[Plugin: Top Posts & Pages] Performance/Page Speed Issues

Hi,

I have some performance issues with the Top Posts & Pages plugin/widget in Jetpack. Specifically, the plugin/widget is adding significant time to the page load time.

Problem

When checking my site with tools like WebPageTest.org, I see that the images being loaded for the Top Posts & Pages plugin/widget are dragging the site down. Specifically each is taking up to .7 – .85 seconds for DNS Lookup and Time to First Byte. The images appear to be loading from wp.com instead of my site/CDN.

Many are loading concurrently, so the total time this adds to the page is roughly 0.5 – 0.8 seconds. However, the plugin seems to require the stats plugin in Jetpack also. This adds additional time to the total load.

Photon is not active. I am hosted on DreamPress with Varnish and DreamSpeed CDN. Both JetPack and WordPress are updated. I am using the Genesis theme with the News child theme.

Questions

I am trying to improve my page speed to give readers a better experience. I am not a coder, so I am fairly clumsy when it comes to figuring out solutions to these kinds of problems.

1. Are these times normal for images hosted on wp.com? If not, where should I start checking for problems – conflicts with the CDN, the host, another plugin?

2. Assuming these load times are typical, is there a way to improve this time? For example, force Top Posts & Pages to grab the files locally from the server or from my CDN instead?

3. If there is no reasonable way to improve the performance of these images loading from wp.com, is there a recommended alternative solution? I’ve tried a few other plugins in the past, but none worked as elegantly, nor could I find a solution that would display both posts and pages together.

Thanks for any help and suggestions you can offer.

Best,

Richard