WordPress performance drop due to introduce Gutenberg

[dylan2intel]

Using Siege benchmark tool to stress WordPress with transaction per second as KPI

After upgrading WordPress from v5.9.3 to v6.0, we found that the performance dropped.

After experiment on git cherry -v 5.9-branch 6.0-branch |cat -n > ~/commits_on_6.0_branch.txt totally 707 commits, root cause addressed due to ​this commit.

NO	Commit ID	Commit Message	Transaction/sec
1	5fc6f2a	Trunk is now 6.0-alpha. Built from ​52448	217.25
354	7b96116	Twenty Twenty: Fix aria-expanded handling in search toggle.	209.71
443	476e731	Users: Improve wording of the "New Admin Email Address" email.	212.07
454	bc0f186	Administration: Clarify some sentences after [53131].	207.59
455	ab8a964	Editor: Update WordPress packages based based on Gutenberg v13.0 RC3	186.43
456	bb723f9	Widgets: Avoid 27 duplicate translations in Media Widgets constructor.	182.69
457	4dd4aec	Administration: Add unit test for term supplementary notice.	185.76
459	1d29cb6	Media: Enable edits to custom image sizes.	184.88
465	e1a2ae3	Post WordPress 6.0 Beta 1 version bump. Built from ​53167	184.04
487	407e802	Docs: Use third-person singular verbs for function descriptions in author-template.php...	188.67
531	943e956	Feeds: Use latest comment date for the Last-Modified header of comments feed.	182.66
707	a9c0050	Post WordPress 6.0.2 version bump.	181.87

[dylan2intel]

git clone ​https://github.com/dylan2intel/wordpress-performance-issue

Follow the README.md file to reproduce the issue.

[mukesh27]

@dylan2intel Can you please share clear steps so we can reproduce the issue? Can you please improve this steps ​https://github.com/dylan2intel/wordpress-performance-issue#how-to-reproduce-the-issue?

[dylan2intel]

1. Install docker & kubernetes, pls. refer to ​https://www.cloudsigma.com/how-to-install-and-use-kubernetes-on-ubuntu-20-04/

2. git clone ​https://github.com/dylan2intel/wordpress-performance-issue.git wp-perf-drop

3. cd wp-perf-drop; ./deploy apply # This step will deploy WordPress on kubernetes

4. cd wp-perf-drop; docker build -t siege .

5. cd wp-perf-drop; docker build -t siege . -f Dockerfile.siege

6. docker run -it siege -c 100 -t 60S ​http://10.166.30.137:30080 > output-5.9.3.log # This step will simulate 100 concurrent users stressing on wordpress with 60 seconds duration, the ip is host machine ip, pls replace ip with yours

7. cd cd wp-perf-drop; sed -i 's/wordpress:5.9.3-php7.4/wordpress:6.0-php7.4/' wordpress-deployment.yaml

8. cd cd wp-perf-drop; ./deploy destory # This step will destory WordPress on kubernetes

9. Re-run step 3 # This step will re-deploy wordpress with version 6.0

10. docker run -it siege -c 100 -t 60S ​http://10.166.30.137:30080 > output-6.0.log

11. cat output-5.9.3.log |grep 'trans/sec' && cat output-6.0.log |grep 'trans/sec'

[dylan2intel]

Actually directly install WordPress on your host machine is also acceptable, deploy on docker or kubernetes is another deployment.

[TimothyBlynJacobs]

Have you tested on 6.1 RC1? There have been performance improvements committed for Gutenberg specifically that may improve the situation.

[dylan2intel]

Indeed, I tried, the performance also dropped on 6.1

[desrosj]

Replying to dylan2intel:

Indeed, I tried, the performance also dropped on 6.1

Could you clarify? Did the performance in 6.1 drop when compared to 5.9? When compared to 6.0?

[dylan2intel]

Actually you can try it by yourself with steps provided on comment#5

BTW, I also tried on version 5.9.3, installing Gutenberg plugin, active/deactive this plugin can also reproduce the issue.

Replying to desrosj:

Replying to dylan2intel:

Indeed, I tried, the performance also dropped on 6.1

Could you clarify? Did the performance in 6.1 drop when compared to 5.9? When compared to 6.0?

[jrf]

@aristath Is this on your radar ?