How Will Wordpress Address The Site Speed Issue?

[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 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

Found today at: www.improvespeed.info/how-to-optimize-wordpress-htaaccess

[Canonical]

ROFLMAO I made that original post at wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=3524. I originally wrote about JD Morgan's suggestions on how to optimize wordpress .htaccess 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]