How Will Wordpress Address The Site Speed Issue?

[morestar]

I look at it this way - site speed is an issue that's not only not going away (because it's so important for user experience), was probably always here and will become much more important as the months and years pass by. Site speed isn't going to be the ultra-important ranking factor of the age of Aquarius (actually it will because we're going to be accessing the internet through our eyes in less than 30 years but that's a whole other thread idea) but as SEOs we're never ever going to ignore it or tell our clients that site loading and speed issue are nothing to worry about.

We have to take care of it.

With that said my question is will Wordpress take steps to address the issue with their current plugin system?

It's simple, as it stands, if you have 20 plugins rocking your Wordpress install chances are you've have at least 7 stylesheets, if not more.

One of Google's site performance suggestions (http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/using.html) was to combine external CSS files (http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rtt.html#CombineExternalCSS). Any seasoned Wordpress worker knows if you try to combine CSS files within Wordpress from each of the plugins, when the time comes for one of the plugins to update, the update could throw off your whole site's display settings or at the very least a portion of it. Get to work!

I think Wordpress is great and I do mean great but again, will they address this issue one day, some day down the road? I'm sure it can be resolved. Wordpress is known among other things for being structured and it'd be nice to see Wordpress address these issues for one main reason - Wordpress can be slow at times...it's as simple as that.

There are possibly hundreds of steps a webmaster/SEO can take to upgrade the loading speed of their website. Google provided a few tips that make good sense. Let's hope wordpress takes note too...

How will Wordpress address the site speed issue? Let us see...

[morestar]

It looks like there's been a pretty quick update to this thread. A new member Tony (travelsignposts) has posted a response related to the issues I've addressed above. Apparently a developer has created a Wordpress plugin called W3 Total Cache (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/) which will combine .js and CSS files. Not too bad.

There still may be one problem though, that being, that this solution requires a plugin and is not actually within the chore Wordpress files so updating the plugin could cause problems - I stress could but that possible 1% chance renders my site one percent less optimal than I'd like it to be.

[SemAdvance]

Funniest thing is Google Analytics and Adsense slows site load time considerably.....I see this as nothing more than "fluff" for Google....like filler in newspapers,...its news to a lot of people, but its not really news......and given their code and servers slow page load time they cannot use this as a fraction of the scoring algorithm, if they did they would need to drop most of their sites from the top 50 results, maybe top 100....

Build business for consumers, and not search engines. Roadblocks are a factor for business, and business needs to weigh the pros and cons of working with a CMS, legacy system or go static.

Its like computers, super sonic jets, race cars, Once you get to a certain speed, we no longer can actually see any speed enhancements.....I have been up to 160 mph in a car, and cannot tell the difference from 140 mph....both times I was half scared, and half on a super adrenalin rush I can't explain....

[rdkelsey]

WP-Total Cache isn't a cure all. When installed on one of my sites by my hosting company the .htaccess code sent all links to a sub-domain on the same account. Not good ... complete breaking of my site!

I don't want to change the subject, but of much more critical importance is the export issue. Once you begin to get large, and I can't exactly determine the size, although it seems like somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 postings, you can no longer export your site.

I am in a position with at least two blogs where I need to move them, but there seems to be no way to get a backup OR export of the posts, categories, authors, etc., etc., etc.

Nearly five years of work is going down the tubes.

I like, or maybe I should say, liked Wordpress, but if I can't keep my blog when I need to move ... it's useless.

--Robert

[computergenius]

If you can't export - are you on Wordpress.org, or your own hosted Wordpress?

I don't see why there should be an issue if it's your own, they are only regular database files.

[SemAdvance]

You need to find someone experienced in moving WP sites with databases.....

They can be tarballed and moved I am sure.



WP-Total Cache isn't a cure all. When installed on one of my sites by my hosting company the .htaccess code sent all links to a sub-domain on the same account. Not good ... complete breaking of my site!

I don't want to change the subject, but of much more critical importance is the export issue. Once you begin to get large, and I can't exactly determine the size, although it seems like somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 postings, you can no longer export your site.

I am in a position with at least two blogs where I need to move them, but there seems to be no way to get a backup OR export of the posts, categories, authors, etc., etc., etc.

Nearly five years of work is going down the tubes.

I like, or maybe I should say, liked Wordpress, but if I can't keep my blog when I need to move ... it's useless.

--Robert

[rdkelsey]

If you do a search for Wordpress export errors or any such type of search you'll find I'm not alone in this issue ... lots of people have the same problem.

