You have attempted to load your site and it appears to be running slow, now what? We understand this is frustrating. There are a few things to consider on what could possibly be making your site run slow. We are going to address those here for you to troubleshoot the possibilities.
What is “slow?” We recognize that this is relative concept and you may consider one speed to be slow while another customer may be completely fine with that exact speed. Since it is impossible to determine what is “slow” for everyone, we have decided we would much rather spend our time helping you fine tune your site to be as fast as it can be, so lets get into what could make your site slow and how it can be fixed.
Connectivity
Connectivity issues often cause sites to appear slow when they may not actually be running slow at all. We have a resource that we suggest to check to see if it is an issue with your connectivity or if there is another issue.
Internet Supervision
The tool we suggest is Internet Supervision. Internet Supervision is a free website testing tool. You simply enter your website URL into the provided field and select “Check URL.” It will then connect to your site from a various places all over the world so you can see if it is your connectivity or if it is something more.
Sample Results Page: (click on image to view larger image)
If your site connects to other locations around the world in a timely manner then it is most likely your connection or your route to our servers. In either case you would need to contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP), however before you do we would like to help you give them more specifics on the issue.
TraceRoute & PingPlotter
If you would like us to help you find the exact location that is causing your site to appear slow, send us a trace route to support@hostgator.com. We suggest you use PingPlotter to send your trace route. Our Linux Administrators will then review the route and see exactly where the the lag is coming from and let you know where to point your ISP.
Site Design
Site design is one of the biggest culprits of causing sites to run slow. Since we are not a web design company our expertise here are limited, however we definitely know where you find how your site measures up to average speeds.
GTMetrix
We suggest you use a tool called GTmetrix. Simply enter your site URL into the “Analyze Performance of:” field and select “Go!” GTmetrix will then analyze your site and give you your grade for general Page Speed and Yahoo!'s YSlow tool. You can also see you exact page load time.
You can also get more details on exactly why you received the grade you received for both Page Speed and YSlow, as well as a Timeline of how long it took each aspect of the page to load and when in your History was your best load time.
Using this tool you should easily be able to optimize your site to be as fast as possible. GTmertix will also show you any site flaws so you can adjust your coding and condense large files that are causing slow speeds.
Server is running slow
Our goal is to have every server running perfectly, however sometimes a server may run slower than normal due to a variety of reasons. You can rest assure are aware of all of them and are constantly monitoring to make sure your server is running at it's optimal level at all times.
If you need any further assistance please feel free to contact us via chat, phone, or ticket.
thanks alot