Long load time on domainname on Pingdom (95% of total load time) - wordpress

Question

The load time of my website is very long, and especially the waiting time on Pingdom. When I scan my site you see the site isn't that slow, but the server is very slow. Also when you load the site on your browser it takes forever before the site will load. I am on a pretty cheap shared server, by my hosting company says the loading time is not because of the shared server, but because of some files on my website.
Can someone tell me it is because of the shared server of because of some files (and which files)?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Here is some tips to speed up:
.htaccess
<ifModule mod_gzip.c>
mod_gzip_on Yes
mod_gzip_dechunk Yes
mod_gzip_item_include file .(html?|txt|css|js|php|pl)$
mod_gzip_item_include handler ^cgi-script$
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^text/.*
mod_gzip_item_include mime ^application/x-javascript.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude mime ^image/.*
mod_gzip_item_exclude rspheader ^Content-Encoding:.*gzip.*
</ifModule>
# BEGIN Expire headers
<ifModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 5 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 2592000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 216000 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 600 seconds"
ExpiresByType application/xhtml+xml "access plus 600 seconds"
</ifModule>
# END Expire headers
# BEGIN Cache-Control Headers
<ifModule mod_headers.c>
<filesMatch "\.(ico|jpe?g|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "public"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(js)$">
Header set Cache-Control "private"
</filesMatch>
<filesMatch "\.(x?html?|php)$">
Header set Cache-Control "private, must-revalidate"
</filesMatch>
</ifModule>
# END Cache-Control Headers
Source: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/02/how-to-speed-up-your-website-load-times/
HTML:
Add defer to scripts:
<script type="text/javascript" src="includes/general.js" defer="defer"></script>
Minify HTML, JS, CSS You can search tools for that.
Source: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/02/how-to-speed-up-your-website-load-times/
More Ideas:
Cloudflare
HTML5 Expire Headers (Look that up)
CDNS
Headjs
Good Luck!
PS I have many more ideas!

Answer 2

You should check your site with webpagetest.org to find out what's slowing it down. It looks like your biggest problem has nothing to do with your files but the culprit is the web server which takes almost 3s before it starts sending the HTML document. I'd migrate to a different server because that's way too slow.