I am hosted on HostGator. I have more than a dozen blogs across as many domains on several different hosting accounts. The error is a memory allocation. One explanation was that Wordpress allocates memory for the export, but when the memory reaches a certain limit it will conflict with server settings. I have tried increasing the limit from, I think the default is 30, up to the maximum. There is also a timeout setting. I've experimented with all, and been to Wordpress support numerous times over the past six or so months.

HostGator has yet to provide me with a solution. I'm hoping they will make whatever adjustments are necessary long enough to get me an export and I'll move to a different account where more resources are available.

There is one plugin that apparently splits the export up, gives options to export only certain authors, or by certain dates ... this still did not work for me, and I see others reporting the same problem.

No fun to all of the sudden realize a blog you've spent years building is now just plain gone.

Whether the real culprit is hosting, or the blog itself, I can't really say ... I'm not that technical ... but neither has come up with a solution as of yet.

--Robert

[rdkelsey]

also ... an sql dump from PHPmyAdmin didn't work, although it provided a partial dump.

Dump was to a .sql, and also to a .sql.gz

Yes, I'm hoping to find an SQL guru who can solve this ... can't afford it right now however. I'll eventually go to rentacoder or one of those sites.

--Robert

[morestar]

...or if you're site is hosting by you or not on Wordpress.com you only need to access PHPMyAdmin and back up your Wordpress database (http://codex.wordpress.org/wordpress_Backups) files within there...That page will also show you how to restore your database as well on your new server.

I know what you mean, it'd be nice to do it the easier way and I'm slightly shocked that after around that many posts you can't export it properly.

[florabalance]

There is a lot more than just the .css files to consider regarding WP speed issues.

Just the fact that it is entirely implemented in php, a scripting language is significant. html pages can be served many, many times faster than php pages. Apache does not need to look at a .html page to serve it, in WP each page needs to be parsed and in WP this results in fetching multiple other files(php) to complete the page being served. We are also seeing a minimum of 8-10 database transactions on a simple WP site.

There are many WP optimization strategies. They are needed because WP in my opinion is a real "hog" when it comes to server cpu utilization. This results directly to user experience, you can throw more and bigger servers at it but it is still a problem.

[FoundByDesign]

WP-Total Cache isn't a cure all. When installed on one of my sites by my hosting company the .htaccess code sent all links to a sub-domain on the same account. Not good ... complete breaking of my site!

I don't want to change the subject, but of much more critical importance is the export issue. Once you begin to get large, and I can't exactly determine the size, although it seems like somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 postings, you can no longer export your site.

I am in a position with at least two blogs where I need to move them, but there seems to be no way to get a backup OR export of the posts, categories, authors, etc., etc., etc.

Nearly five years of work is going down the tubes.

I like, or maybe I should say, liked Wordpress, but if I can't keep my blog when I need to move ... it's useless.

--Robert

If you are using a self hosted Wordpress installation, you should have access to phpMyAdmin where you can easily download the ENTIRE database in a SQL file. Then simply make edits to a copy of the SQL file with a text editor (Notepad ++ is my fav!) to change the name of the new database you will be uploading to, and upload the new SQL file to the new server.

The only thing you will need to do then is reset your widgets, which for some strange reason do not convert when you import the data, either by Wordpress's import or by SQL import. Not sure why, since the settings are in the database, but thats another story.

It may seem intimidating at first, but its rather simple to do. Once you do it a couple times, it becomes your preferred way to move Wordpress database data.

[edhan]

Luckily for me, I am using dedicated Server where I have the direct access to the MySQL database itself. So even if it is bigger than the allocate size, I can use FTP to transfer it directly.

You can try zipping into smaller portion as this may help to transfer.

[rdkelsey]

Yes, well ... I'm hosted on a shared/reseller account at HostGator.

When trying to dump, I do not get the entire database.

One of the two I have issue with right now ... is over 100,000 postings, the other somewhere around 50,000.

I know Wordpress is "supposed" to export, I know PHPmyAdmin s supposed to "dump". Problem is I have a problem with each method. Whether this is server related, or Wordpress related has not be defined. Each seems to blame the other.

Someone here sent me a private message offering to make the move for me ... this sounds OK to me ... I've been running sites since 1997, but I'm not a super tech type. I do SEO for a living. I have exported/imported, and I've done a dump or two in my day without issues, but these two sites are a large problem for me.

[iany]

The wordpress export function is limited to 2Mb so large blogs are bound to fail.
I suspect this may also be the problem with the dump function on your host. You may have to dump each table individually.

I recently experience this problem, but eventually got all working - execept that the blog wouldn't show the comments although it gave the number of comments for eeach posting - bizarre.

