Hello Shufflehound support,

Previous controlled tests produced:

• Thumbnail removed: LCP moves to the heading and drops to approximately 2.1 s.
• WebP thumbnail: approximately 10.4 s.
• JPG thumbnail: approximately 11.1 s.
• Different article/category selection: approximately 10.7 s.
• The issue also occurred with the previous homepage structure.

A current mobile audit reports LCP 11.3 s, FCP 2.1 s, TBT 50 ms and CLS 0. Previous observations indicate short image download times, but we do not yet have a complete LCP timing breakdown.

The affected block renders <code dir=”ltr”>.blog-list.blog-style-grid. In <code dir=”ltr”>content.php:35, its thumbnail is a <code dir=”ltr”>.sh-ratio-content div with an inline background-image from <code dir=”ltr”>get_the_post_thumbnail_url(…, ‘gillion-landscape-small’).

The current image URL exactly matches an early image preload with fetchpriority=”high”. The element does not use data-lazy-background. The Masonry opacity/imagesLoaded reveal path does not target this Grid block. The page loader is disabled.

Relevant CSS:
<ul data-spread=”false”>

• <code dir=”ltr”>style.css:1426–1433: translate3d(0,0,0) on thumbnail backgrounds.
• <code dir=”ltr”>style.css:4640–4641: Grid ratio padding.
• <code dir=”ltr”>style.css:9567–9592: ratio positioning and background cover.

Gillion’s main scripts are loaded synchronously in the document head. WP-Optimize minification is active; the HTML also reports a cache-write failure for the otherwise empty child stylesheet. We have not established a causal relationship.

Could you help identify what can delay painting or LCP reporting for this Grid background thumbnail, and recommend a supported diagnostic or fix? In particular, is the forced translate3d relevant to mobile compositing?

We reviewed your performance FAQ. The site runs PHP 8.3 and uses WP-Optimize for CSS/JS minification. OPCache status has not yet been verified.

Our question concerns the specific thumbnail rendering behavior described above: removing the thumbnail reduces mobile LCP from approximately 10–11 seconds to 2.1 seconds, while changing the image, format, category, and homepage structure does not resolve it. Could you investigate this specific rendering path and advise what diagnostic evidence you need beyond the general optimization checklist?

No theme files or configuration were changed during this investigation.

• This topic was modified 15 minutes ago by osoga.