Results slow to return

[iltdev]

Hi there,

I’m noticing that autocomplete results are a little slow to return. Say around 8 seconds. If I search for a word that I’ve previously search (presumed cached) it takes around 6 seconds.
I was previously using JQuery UI autocomplete at that took around 3 seconds.

Is there anything I can do to speed it up or trace where exactly the long response time is coming from?

The search is set up to only search titles within a custom post type and a specific taxonomy.

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi!

It’s usually the images in the search results. Each image must be parsed once, and the resizing may take a while if the initial image is large.
What I usually recommend is to limit the search results down to 10 from 30 (on the general settings panel the “Max. results” option)
It should speed up the search by a few seconds.

You can also turn off the images temporary, to see how faster is the search without them. If it’s much faster, then definitely the images are the problem.

Let me know how it goes!

[iltdev]

Cheers. I’ll give that a try. IT are currently moving my server, so there may be a little delay in getting back to you.

Chris

[iltdev]

Hi,
I’m made all those changes you suggested. The response for new searches is around 5 seconds. I was hoping for around 2 seconds max.

I’m using multisite and domain mapping. Do you think it’s anything to do with that?

[Ernest Marcinko]

Hi!

Multisite only affects that if you are searching multiple blogs.
I’m just finishing a newer version, so far I got around 150% speedup (from an initial 2s to around 700ms). I figured out, that the main reason for the slow responsen is mainly the fact, that for each ajax request the whole WordPress core is loaded, which is usually slow as hell. I’ve found a nice tweak to minimize the resources needed to make this functional, however it needs a bit more testing.

I’m sending you a copy of this, you should experience huge speedups.

After extracting the zip file, please upload it to your server, overwriting the old search files, then open up the search you are using and save it, just so the new options get to the database. BACKUP THE OLD SEARCH FIRST!

Then open up the caching options tab, make sure, that the TimThumb option is enabled and save it.

Then do some testing, it should work much better, at least I hope so. If something goes wrong, use the backup 🙂

[iltdev]

Excellent! I’ll give this a good test now 🙂

[Ernest Marcinko]

Meanwhile the one I uploaded to codecanyon had been approved. It contains a few more changes then this one, you can download that as well 🙂

[iltdev]

Things definitely seem to be a bit quicker. New keyword searches still seem to take around 4 seconds in Chrome and around 2 seconds in IE. Never thought I’d be saying IE was quicker than Chrome! haha.

I’ve noticed on my site, if I reload the page (tested with an without bypassing cache) sometimes it will load in a couple of seconds, sometimes it takes quite a while. So there’s something going on. Whatever the issue is, it might be causing the slowness of the ajax search pro results.

I previously disabled all plugins, including mu plugins. Disabling WP Better Minify actually seemed to speed things up considerably! But maybe there’s another issue somewhere 🙁

[Ernest Marcinko]

Actually there is an easy way to find out (not 100% tough):
– Turn on the caching on the search caching options panel

– Try to search for any phrase once. Wait a few seconds, then search again for the exact same phrase. Do this a couple of times. After the first search, the second, third, fourth etc… searches for the same phrase should be a lot faster, I mean super fast, like under half second. If it’s not that fast, then there is definitely something else involved.

[iltdev]

I can confirm that results are almost instant when they have been cached.

Is there a way I can use the ajaxurl to test a search directly? I notice is uses POST. I was hoping to use GET so I could do something like:
http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/ajax-search-pro/ajax_search.php?q=mykeyword

[Ernest Marcinko]

Okay.

Unfortunately not, because of the search settings on the frontend. Most of the time there is too many options to handle with a GET request 🙂

I use firefox+firebug plugin to debug speed issues. The console tab didplays the ajax requests with the timeframe, it’s pretty neat.

Can you provide temporary admin access to the site? I might as well try to experiment with the search settings myself 🙂

[iltdev]

Unfortunately it’s an internal development server so I can’t give you access at the moment. We plan to go live on the 3rd March, so I can give you access then?

Thanks for your continued support. It has been excellent. As is the plugin 🙂

[Ernest Marcinko]

Okay! Thank you for all of the information!

Feel free to reply to this thread if got live, or if you have any information regarding this issue 🙂

If you have a minute, please rate the search on codecanyon. (link)

Thank you, have a nice day!

[iltdev]

Rated 5/5 🙂

[iltdev]

Still can’t make any progress with this. I did wonder though, would it be possible to index pages/posts etc and query that instead?
I use Relevanssi which already indexes everything to provide fast search results. It would be cool to do something similar with AJAX Search Pro, or even use Relevanssi’s index.

Just thinking out loud really 🙂

[Author]

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