Server response time

Silktide measures how long your server takes to start sending the page after a browser asks for it. This wait happens before anything at all can appear, so a slow server delays every other part of the page.

Why this matters

Server response time is the floor under all your other speed work. Optimised images, lean scripts, and fast hosting for assets cannot help while the browser is still waiting for the first byte of the page itself; every visitor pays this delay in full, on every page view, before anything renders.

Slow responses usually mean the server is doing expensive work to build each page: heavy database queries, slow plugins or integrations, or hosting that is underpowered for the site's traffic.

How to fix it

Enable page caching, so the server builds a page once and serves the stored copy to subsequent visitors instead of rebuilding it every time. For most -based sites this is the single biggest win.
Profile what the server spends its time on when building the page - slow database queries, plugins, and calls to external services are the usual suspects - and fix or remove the worst offenders.
Serve pages through a , which responds from a location near the visitor and shields your server from repeated requests.
If the server is simply overloaded, upgrade the hosting plan or resources.

How Silktide tests this

Load the page in a real browser, using the device type, connection speed, and test location configured for your speed tests.
Measure how long the server takes to begin responding to the main page request, excluding time spent on the network connection itself.
Report the measured time and grade it: under 400 milliseconds is good; the grade worsens from there, with around 600 milliseconds or more rated as poor.

Troubleshooting

The response time varies between scans

Server response time is genuinely variable: it depends on server load, cache state, and database performance at the moment of the test. A page that has just fallen out of cache can respond much more slowly than one served from cache seconds later. Watch the trend across scans rather than a single reading.

The site feels fast to me

Your browser has likely cached the site, and you may be near the server. First-time visitors on the other side of the world get the uncached, long-distance version. The measured time reflects what the server actually did for a fresh request.