Very slow load times

reesmorrison · March 12, 2021, 4:22am

My Netlify site is themesfromart.com. I am using RStudio and .rmd files, pushed to GitHub which directs to Netlify (a very simple Hugo theme, Tanka). I am a rank newbie.

The blog is brand new and has about 10 images, but all of them are 100KB or less. It takes 30-40 seconds for the site to load when I enter it in my Firefox browser. I have copied below the most recent Deploy log. What struck me is the 92MB cache, which seems huge given the total text is about 50 Word pages plus the images.

11:01:32 AM: Build ready to start
11:01:34 AM: build-image version: d84c79427e8f83c1ba17bcdd7b3fe38059376b68
11:01:34 AM: build-image tag: v3.6.1
11:01:34 AM: buildbot version: 29b385c68bd41d74f1928b3636e1e718dd36f421
11:01:34 AM: Fetching cached dependencies
11:01:34 AM: Starting to download cache of 92.5MB
11:01:35 AM: Finished downloading cache in 665.530989ms
11:01:35 AM: Starting to extract cache
11:01:39 AM: Finished extracting cache in 3.877891854s
11:01:39 AM: Finished fetching cache in 4.575892866s
11:01:39 AM: Starting to prepare the repo for build
11:01:39 AM: Preparing Git Reference refs/heads/main
11:01:42 AM: Starting build script
11:01:42 AM: Installing dependencies
11:01:42 AM: Python version set to 2.7
11:01:43 AM: Started restoring cached node version
11:01:46 AM: Finished restoring cached node version
11:01:47 AM: v12.18.0 is already installed.
11:01:48 AM: Now using node v12.18.0 (npm v6.14.4)
11:01:48 AM: Started restoring cached build plugins
11:01:48 AM: Finished restoring cached build plugins
11:01:48 AM: Attempting ruby version 2.7.1, read from environment
11:01:50 AM: Using ruby version 2.7.1
11:01:51 AM: Using PHP version 5.6
11:01:51 AM: Installing Hugo 0.80.0
11:01:51 AM: Hugo Static Site Generator v0.80.0-792EF0F4/extended linux/amd64 BuildDate: 2020-12-31T13:46:18Z
11:01:51 AM: Started restoring cached go cache
11:01:51 AM: Finished restoring cached go cache
11:01:51 AM: go version go1.14.4 linux/amd64
11:01:51 AM: go version go1.14.4 linux/amd64
11:01:51 AM: Installing missing commands
11:01:51 AM: Verify run directory
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:53 AM: Netlify Build
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ❯ Version
11:01:53 AM: @netlify/build 9.1.2
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ❯ Flags
11:01:53 AM: deployId: 6026a65c5cce350008e5542e
11:01:53 AM: mode: buildbot
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ❯ Current directory
11:01:53 AM: /opt/build/repo
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ❯ Config file
11:01:53 AM: /opt/build/repo/netlify.toml
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ❯ Context
11:01:53 AM: production
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:53 AM: 1. build.command from netlify.toml
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: $ hugo
11:01:53 AM: Start building sites …
11:01:53 AM: | EN
11:01:53 AM: -------------------±----
11:01:53 AM: Pages | 28
11:01:53 AM: Paginator pages | 0
11:01:53 AM: Non-page files | 2
11:01:53 AM: Static files | 14
11:01:53 AM: Processed images | 0
11:01:53 AM: Aliases | 0
11:01:53 AM: Sitemaps | 1
11:01:53 AM: Cleaned | 0
11:01:53 AM: Total in 103 ms
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: (build.command completed in 191ms)
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:54 AM: Creating deploy upload records
11:01:53 AM: 2. Deploy site
11:01:53 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:53 AM:
11:01:53 AM: Starting to deploy site from ‘public’
11:01:53 AM: Creating deploy tree
11:01:54 AM: 21 new files to upload
11:01:54 AM: 0 new functions to upload
11:01:55 AM: Site deploy was successfully initiated
11:01:55 AM:
11:01:55 AM: (Deploy site completed in 1.2s)
11:01:55 AM:
11:01:55 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:55 AM: Netlify Build Complete
11:01:55 AM: ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
11:01:55 AM:
11:01:55 AM: (Netlify Build completed in 1.5s)
11:01:55 AM: Caching artifacts
11:01:55 AM: Started saving build plugins
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving build plugins
11:01:55 AM: Started saving pip cache
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving pip cache
11:01:55 AM: Started saving emacs cask dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving emacs cask dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Started saving maven dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving maven dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Started saving boot dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving boot dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Started saving rust rustup cache
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving rust rustup cache
11:01:55 AM: Starting post processing
11:01:55 AM: Started saving go dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Finished saving go dependencies
11:01:55 AM: Build script success
11:01:55 AM: Post processing - HTML
11:01:57 AM: Post processing - header rules
11:01:57 AM: Post processing - redirect rules
11:01:57 AM: Post processing done
11:01:57 AM: Site is live
11:02:15 AM: Finished processing build request in 40.780475003s

My Verizon cable service is fast for everything else I do on the internet, so something is bringing my blog to a crawl. I have read about creating a HAR but don’t know how to do that and provide it to you. I Have not set “Base directory” I realized. I ran nsloading and it said TTL Until Refresh was 3600.

