[Resolved] WordPress editor is now painfully slow for one of my websites with Toolset Types

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[MichaelM5743]

I am trying to:

Edit pages on my website hidden link. I have Toolset Types installed for a number of years. I use a number of bespoke Taxonomies created via Tooltypes. Some of these taxonomies, such as "Title" and "On-Air Talent" have well in excess of 1,000 values now.

Over the last year or so, with various new WordPress releases, the editor has been getting progressively more painful to use on this website. Adding a feature image from the media folder can take in excess of 1 minute for the images to appear, so that I can select them. Filling out values for the various taxonomies takes a long time too - sometimes the editor hangs for over 30 seconds or 1 minute, before I can perform another action.

Link to a page where the issue can be seen:

Doesn't manifest on the public-facing website. Just in the WordPress block editor.

I expected to see:

Ease of use of the WordPress block editor.

Instead, I got:

The Editor hanging many times in each edit session. To give an idea of how bad the problem is, a page that should take 2 minutes to update is taking in excess of 20 minutes. This is not sustainable with the number of edits I need to perform in a day.

I am confident that Toolset Types is the issue, as I've been going through a lot of trial error, deactivating plugins. Deactivating Toolset Types speed up the editor significantly - though obviously, all my essential taxonomies are unavailable when I do this.

*** Let me know if admin access is required to the website. This is a LIVE website and I'd prefer data was not tampered with if avoidable. Certainly can provide an admin account for further investigations. Let me know.

[Christopher Amirian]

Hi,

Welcome to Toolset support. The block editor slowness indicates that the system tries to load too much information via JavaScript, and it fails.

There is no inherent code-related solution that we can offer here, but I might be able to help by giving some suggestions:

Split the content

Instead of using many block editor items such as views and stuff split the content for the homepage into content templates.

For example, the header can be a separate content template and then you can call it on the homepage.

That way, when you want to edit something you would open up that specific content template and will not wait for the other parts of the page to be loaded on the block editor.

Hide heavy taxonomy panels you don’t need while editing

If editors don’t always need every taxonomy on every edit:

Edit the post/page.

Top-right ⋮ (Options) → Preferences → Panels

Disable the taxonomies you don’t need visible.

This reduces the UI work WordPress does while opening the editor.

Reduce the Media Library load (featured image selector)

If the Media Library takes 1+ minute to populate, it usually means the site has a large media library and the editor is pulling a lot of attachment data.

Try switching the Media Library view from “All media items” to a narrower filter (images only) and search by filename.

If you’re on a host without object caching, adding object cache can make a dramatic difference for REST-heavy screens.

Check if those huge taxonomies are “category-style” checklists

If those taxonomies are behaving like checkbox lists (especially hierarchical/category-style), that UI is far heavier than a tag/autocomplete input when term counts are large.

If “Title” and “On-Air Talent” are basically “select one/many from a huge list”, consider redesigning those as:

- CPT + relationship (e.g., “People” CPT) rather than a taxonomy, or
- tag-style taxonomy input (autocomplete) rather than a full list UI.

Thanks.

[MichaelM5743]

"tag-style taxonomy input (autocomplete) rather than a full list UI."

How do I achieve this? Is there a setting that allows customer taxonomies to be switched to autocomplete rather than listings out all values as checkbox options?

Autocomplete would be an excellent option - but just like Tags, I need to be able to select one or more values for each custom taxonomy.

[MichaelM5743]

I've switched most of the custom taxonomies to the tag-like autocomplete format, as most of these structures were already flat.

This has resulted in a huge performance improvement within the editor, making page edits much quicker now.