Run an X-ray report to diagnose a slow website

Definitions

The X-ray report tool analyzes your website’s performance, pinpointing specific issues and resource bottlenecks that cause slow loading times, helping you optimize and improve site speed.

Before you start

✅ You can run an X-ray on any of your WordPress websites.

❗The X-ray report tool works only for WordPress websites.

⚠️ The X-ray generates a detailed technical report for your website. Ideally, it should be reviewed alongside a professional website developer.

ℹ️ In addition to an X-ray report, here are some general tips for improving WordPress website speed:

• ➡️ Use a lightweight theme: Choose a streamlined theme with only the features you need to avoid slowing down your website with unnecessary code.

• ➡️ Optimize theme use: Deactivate and delete any inactive themes from your WordPress admin dashboard since only one theme is used at a time.

• ➡️ Optimize plugin use: Remove unnecessary plugins and avoid plugins known to cause slow speeds, such as Jetpack and Wordfence.

• ➡️ Optimize images: Compress images before uploading or use an image optimization plugin to automatically compress them, reducing load times.

• ➡️ Use cache: Implement a cache plugin to store parts of your website for quicker loading times.

• ➡️ Optimize database: Regularly optimize your database to prevent slowdowns from accumulated revisions and data. Normally, this can be done using a cache plugin.

Step by step

1. Log in to your hosting control panel

2. Click on the X-Ray button

3. Click on the Start Tracing button

4. You’ll get a Start tracing popup, from the URL dropdown, select your website

5. In the Specify mask field, put in an asterisk *

6. Leave your web browser window open on the X-Ray page on the Start tracing popup. Don’t click anything else for now.

7. Open a new web browser window in Incognito or Private mode, type in your website domain name in the search bar however do not press enter, i.e. don’t load your website, but have it ready to be loaded within your browser.

8. Go back to your X-Ray tool and on the Start tracing popup, click the Run button

9. Return to your incognito / private browser page where your website domain name is in the search bar, and click ‘enter‘ or ‘return‘ on your keyboard to load your website. Do a few clicks around your website and load different pages or elements.

10. Leave the X-Ray tool to run for approximately 60 minutes (1 hour)

11. After 60 minutes, click on the eye icon 👁️ under the Actions column where your X-ray task is running

12. Under Requests, you will see one or a series of requests listed, click directly on the request at the top with the longest Duration

13. Then click the Download as PDF button to save the PDF file to your computer

14. Open the PDF file and you will find your website diagnostic report (X-Ray monitoring report).

• The detailed X-ray report will pinpoint exactly where slowdowns are occurring, whether it’s a specific plugin, a theme, or a custom script causing the issue.

• Once issues are identified, you can take action to improve performance by deactivating and deleting unnecessary plugins, changing themes, or optimizing custom scripts. Remember, these tasks will likely require the help of a professional website developer.

• The slowest components will be color-coded to help you easily identify where most of your load time is being spent. Here is an example of what the first page of the X-ray report looks like:

15. Once you’re done with the X-ray session, return to the Tracing tasks screen and click the trash icon and follow the prompts to delete it