When was the last time you (or your tech person) checked the list of plugins you use and think do you really need all those plugins?
- Are you using too many plugins?
- Or are you running three plugins that all do the same things (overlapping features)?
- Have you checked how much the plugins you use actually burden your server, mysql database and slow your page loading times?
JTPratt is concerned about WP beginners getting caught up in "plugin overload" and wrote about WordPress File Include Hacks which questioned the need for so many plugins and promoted editing and hacking your WordPress theme instead. While the post is an excellent guide and tutorial to hacking your WordPress Theme files, I wouldn't go as far as telling people to stop downloading so many plugins...
As I see it, for most bloggers editing their theme by themselves is something that is not worth their time and they are better off just writing more content to their blog instead of learning how to edit the template files. But it's definitely worth it to check your plugins-list and get rid of the ones you don't really need or do the same thing as the other, a better one.
Why WordPress Plugins Are So Cool?
I think WordPress Plugins are so popular and people use them a lot, because they make complicated things and manual editing one-click-easy and using only plugins/widgets to add content on top of the WordPress theme makes it easy to change or update themes, which can be important for a beginning blogger.
In a sense, plugins reduce the maintenance and manual editing one has to do. Having to go through all the templates that need some "hack" in them every time you change or update your theme can be a pain. Especially if there's many manual editing in the different templates.
For example, the Google Analytics JTPratt mentioned, yes - adding the code to the footer is simple, but what if you want to track outgoing links? Or what if you want to disable analytics tracking for logged in visitors (like yourself). Using a plugin does all that and I don't have to worry about that issue at all. (I wrote about this in my Track Outgoing Links with Google Analytics -article)
I'm all about DIY, hacking and php-/javascript-coding myself, but I also like convenience. Thus, I like to use plugins for certain tasks and minimize the tasks I have to do often without the plugin.
How To Test The Performance of Your Blog
Test Your Blog With Web Page Analyzer
- Go to the Web Page Analyzer,
- enter your URL and
- hit send,
- master the captcha and you're done...
- Check the report page for the load times and tips for improving the efficiency of your blog.
Web Page Analyzer is not designed to test blogs, or WordPress for that matter, but you can get some idea what might be slowing your website down, for example are your pages loaded with large images or such. My T1 loading times are under 4 seconds at the moment, which is great, but on the other hand I run minimal images with my self-brewed and brand new pure css, no images theme.
Test Your Blog With Firebug Addon to Firefox
- Go and get Firebug,
- Install Firebug for Firefox.
- Restart your Firefox.
- Look into the bottom right of the browser window
- You should see little Firebug icon
- Right click the bug icon, and
- Open firebug in New Window
Now, go to your own blog (not admin, but the front page for example) and check the Firebug window.
Inside the Firebug window:
- Click on the NET tab and
- Turn on the Console logging, Script- and Net monitoring by clicking on the check-boxes,
- Click Apply settings for yourdomain.com.
- See the data pouring in as you navigate your website
You can use Firebug to analyze your HTML code, CSS and all the scripts, plugins, images, etc. that are used and loaded on your pages.
You can see how fast your blog loads, what images and scripts are loaded and how much time it takes to get them. For example it might be a surprise to you how much images are loaded in your theme, if all list bullets, menus, etc. are done using images. You'll also notice how much WP Super Cache helps if you're running that plugin - a plugin you really should have... see, it didn't take me too long to recommend yet another plugin for you. But seriously, WP Super Cache is on my top 2 plugins, right alongside All In One SEO Pack.
After playing enough with the firebug, disable Firebug by right-clicking on the Net tab, and setting disable (+ uncheck the check-boxes and click apply)
Firebug is priceless for WordPress Theme and Web Designers, but it is so easy to use, it can be for you too.
Bonus Tip for Minimizing Your Images
Reduce the size of your images but still maintain as good quality as possible, try RIOT - Radical Image Optimization Tool.
I spotted this nice little tool from a Lifehacker post - Radical Image Optimization Tool Provides Side by Side Image Comparison - couple of months ago, and I've been using it ever since, mostly because I can see the preview shot right next to the original and see the effects of the compression right there. There are probably better alternatives if you need to batch process a load of images, but if you just need to go through one or two, check Riot out.
Other Means to Test the Performance of Your Blog
In addition to these, you might want to check and monitor the usage of the mysql database your WordPress is running on and also the load your server is under (for example, checking the uptime by connecting to your server with a shell.)
Plugins, oh Plugins
I'm still planning, testing and choosing the plugins I'll be using in the long run, and I also want to keep my blog running smoothly by minimizing over-complicated solutions and unneeded functionality. I guess there's a "Middle of the road" in using plugins & hacking the files in your WordPress and getting the performance of your blog to desired level, but I haven't found it yet..
