Hi, I have a complex form that I’ve been working on for months. It has 300 fields.
It’s almost done, but I’d like to improve the intiial load time, which is about 8 seconds. Du to the design, I can’t make it into a multipage form.
Even having a spinner or fake form initial image might help. Any ideas most appreciated. Have a look…
You should add a “page loader” to your page so it seems intentional. Any third-party plugin should work.
Thanks! Is there a particualr plugin you have used before?
Also, you can enable page cache if your forms don’t dynamically add data.
I would imagine though if you did a little digging you might find one that is free in the WordPress repository.
Hi, that didn’t really work because the preloader is at the page level, rather than being inside the form itself.
Actually, I figured it out, I added a progress bar from my theme just above the form.
That didn’t work either because the animation on the progress bar wouldn’t run until AFTER the form has loaded. How would I go about getting it to run before the form?
The page loader I sent you allows you to set a timer and wait until the page has completed loaded. You will need to dig into the settings for a configuration that will work.
You should disable the rendering of the the page until it’s loaded completely and just have the loader appear.
This won’t solve a slow loading page. See next post for solving this at the root.
Did you enable your cache? If you don’t have a caching plugin you might want to check out WPRocket. Caching is great for subsequent visits but you can also use their plugins to configure other settings that can help.
You may also want to check out the asset cleanup plugin and unload any scripts, plugins, or files that aren’t needed for that page. It’s an excellent plugin to strip the fat.
Many plugins and files load on all pages even if they aren’t needed. This adds bloat to the page and makes it take longer to load.
Also, there’s a company called Cloudflare which has a network of servers (CDN) all around the world. If you create a cloud flare account, your site can get loaded closer to people based on their location which can help improve performance.
Hi, thanks for the options you sent. I am using Kinsta as a host, which has super-fast caching and I’m using their cdn, but the form still takes nine seconds or so to load.
If you genuinely believe you’ve done all you can do and feel it is the form itself, my only suggestion is to make your one large form and convert into two to three smaller forms.
I’ve built several long forms and the page hasn’t ever taken 8-9 seconds to load.
Which is why perhaps you should consider other possible options to increase the overall page load.
Hi, I have a client with a similar complexity form using GF and it’s way faster. I’m curious to understand what are you using to show/hide fields. In his case it’s conditional logic but there are no calculations until the very end. Do you run the calculations on every click on the form and that’s when the spinning wheel gets fired? just curious if you do this on code or in GF fields. Also, he uses WPRocket cache/cdn.
Hi, sorry for the late reply. We’re just using conditional logic, but there are a lot of pricing calculations through the form. How would I put them at the end?
You would add a page break towards the end of your form and drag the pricing fields inside the page break.