Website suddenly extremely slow – request for assistance

This topic has 15 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 3 months, 4 weeks ago by Artem Temos.

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March 5, 2026 at 7:40 pm #711136

granule.petshop
Participant

Hello,
My website https://granule.rs built with the Woodmart theme has suddenly become extremely slow.

The site was working normally before, but recently the loading time has increased significantly and it is currently very difficult to use. At the moment, the performance is so slow that the website is practically unusable.

I am already using WP Rocket and have implemented the recommended speed optimization settings.

Could you please check and help to fix this?

For reference:
– Website: https://granule.rs
– Theme: Woodmart
– Caching plugin: WP Rocket

Any advice on what could be causing this slowdown or how to improve performance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Best regards,
Dejan

March 6, 2026 at 9:34 am #711199

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

Hello,

To better assist you, could you kindly test the functionality with default WordPress themes such as TwentyTwenty or WooCommerce Storefront? This will help us determine whether the issue stems from our theme or elsewhere.

Regards

March 6, 2026 at 1:31 pm #711245

granule.petshop
Participant

Please, feel free to test it, do whatever you think it’s needed to fix this.

March 6, 2026 at 1:55 pm #711249

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

OK, please disable all plugins that are not related to our theme and switch to the default theme so we can see how your website works without WoodMart.

March 6, 2026 at 3:14 pm #711281

granule.petshop
Participant

Guys, the website is still in development mode, so feel free to disble/enable what ever you wish, just to fix this?

March 6, 2026 at 3:52 pm #711301

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

We have disabled all plugins that are not related to our theme and see that your website works well now. Could you please test from your end and let us know?

March 6, 2026 at 5:00 pm #711319

granule.petshop
Participant

It’s the same, i have the same slow parameters with disabled and enabled plugins :/

March 6, 2026 at 5:09 pm #711325

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

Could you please clarify what parameters you measure on the backend of the website? Send us a screenshot.
Thank you

March 6, 2026 at 6:35 pm #711371

granule.petshop
Participant

Of course – you can see this clearly in the screenshots.

Feel free to temporarily disable Maintenance Mode in the theme settings to perform the test. However, please enable it again afterward to avoid any potential orders being placed during testing.

An 11-second delay before the first interaction makes the website practically unusable.

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March 6, 2026 at 6:41 pm #711377

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

In general, our theme is already optimized and doesn’t have too many resources to make your website slow. Most likely, your website performance suffers from the content you have added to your website. It may happen in case of too many plugins, large not optimized images, or other resources. So we suggest you remove unnecessary plugins, install some kind of JS & CSS optimizing plugins like WP Rocket. You can find our guide about how to optimize your website built with our themes here https://xtemos.com/wordpress-performance-optimization-the-ultimate-guide-in-2021/

March 6, 2026 at 7:23 pm #711385

granule.petshop
Participant

I’m already using WP Rocket (paid and fully updated). All images uploaded to the site are compressed with TinyPNG and Imagify, and I’ve strictly ensured that no image exceeds 80 KB.

I also don’t have many plugins installed – only a few basic ones that are necessary for the site to function:
• Loco Translate
• Pixel Manager for WooCommerce
• Raiffeisen Payment Gateway
• Rank Math SEO

These are essential plugins for the basic operation of the store.

So could you please clarify what exactly you recommend in this situation?

Thank you.

March 9, 2026 at 9:41 am #711578

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

Hello,

Please disable all plugins that are not related to our theme completely and turn off the maintenance mode. And test again to see the difference. Also, keep them turned off so we can test from your end.

Kind Regards

March 9, 2026 at 1:58 pm #711633

granule.petshop
Participant

Hi guys,
Unfortunately, I can’t disable maintenance mode completely at the moment because I’m still waiting for the final legal pages before launching the webshop in production. I don’t want to open the site and start receiving orders that I wouldn’t be able to process yet.

I hope that makes sense. The production launch should happen very soon – most likely on Wednesday or Thursday.

My goal was simply to have the site optimized and running fast before the official launch.

You have my permission to disable/enable plugins as needed for testing, and if necessary you can briefly disable maintenance mode while testing from your side. I would just prefer that the site is not left publicly accessible for hours.

I hope you understand the situation and that you can still investigate what might be causing the slowdown.

Thank you very much.

Dejan

March 9, 2026 at 3:09 pm #711656

granule.petshop
Participant

Hi again,
Just to add a potentially useful finding from another WoodMart user who joined the discussion.

After testing with all plugins disabled, he narrowed the issue down to the child theme, not the parent WoodMart theme itself. The parent theme with plugins enabled was fast, while the child theme caused significant slowdown.

The root cause appears to be an unoptimized gettext filter in the child theme’s functions.php. The filter had no domain restriction, which caused it to run on every string processed by WordPress in the admin, and with Plugins invoked on each call. With thousands of strings being processed per page load, this created a large performance overhead.

According to him, this code had been working fine before the WoodMart 8.4.1 update, but the update seems to have increased the number of processed strings in the admin, which pushed this inefficiency into critical territory.

Once he added a proper domain restriction to the gettext filter, the backend speed returned to normal.

Maybe this information can help point the investigation in the right direction.

Best regards,
Dejan

March 9, 2026 at 3:14 pm #711659

granule.petshop
Participant

Hi again,

I checked my child theme functions.php and there is no custom gettext filter there, so Henrik’s exact issue does not seem to be present in my setup.

So while his finding may be a useful clue in general, it does not appear to explain the slowdown in my case.

Could you please continue investigating from your side, especially the interaction between WoodMart and my current setup/plugins?

Best regards,
Dejan

March 9, 2026 at 3:38 pm #711670

Artem Temos
Keymaster
Xtemos team

Hello,

As we can see, your website doesn’t have any performance issues. Your Google Page Speed score varies between 65-70, which is quite good. You need to refer to the provided article and try to enable/disable some features that may affect the performance. For example, I have enabled Convert large CSS files to inline styles, Load Google Fonts locally and Preload LCP Image. And now the mobile score is 80+ while the desktop is 93+.
Here is a screenshot https://gyazo.com/a4936a4406ad2629d8eb561d3d0b25b3

Kind Regards
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