I’m sorry if I haven’t told you enough but I don’t know what else to offer. Thank you for your help.

hrishikesh · February 13, 2021, 1:44pm

Is there any specific page with problems? I got the home page loaded in some 2 seconds and the first post in 1.34 seconds. The second post (the one with an image) took 1.55 seconds.

snorkypie · February 13, 2021, 3:15pm

Is it only slow in Firefox or in Edge/Safari too?

It’s even faster than that for me (from Romania).

Only thing I noticed was an incorrectly generated link to the CSS file which results in a failed DNS lookup.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://themesfromart.comcss/custom.css" />

(Notice no slash between domain and css directory)

reesmorrison · February 14, 2021, 3:03pm

Thank you both for your quickness. I will try from other machines and see if I can replicate the slowness, then provide more information if I do.

tomrutgers · February 14, 2021, 5:39pm

It probably helps to record a HAR file from your network console of your browser

luke · February 15, 2021, 4:11am

Hi, @reesmorrison. I did notice your apex domain is the primary custom domain for the site. This directs all traffic to a single system on the west coast of the USA. I would recommend making the www subdomain the primary custom domain (under Site Name > Settings > Domain management > Custom domains).

We have more about this in our documentation here:

Quoting:

Unless your DNS provider supports CNAME flattening, ANAME or ALIAS records for apex domains, we strongly recommend setting the www subdomain (or another subdomain) as your primary domain . Our blog post How to Set Up Netlify DNS has more details on why we recommend that configuration.

If that doesn’t resolve the issue, a HAR recording of the issue would contain the information required to troubleshoot. Would you be willing to please send us a link to a HAR recording of the issue occurring?

reesmorrison · February 19, 2021, 7:39pm

Here is a screen shot of the HAR, Luke (and thank you and your colleagues for their advice). The steps of “read utterances.es” and later “connection to themesfromart.comcss” each take about 15 seconds.

luke · February 22, 2021, 10:41am

Hi, @reesmorrison. I would need to examine the HAR recording itself. That screenshot doesn’t contain any of the information required to troubleshoot.

Note, for the domain domains you are asking about (utterances.es and themesfromart.comcss) Netlify isn’t hosting either of those sites so you would need to contact the hosting for those sites about those errors. We can only troubleshoot the HTTP requests that point to Netlify and neither utterances.es or themesfromart.comcss point to our service.

In fact, themesfromart.comcss looks like a typo (not a correct domain name at all) and I show utterances.es as a non-working domain name.

To summarize: A) we don’t host the sites you are asking about and B) it appears that neither domain is working (no one hosts them).

You are asking about two sites which literally do not exist at all - not at Netlify or anywhere else. They don’t work because no one has created them and Netlify certainly doesn’t host them (because the domains don’t even exist).

If there are other questions about this, please let us know.

reesmorrison · March 1, 2021, 11:07pm

Luke, thank you for your help.

I have attached an HAR recording. Does it give you any clues why the site renders so slowly from my laptop?

Thank you.

(Attachment themesfromart.com_Archive [21-03-01 14-52-05].har is missing)

perry · March 1, 2021, 11:43pm

hi @reesmorrison , looks like when you replied by email the HAR file didn’t come with - you’ll need to upload that somewhere and then link it to us instead.

reesmorrison · March 3, 2021, 10:13pm

Perry,

Here is a link to the HAR file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11fbbMCuBeADmTvHENmud6KWteHsL0Bji/view?usp=sharing

perry · March 11, 2021, 7:05pm

hi rees, sorry to be slow to get back to you. I am going to ask one of our engineers who is well versed in diagnosing performance problems to take a look at this.

luke · March 12, 2021, 4:22am

Hi, @reesmorrison. I don’t see any slowness in the HAR file attached.

The initial page load of /index.html does take 453 ms. While this is longer than one might expect for such a small file (2627 bytes transferred brotli compressed including headers), most of the timing is spent waiting for the local network connection and SSL negotiation. The SSL negotiation is unavoidable and only applies to the initial connection. The subsequent requests to the same domain name are reusing the connection (in most cases with most browsers) so the SSL negotiatoin only applies to that first connection.

The blocked time is local networking related and not something Netlify can control.

Here is a screenshot to explain the analysis:

So, while this 453 ms seems slow it is really only 280 ms once the blocked time is removed and the 280 ms isn’t unreasonable for an asset which was not in the ADN cache (and it was a cache miss - I checked).

Now, the next for connections do show failures. However, none of those connection are connection to Netlify. If those connections are slow (or not working at all), you need to ask the hosting provider for those URLs.

The first failure is because the domain simply doesn’t exist. I pointed that 18 days ago here:

Here is a screenshot to clarify:

This is what your /index.html contains for that URL:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://themesfromart.comcss/custom.css" />

This should be this instead:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://themesfromart.com/css/custom.css" />

So that failure is because there is a mistake in your HTML. We don’t control what is in index.html. You control that so this is an error you will need to fix. Netlify cannot do it for you.

The next three failures are for URLs at the domain cdnjs.cloudflare.com. It should be clear that Netlify doesn’t host those URLs and that Cloudflare does.

For these three error (screenshot below to clarify) Netlify doesn’t host those URLs so we cannot explain why they didn’t work. If Cloudflare didn’t work, you need to ask Cloudflare why, not us.

Again, here is a screenshot to clarify:

To summarize, I don’t see any slowness. The four failures I do see are either caused by mistakes in the site HTML itself or are for URLs which Netlify doesn’t host in any way.

If there are questions about any of this, please let us know.