Slow Loading Websites

[MidwestJoe]

I got a problem with my website. I was having some problems with SEO and did some analyses with Google, Woorank and hired an SEO company. I had two major problems.

1) the website didn't have a declared language. I am able to take care of that, but you would think that with a website builder, that should have a built in 1 click option for that.

2) This is the big one, the opne that will likely cause me to abandon Weebly. My website is loading to slowly. I have a business plan, so I am a paying customer, and my website is loading slowly, to the point that not pnly is it affecting my SEO rank, but even my google adowrds is penalizing me with a bad "landing page experience"

There are a few things that can be causing this, some of it, is the way that the themes were built. The other problem is that it is likely that Weebly is overloading their servers.

With a woprdpress theme, there are programs you can run to optimize the speed. With Weebly those tools aren't available, and some of the code can even be modified (that is what my wife tells me, she is a computer programmer).

This wasn't always a problem, I ran a test on my site abouyt a year ago and all was good. Since then I have upgraded to one of the newer themes, althoug I suspect that the new theme alone is nbot the culprit, and slow overloaded servers are a factor.

Anone else here havong this problem, and any ideas short of switching hosted providers?

[Adam7]

No problem. It's in the top chunk of elements next to the button element:

[michaelm73]

Thanks very much Adam. I must be blind but I totally missed it....

[Adam7]

The main blog page of a site is often going to going to be slow like that because of the amount of content on the page. You could probably increase the speed some if you use the "Read more" element near the top of your posts so most of the content is on individual blog pages and not on the main blog page itself. 

[michaelm73]

Thanks for getting back to me Adam. Where do I find the "Read More" element?

[Adam7]

When editing a blog post it should show as an element in the side bar (it won't show unless you're actually editing a blog post).

[michaelm73]

Hi Adam, I don't see it even when editing a blog post. Please could you post a screengrab?

[revpennydean]

I am having the same problem with all of my websites both my free weebly websites and my Pro accounts. My pages load extremely slow which is causing me to lose viewers. When I contacted weebly about several issues on their end that were listed when I tested the site they said it was because there were pages under "More" but even after moving those pages the site does not load any faster.

[PLANKeyewear]

Ooof 24 PageSpeed. All Weebly. How can i fix this? This is just a small sample of the cdn2.editmysite.com 

[Adam7]

There really wouldn't be a way right now to change that, @PLANKeyewear, since it wouldn't be possible to remove, edit, or change those files or how they are added to a site. You can control the amount of content you add to a page, though, so you could improve page speed by limiting how much content you add to a given page.

[PLANKeyewear]

It’s the mobile that is super slow. Actually desktop speed is great. 

[Zens77]

I am also having issues with load speed. Since yesterday, my new website has started dramatically fluctuating in speed and is mostly loading extremely slowly. I thought it was casued from using an app for color blocks that is no longer supported by Weebly. I removed the app and the color blocks, but that did not fix the issue. 

Webtest: https://www.webpagetest.org/result/190305_WY_1b54bc5a9caef837cbeedd1de1735189/ 

URL: www.theeightoneseven.com 

Theme: Haberdasher 

As I was writing this, with no changes to my site, the speed went back to normal. Then, 10 minutes later, it's back to a crawl. 

Here is what I have done so far to try and fix it:

1. Removed the Color Block app that was no longer Weebly supported

2. Removed the Google Analytics and Webmaster scripts in the header. (It changed nothing, so l put them back in.) 

3. Reapplied the original theme to remove my customized pieces in the HTML/CSS (also did not change anything, so reapplied my own again.)

4. Removed the app that allowed Facebook shares. No effect. 

Honestly, I'm so early in the process with this site I can't figure out what changed or is happening. I've done 5 other sites in Weebly over the years and didn't run into this issue, but I wasn't doing a blog style theme either. 

And this is the bare minimum of the content I will have on my page. So if it's a content problem then I will have to look at other options. 

Please advise where this is going wrong? Thanks in advance for your help. 

