Troubleshooting WordPress Plugin Making Blog SLOW

Some of my blogs were taking several minutes to load. Nothing would happen, and then they load quickly.

PhpMyAdmin says all MySQL tables are OK.

Firefox Web Console (I think it’s part of the Web Developer add-on) shows lines like this:
GET https://molten-salt-reactor.glerner.com/ [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 283757ms]
(took 283.757 seconds for the page to load)

Okay, what’s taking over 4 minutes?

After trying different things to fix the problem, I found that one of the plugins I had installed, a while ago, caused the problem: disabling all but essential plugins (both for the individual blog and in Network Plugins) had the page load quickly.

The “essential plugins” I tried (and having them Active it Works): Akismet, All in One SEO Pack, Sociable, plus 2 “Must-Use” plugins: WordPress MU Domain Mapping and WP Super Cache

Note: See my installation instructions for the WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin”, it is Essential for any multi-site WordPress installation.

To find which plugin is the problem, I kept trying enabling a few plugins at a time, starting with the ones that I thought were most likely to affect page loading times.

Enable FeedWordPress and MemberWing Membership Website Free Edition: still works

Enable WP-Amazon, WPMU Global Search, WPMU Global Search, WordPress Database Backup, Theme Info, TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker), Smart Youtube PRO, KB Advanced RSS Widget, HopPress, Bubblecast Video for WordPress: long time to load

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere…

Disable Bubblecast Video for WordPress, and HopPress: loads fast
Enable Bubblecast Video for WordPress: long time
Disable Bubblecast Video for WordPress: fast
Enable Bubblecast Video for WordPress: long time

Found you, dratted plugin!

Enable Bubblecast Video for WordPress:
[16:30:22.960] GET https://molten-salt-reactor.glerner.com/ [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 283757ms]
Disable Bubblecast Video for WordPress:
[18:32:03.826] GET https://molten-salt-reactor.glerner.com/ [HTTP/1.1 200 OK 1078ms]

So this plugin adds 282.7 seconds to my blog load time.

Only settings for the Bubblecast plugin are to enter your Bubblecast login info.

Perhaps you Must provide your Bubblecast account info? But I don’t have one, and when I try to load the plugin home page, http://bubble-cast.com/wordpress.html it fails:
“The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.”

So, I’m deleting the plugin, and posting to the WordPress plugin forum this plugin doesn’t work, at least not with WordPress 3.3.1


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