queries

 *  Resolved [Dan14](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dan14/)
 * (@dan14)
 * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/first-byte-queries/)
 * First I want to say that this is a great plugin. I am trying to further optimize
   my site and I cant seem to find what affects the time to first byte. Can you 
   please highlight what I need to look for in the queries?
 * Thanks in advance.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Author [John Blackbourn](https://wordpress.org/support/users/johnbillion/)
 * (@johnbillion)
 * WordPress Core Developer
 * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/first-byte-queries/#post-9548528)
 * Everything that QM shows you will affect the TTFB unless you’ve specifically 
   implemented implicit flushing in PHP. This is because PHP waits for the whole
   of the page to be generated before sending it to the browser.
 * Your TTFB will be at least the time shown under “Page generation time” in the
   overview at the top of QM, plus the DNS lookup time, plus the time taken for 
   the request and response to pass over the network, etc.
 * As a rule of thumb, any individual database query over 0.05 seconds is very slow(
   and QM will highlight it as such), and on a modern server you shouldn’t expect
   to see queries taking longer than 0.01 seconds.
 * You’ll usually find that the query time isn’t a big factor in the time your page
   takes to generate. Unfortunately QM isn’t very good at exposing other points 
   on the page where slowdown occurs (it’s in the works), but server side HTTP API
   requests can be a factor, so keep an eye out for those.
 *  Thread Starter [Dan14](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dan14/)
 * (@dan14)
 * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/first-byte-queries/#post-9548900)
 * Thank you for your reply. My queries are relatively low but the TTFB is too high
   for my liking. Its around 800ms. Im not a professional but someone sent me a 
   screenshot and apparently the first page has 1.7k bottlenecks.
 * I just discovered what bottlenecks are and I want to get the TTFB down. The server
   is itself is very fast but something is affecting the TTFB and I have no clue
   what it is. I did some research so I know what could be affecting but I can’t
   get it down low enough.
 * The plugin helped me reduced the loading speed but not the TTFB. Can you give
   me any suggestions how I can use the plugin to fix this?
 * Thanks in advance.
 *  Plugin Author [John Blackbourn](https://wordpress.org/support/users/johnbillion/)
 * (@johnbillion)
 * WordPress Core Developer
 * [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/first-byte-queries/#post-9549110)
 * If your queries are fast and you don’t have lots of non-SELECT queries running
   all the time and you don’t have HTTP API calls running all the time, then your
   best bet is to look at a plugin such as P3 Profiler which helps you identify 
   which plugins on your site are slow by selectively disabling them and profiling
   your site.
 * If you’re comfortable using the command line, you could also install WP-CLI along
   with [the `wp profile` package](https://github.com/wp-cli/profile-command) which
   will allow you to [identify why WordPress is slow](https://danielbachhuber.com/tip/identify-wordpress-slowness/).
 * HTH!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘First byte queries’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/query-monitor/assets/icon.svg?rev=2994095)
 * [Query Monitor](https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/query-monitor/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/query-monitor/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/query-monitor/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/query-monitor/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/query-monitor/reviews/)

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [John Blackbourn](https://wordpress.org/support/users/johnbillion/)
 * Last activity: [8 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/first-byte-queries/#post-9549110)
 * Status: resolved