Hey everyone,
I’m facing a puzzling issue with one of my WordPress projects. The homepage takes 8–10 seconds to load fully, while all inner pages (posts, archives, contact, etc.) load within 1–2 seconds. I’ve already tried standard fixes — deactivated all plugins, optimized media, switched to a default theme (Twenty Twenty-Four), and cleared all caches — but the delay persists.
Interestingly, the delay seems to occur before the first byte is received, suggesting something server-side. Could this be related to a custom query in functions.php, an inefficient WP_Query loop in the template, or a database call stacking issue?
Has anyone dealt with a similar bottleneck or found an effective way to profile homepage-level queries and hooks in WordPress? I’d love to hear your insights or recommended tools for diagnosing this deeper issue.