[Adam7]

Your site is loading quickly for me, @Zens77. There was someone else complaining of a similar issue earlier this morning, and when I checked their site there was a file being used by a Waddons addon that was taking a long time to give a 404 error; while the browser tried to get the file it pretty much prevented the site from loading. Maybe the server that Waddons uses to serve files for their addons was having some intermittent trouble?

[Zens77]

I removed the Waddons app and the problem appears to be fixed, even though I had not applied that theme yet to any page. 

It's disappointing that I did purchase the Waddons add on, but I can contact them about the issues. Thank you for your assistance! 

[Adam7]

I'm sure they'll resolve whatever the root cause is. Thanks for the update, @Zens77.

[tomlaneguitar]

ALL of your themes get a POOR rating on thinkwithgoogle, testmysite.  It's very dissappointing.  I have been a BUSINESS and PRO customer of weebly for years.  I created a completely empty new site, except for an empty home page of course with a title.  Every single theme I tried (and I tried dozens), even old ones, rate OVER 4.6 seconds, which get a POOR rating according to google. Most are 5.5 to 6.0   Google here is emphasizing load time over a 4G connection, not anything like a 200MB ethernet line.  Of course they are great on desktop, but on 4G cellular they are horrible.

I believe it is all of the javascript, and css components in these themes, needed for all of the optional functionality like membership for example that is probably the main culprit.  Also I realize js libraries are required for the bootstrap etc for responsive sites.  But can someone please make a bare bones theme that will work on mobile as well as desktop, that can load quickly according to google?

It really makes me think I may have to take my business elsewhere where I can get a quicker loading site on mobile.  According to google, we lose a lot of site visitors as people with slow cellular connections will not have the patience.

[davidb123]

have the same issue - weebly server slow. even editing website is slow. 

[Adam7]

Which of your sites are you having trouble with, @davidb123?

[davidb123]

nerangtiles.com.au.

I understand there is plenty of content on each page but many high performing websites also have high content and load very quickly.

[davidb123]

The editor on each page is so slow that it takes over 2-5 minutes to delete simple items such as a 'Divider' or 'Slideshow' at this stage. 

I attempted using different browsers, deleting cache regularily and ensuring there is adequate memory space while using a FTTH top speed internet. 

Is there any known issues with the theme that I am using?

[Adam7]

Your live site loads fine for me and the editor seems fine as well, even on pages with more content. Since our servers are US-based I would expect a little more latency, although 2 - 5 minutes is much more extreme than anything caused by distance. I don't think it would be theme related, although it wouldn't hurt to try a different one just to see.

[#22]

My website is not loading on mobile at all!! I have PRO account with Weebly for 6 years and pay every month to Weebly and Square. Hosting is from Weebly as well.

I have this issue for the last 3 months. The nature of my business requires booking appointments online. But if the client can not open my website on mobile they can not book an appointment. I am receiving emails, texts, and calls from my clients saying they can not open the website. I am losing business, a lot of business. It took me 6 years to build my website, Google account and online presence, but now all this hard work just ruined. Because Weebly does not work and the representatives do not provide any support.

For these 3 months, I have contacted support several times over email, calls, and sent screenshots and screen recordings. I have received always the same response "everything looks good at our end" and they just hang up. Unfortunately, plus to nonexisting support, Weebly representatives are also very disrespectful. If you do not speak "SEO and HTML" they will treat you like an idiot and give advice something like "type correct URL", "make sure that you connected to internet", or it is "local issue with internet" (yes sure I am located in a very rural area 30 min from Manhattan NY). My family, my friends, my clients, and I tried to open a website in different states and even countries including NY HI CA TX, from different browsers and different mobile devices, and the website just not loading.

Weebly representatives give one answer that I see a lot in this forum as well "site works perfectly fine on my end if we can not rerecreat the issue we can not help". How convenient!  This is how all attempts to seek support ended up. They do not answer emails for 3-4 weeks. Weebly ignored my requests for a refund for the months my website was useless. 

I lost hope to receive technical support, so I have one last question how long do you think clients will tolerate this?