what would cause my menu to blink in vertically before loading my page

Hello,

Thanks for the excellent question, I’m sorry that your site is loading strangely for you.

To answer your question, menus in WordPress are actually created as HTML Lists, like this:

• Home
• About Us
• Services
  • Service 1
  • Service 2

This allows for your site to be easily navigated by non-graphical users, notably search engines like Google, and people using Screen Reader software for accessibility purposes.

When your site gets loaded by a graphical browser, the HTML is loaded first, and then after that the CSS loads, so that it looks the way you’ve designed it. Most of the time, this happens so fast that you don’t actually see it. However, depending on your hosting, connection speed, and the overall size of your website, you might see it very quickly, as you described.

As far as fixing this issue, there are a couple of ways you can optimize for speed. First, I highly recommend trying out our brand new Website Speed Test in BoldGrid Central, Speed Coach. It can analyze your website and give you specific advice on speeding it up.

I also highly recommend using a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache which can greatly speed up your website. If you have a lot of international visitors who are far from your hosting provider’s server, a CDN like Cloudflare can help by keeping cached copies of your website on servers all around the globe.

I hope this helps!