Are you happy with your plugins and blog performance?
2 links to this post.
15 comments.
Its really cool, I came to know this really worth visiting, just bookmarked your site.
http://gisnap.com/
The place where fun never ends
Yes, i'm happy with my blog. :)
I have a lot to say about plugin performance… mostly opinion since I haven't gathered hard data.
But my opinion is most people don't know what they're talking about when they say “plugins are slow.” They don't even know they don't know what they're talking about. They're just echoing what they have read elsewhere. My opinion is pretty strong on this point because it's pretty clear most of the people saying this don't have the technical expertise to evaluate their claims.
In any case, someone needs to run some performance tests on a suite of “standard” plugins and collect a lot of data. A lot of data, real numbers. It won't be me this month, don't have the cycles for it.
In the meantime, I tend to take a pretty close look at the source code for plugins I suspect might be slowing me down. I'll also use YSlow to check. I have found that YSlow doesn't always find repeatable behavior. That is, sometimes different plugins run at different speeds. Weird. Worth checking into. And I hope you do!
Most of the “WordPress plugin slowness” comes from plugins that add something to the visible layer of the blog, e.g. sidebar, although it is possible to bring any blog to it's knees by abusing the wp-cron…
The fact is that 99.9% of the plugins are not using the most optimal code. There's a reason for that: the plugin authors want to keep their code readable and editable, and for most, they just don't know better. With thousands of plugin authors out there, most of them are not that good at coding.
And with good I mean those who do what they want using the least amount of code and resources. When it works and does what the plugin author had in mind, they publish and leave it be – there's some seriously sloppy code in some popular plugins, let alone themes!
So hard data or not, people should pay attention to the number of plugins they use, especially if the plugin adds something to the sidebar (widgets), posts or pages. In addition to that, some optimization needs to be done by hand, or on the fly.
Anyone know where the websiteoptimization.com server tests from?
The tool at WebTrends is really awesome too – http://www.uptrends.com/aspx/free-html-site-pag...
You can select from about 30 different geo-located servers. So for we Southern Hemisherians, you can select a server closer to home (Sydney or Singapore) to getting a more realistic representation for local visitors.
NB: I don't work for them! I do love their free tool though.
Maybe I just love them because they show my site loading in under 1 second, even with an overhead of 9 images. So I'm not sure if that's accurate? I'd like to think so. But while they do, I'll keep testing with them!
I like the websiteoptimization.com web page analyzer as well, it does a nice breakdown. I don't know where their tests are run from, but it doesn't matter that much.
But I like that WebTrends tool! It's new one for me, thanks for sharing! The option to choose a city is AWESOME.
I've been personally using http://tools.pingdom.com/ and http://www.webpagetest.org/ myself (in addition to Firefox plugins like YSlow and Google's Page Speed)
Pingdom tends to show relatively realistic results (often the “worst case”) and with WebPageTest you can choose couple of locations as well and get cool breakdown charts and suggestions what to optimize.
Leaf, what's your site URL? I'd love to check it out. (You haven't added it to your blog comment profile). Go ahead and register a Disqus profile to make blog commenting quick and easy on blogs running Disqus…
It's completely possible to have a blog load really fast even with images, taken that the images are optimized and not too large.
Also, in reality, loading times with pages that have images in them are often better than the tools show, because when you have the width and height defined for the images (or they are in background and are loaded via CSS), loading of the images does not block page loading = the page shows to the reader quickly and images are loaded afterwards.
Something to think about with respect to optimal code:
* Torbert (All In One) and de Valk (e.g., Sociable) tend to code in very few, very long files.
* Godley (Redirection) tends to modularize into many dozens of files.
Which is more optimal?
Depends, but usually modularized code is more efficient (although, I haven't looked that deeply into those examples). If the module is not needed, it's not loaded unnecessarily. And as it's modular, it can be re-used as needed.
On the other hand, with files visible for enduser, less files is nearly always better. Thus, plugins using CSS- and js-files should a) optimize those files and b) make it easy to take control of those files for combining and minification.
Not related to optimal code, but optimization otherwise – Joost's sociable is a good example, since it's one of the few “social bookmarking” plugins that uses CSS sprites, making it much better for speed than many alternatives. (and it also has an option to not load the default CSS for ultimate control)
A fresh install of WordPress is super fast. But when plugins are added, they have a tendency!
This was a great post and I thank you for sharing the resources. My blog load time isn't as great as I would like it to be unfortunately.
Any suggestions?
WordPress Plugins My tech blog and the Q & A forum are both powered by … I was initially on the more popular WP Super Cache plug-in but had to
Great link! I ran it on my site and apparently I have a lot of optimizing to do…Thanks.
Great link! I ran it on my site and apparently I have a lot of optimizing to do…Thanks.