[Resolved] navigation.min.js seems to be the "slowdown culprit" …. How can I get past?

[William]

On the following website: russianriverhomesales.com
I have started to see significant slowdowns in loading items… especially the home page. Everything seems to load super fast…. except the slideshow on the home page. It now takes 15 sec to load according to the waterfall view in developer view. The slowly loading file that is delaying the slideshow display seems to be navigation.min.js. What can I do to rectify this? I used the twenty-seventeen theme to make sure this was a GeneratePress isue… and with TwentySeventeen, the slide show loads instantly, the way it should. This has only been an issue lately. Perhaps the cause of some update? Not sure.

Are you familiar with any problems associated with this js file?
Thanks!
Bill

[Tom]

Hi there,

navigation.min.js is only 1.8kb in size, which is tiny. It shouldn’t be causing any speed bottlenecks.

If there is an issue loading the file, it might be some sort of caching/server issue.

I just ran your website through tools.pingdom.com.

navigation.min.js took 37ms to load.

However, you have a bundle.js file which is 175kb, and took almost a full second to load.

You also have a bundle.css file which took 500ms to load.

[William]

Thanks Tom,

Yeah the google waterfall timeline shows that navigation.min.js as the bottleneck. Obviously it’s miniscule in size. Maybe I should reinstall the theme. Perhaps there’s some corruption that’s hanging it. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll run across some remedy for it.

In the meantime it’s terribly slow. Don’t recall anything that would have caused that behavior. It was fine a couple of weeks ago and loaded perfectly for the 3 months since I installed the site.

Who knows?

[Tom]

It loaded fast for me.

Which tool are you using which is highlighting navigaition.js?

[William]

The Chrome Developer Tools NETWORK PANEL… waterfall view.

[Tom]

Here’s what I’m seeing: https://www.screencast.com/t/SQ1obv8R

I excluded the top item which was the initial request to your website to keep your URL private.

[William]

So those are the slowest items you see? No reference to navigation.min.js on your computer? How weird. All my computers are seeing the slowdown…. including my iPhone.

Are you waiting until the slideshow loads? That is mainly what is being delayed by the bottleneck.

This is what I see on my end in the network console: https://www.screencast.com/t/C4UClOB3
Bill

[Tom]

Yes, those are the items sorted by slowest to fastest I’m seeing.

Your navigation.js is in red, and the status is set to 500 (I think, it’s cut off). That means the browser isn’t able to even read the file. So it’s spending all of that time trying to read it, but isn’t succeeding until it eventually times out.

This makes me think it’s likely something server related going on.

I do wonder why I’m seeing completely different results. Your site also loads very fast for me. Do you have any caching plugins, or server caching?

[William]

Geez, Tom…. I thought you’d left for the night 🙂

Yes… I’m caching and handling HTTPS and some minification through Cloudflare. Has been working OK, so far… for about 6 weeks.

Bill

[William]

Tom… I put Cloudflare in “development mode” to turn off the caching. Then I purged the cache entirely. Then I purged my Chrome browser cache. Still the same problem. I think I’m going to clone this site to my development server and see if the same problem occurs there. Maybe that will give us some hints on the js loading problem. Like you said… could be a server problem.

[Tom]

Sounds good, let me know the results.

[William]

OK Tom… this has been resolved.

The 522 (Cloudflare) error that was blocking the navigation.min.js file was a firewall blocking issue at my inMotion VPS. Lord knows why that individual file was the only one blocked…?

The solution was to take the full gamut of Cloudflare IP ranges and plug them into my firewall whitelist on my Virtual Private Server’s WHM at the host. As soon as I completed that… everything works again. So it was definitely a server issue, as you assessed…..not GeneratePress.

Odd, though, the site worked great for a few months… then, all of a sudden, this was an issue. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The web is a very dynamic place where the sands are constantly shifting. So many “moving parts”!

The solution was discussed here: https://community.cloudflare.com/t/error-522-on-some-files-and-some-connections/6490

Thanks for your help and pointing me in the right direction.
Bill

[Tom]

Awesome, glad you found a solution – thanks for sharing it with us! 🙂

[Author]

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