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I am running a LAMP Stack on a google cloud customized compute engine primarily to host wordpress websites running woocommerce stores.

Following are server specs: RAM: 5GB, Cores: 1, Space: 30GB, OS: CentOS7, Maria DB Version: 5.5.64, PHP Version: 7.3

Currently facing extreme ttfb Values over 10-20 secs even with very low traffic. Have done the following optimisations for improving the timing but it doesn't seem to improve it. The site has close to 1500 products.

  1. Wordpress caching using hummingbird and auto optimize (minify, GZIP compression etc..) custom .htaccess with header expires, APCU PHP cache, cloudflare CDN, compressed images.

  2. Optimized mariadb with optimum memory allocation, allocated optimum memory to apache and PHP as well.

    1. Tried adding more cores and increase memory of compute engine in vain.

    2. Disabling theme and template has little to no effect.

All the above optimizations has had little effect on the ttfb timings, is this a server/network related issue on my google cloud compute instance ?

Pls check the ttfb values below, test link:

TTFB Test Results

Thanks in advance !

Kailash Rao
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    The Plugins installed on WordPress has a big impact on performance. First, remove everything that is not activated. Then disable and remove anything not required. Then review what is left. Look at the raw HTML to see what is being generated. This can help identify plugins that are slowing down response time. There are other factors to consider, such as compression which slows down TTFB but might decrease total transfer time. How big is the database - to maximize performance you want everything in memory. Databases will consume as much memory as possible leaving PHP and Apache with less. – John Hanley Nov 19 '19 at 19:07
  • You mention 5 GB but only one core. Do not run a database on a single core VM. What instance size are you using? Check if your system is using SWAP. You do not want your system swapping to disk. Edit your question with a lot more details. – John Hanley Nov 19 '19 at 19:08

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I think you can measure the repose times. Try to measure the time spent waiting for the initial response by going to your browser and clicking "F12" >> "Network" tab and then search for your website using the browser in the same window.

You will get the response times by each process to connect to your website. If you click a specific process and then select the timing you will be able to see the TTFB and with that try to catch where is taking more time.

I believe this is more related with your installations than with the server itself.

If you want to test your server connection you could try to avoid the app side and use a trace or iperf to test your TCP connections times to your server from your local computer (to the external IP), this will only work if you have ICMP traffic allowed.

And the last thing is the same than John mentioned above, check if you're server is not swaping memory or even try to monitor the CPU and mem in use while you run the ttbf test, that will give you an idea if the problem is with the server or with the website and its configuration.

Additionally here are some recommendations to reduce ttbf (https://wp-rocket.me/blog/how-to-reduce-ttfb-wordpress-site/). Hoping it can help some how with this.

Ariel Palacios
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