[zbikenut]

My thought is it will become less of an issue. The Speed of the net is going to get faster.

As more people use more and more bandwidth the rest of the web will become closer to the slower load speed of Wordpress.

I can remember really slow loading pictures. The good old days.

Rick

[edhan]

The wordpress export function is limited to 2Mb so large blogs are bound to fail.
I suspect this may also be the problem with the dump function on your host. You may have to dump each table individually.


Yes, dump each table is okay for others but he is having 100,000 & 50,000 posts. That means the individual table for that post exceeds the limitation.

Guess the only solution will be asking the host to archive it for him.

[thunderpoet]

The IRONY here is that it is Google analytics and adwords scripts that USUALLY CAUSE THE LONGEST DELAY IN PAGE LOAD of most of the sites I see in a day of business browsing!

Really, this is not an issue I see discussed by columnists who report on Web usage issues.

The very company whose products slow down the page load now purports to rank according to these delays.

It has really gotten ridiculous how many external sources besides myriads of .js files called for are required for a page just to finish loading and beginning to display in a browser! PEOPLE, get a grip!

It is not just Wordpress plug-ins that must be processed along with their attendant js and css files loaded.

Everyone is convinced that they just cannot live without reams and reams of analytical details, for one thing. Thus a page that contains hundreds and hundreds of bytes of text, javascript, and the loading of traffic scripts from other servers. I look at the page code of many sites every day and it is really getting STUPID how they have degraded the user experience with not one, but MULTIPLE scripts that must go fetch MORE code and tracking gifs from external servers somewhere else in the universe.

A local newspaper site, for instance may be loaded to the ying yang with multiple google ads scripts that must run out to many different locations for processing and feeds. Then the analytics scripts must go and do their thing, on and on. And the web design guys for so many publications are happily adding so much crap and so many time delay ads and more feeds even into the templates just because it works instantly at their workstation. A lot of these corporate web designers are removed from the reality of trying to access a site or a service from an internet cafe or from a portable device on the road or somewhere out of the country.

I have a screamingly fast internet connection for my work and I still encounter delays and white pages with just a header loaded. I then decide to check the page source and find that the entire page code has already been delivered to my browser but the browser--Firefox, Safari, IE, Opera.... will not display this visually because the very last miniscule gif from some analytic server has not been downloaded yet.

PageTracker, Google, blah blah...too many sites can't leave well enough alone and those two are followed by 3, 4, 5 or more analytics accounts. SLOWING down Visual DISPLAY.

This is not just a Wordpress problem with plug-ins.

Now I wonder how Google will judge the millions of websites whose page load is affected by its dependency on Google analytics and adwords servers?

[iany]

Yes, dump each table is okay for others but he is having 100,000 & 50,000 posts. That means the individual table for that post exceeds the limitation.

Guess the only solution will be asking the host to archive it for him.

Yes, of course. Depends how co-operative Hostgator would be in that respect.
He could of course archive himself using phpMySQLAutoBackup automates the backup of MySQL databases (exports your db structure and data in seconds) (http://www.dwalker.co.uk/phpmysqlautobackup/) - an excellent utility which can then be managed through ftp.

Cheers

Ian

[thunderpoet]

Here is a link that shows an .htacess file change that I have made on all my Wordpress websites.

canonicalseo.com/wordpress-performance-improvement/

It should be drafted into the core of Wordpress because it does help with pageload.

[dgswilson]

A few months ago I had added some code to my htaccess file that seemed to work in speeding things up. This morning I looked until I found the site with the code. Here it is - http://www.ghacks.net/2010/01/09/speed-up-wordpress-with-better-permalink-rewrite-code/

[mjtaylor]

It looks like there's been a pretty quick update to this thread. A new member Tony (travelsignposts) has posted a response related to the issues I've addressed above. Apparently a developer has created a Wordpress plugin called W3 Total Cache (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/w3-total-cache/) which will combine .js and CSS files. Not too bad.

There still may be one problem though, that being, that this solution requires a plugin and is not actually within the chore Wordpress files so updating the plugin could cause problems - I stress could but that possible 1% chance renders my site one percent less optimal than I'd like it to be.

There's also this plugin: Super Cache: http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/ which Webnauts suggested for a couple of my client blogs. I still have a lot to learn about optimizing blogs!

And I noticed another plug in wp-Cache on the word press site.

[morestar]

Yes I've made an effort to actually NOT use wp-cache but mainly because you have to restart it every time you make a website update. I know I could simply turn it off but when I was going through my site and optimizing it for speed I got rid of a few plugins - wp-super cache was one of them and I've just never installed it again.

I wonder if the defaults wordpress .htaccess file will have some compression directives added to it by default. if not that's ok as we can just do it ourselves...

[mjtaylor]

Super Cache also requires that you delete the cache for every update. It's a new step for my clients to remember ... here's hoping!!!

[morestar]

Ya I'm not too into it. My site is pretty quick right now without it either...

Sunny Days!

[Faglork]

WP-Total Cache isn't a cure all. When installed on one of my sites by my hosting company the .htaccess code sent all links to a sub-domain on the same account. Not good ... complete breaking of my site!

Well, installing WPTC is a almost a no-brainer. You should do it yourself, if those guys can't do it properly.
There is only one snag: WPTC needs an empty .htacces in wp-content/w3tc/min which it creates during install, which means the owner rights are set to NOBODY so you can't access the directory via FTP since you don't have the rights ...
For me it was easy, I SSH'd in as ROOT since I am on my own server. In your case it might help to create this directory before, so maybe it does not change ownership.


I don't want to change the subject, but of much more critical importance is the export issue. Once you begin to get large, and I can't exactly determine the size, although it seems like somewhere around 30,000 to 50,000 postings, you can no longer export your site.


Do not use a http-based program for export. SSH into your server, and

mysqldump -u sqlusername -p databasename > backup.sql

should work. If you are still running into memory problems, increase php_memory_limit in your .htaccess:
php_value memory_limit 50M
or even higher - look at your error_log, it says exactly how much memory it needs.

If you are not allowed to do this, it is time to change hosting or get a dedicated server.

Cheers,
Alex


There's also this plugin: Super Cache: http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/ which Webnauts suggested for a couple of my client blogs. I still have a lot to learn about optimizing blogs!


AFAIK WP Super Cache does not work with the WP TOUCH theme, which is a *great* way to display your site in proper iPhone format. WPTC does.

Cheers,
Alex

[Social-Media]

Hey Morestar...

I love WP too... But try to live within it's limitations... live within what it was built to do.

There are several solutions the most imporant of which IMO is "Stop using so damn many plugins!" LOL. 15-20 plugins for a single site is totally ridiculous. My sites do just fine with 2-3 plugins - Akismet, Contact 7, and Thesis Openhook. If I started to approach 7-10 different plugins I'd be looking for a more robust CMS. I mean really... the bottom line is that wordpress was designed for blogging... it's been "molded" into a simple CMS. But it is NOT built for building commercial sized sites. Anything bigger than a blog or a simple web site, and WP is probably not the right choice IMO.

There are some gains to be had by optimizing the .htaccess RewriteRules that WP installs. They are very inefficient... Then of course there is caching... But no one thing other than those that is likely going to result in huge performance gains.

[dgswilson]

I use askimat (askimet ? ), and seo optimizer and have this (Jim Morgan) code...


# BEGIN wordpress
RewriteEngine on
#
# Unless you have set a different RewriteBase preceding this
# point, you may delete or comment-out the following
# RewriteBase directive:
RewriteBase /
#
# if this request is for "/" or has already been rewritten to WP
RewriteCond $1 ^(index\.php)?$ [OR]
# or if request is for image, css, or js file
RewriteCond $1 \.(gif|jpg|css|js|ico)$ [NC,OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
# then skip the rewrite to WP
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [S=1]
# else rewrite the request to WP
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
#
# END wordpress


Here are the optimizations the previous code implements:
it is useless to check the existence of index.php, because it is there. This will avoid useless file checkings for requests to example.com, example.com/ or example.com/index.php.
each request to static instances is not really required to be redirected. If the file is on disk it will be served otherwise an file not found or default subdirectory index.php file will be returned. This would include all the .jpg,.png,.gif,.css,.js and other static files. Since most of the blogs contains lots of static file this would have a huge impact.

Source: wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=3524 (http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=3524)

Found today at: www.improvespeed.info/how-to-optimize-wordpress-htaaccess (http://www.improvespeed.info/2010/01/how-to-optimize-wordpress-htaaccess.html)

[Canonical]

ROFLMAO I made that original post at wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=3524 (http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=3524). I originally wrote about JD Morgan's suggestions on how to optimize wordpress .htaccess (http://www.canonicalseo.com/wordpress-performance-improvement/) on my own blog.

Funny seeing peeps quoting your stuff on the web. :)

[dgswilson]

That's what you get for posting good useful stuff.

For anyone who is going to paste this to their .htaccess make sure you include the directory (folder) in the last line

RewriteRule ./WP-folder /index.php [L]