Recently I noticed that my site was loading uber-slow. I never really thought much of it, but then more and more people were complaining so I took a closer look at it. There were a couple of issues that I uncovered.
The first big issue was the social networking plugin I was using had a server that was down, that is why I don’t have the bookmark links at the end of posts right now. I removed that and it sped up a little bit, but it was still lagging. This is when I discovered a downfall with WordPress.
Upon doing an audit of my WordPress, I found out that I had a bunch of plugins activated that I wasn’t using, some of which were calling 404 pages. This was draining my site big time and making loads take forever. Once I deactivated the unused plugins, load times dropped. This site still has a few issues that are causing a not-so-optimal load time, but it is more along the lines of normal now.
Firefox add-ons turned out to be my best friend for this task. I used FireBug and YSlow to determine the issues. Both these tools provided me with the insight I needed into my site’s issues and then with a few clicks, I was able to remedy the majority of the issues.
Now that those extra plugins and error pages are gone, my site is running much better. I am a little baffled as to what to do next. Some of the plugins I am using are pretty standard these days and I like them. They are Web 2.0 and are easy to implement via plugins in WordPress. The only downfall is now my site is calling out to multiple servers and loading tons of javascript code. The only workaround is to write these modules myself. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time to write all of this custom interactivity myself, so for now, I will just sit back, be happy with what I have and wait for the developers of the plugins to eventually write lighter weight plugins.
I am a Web developer who began in traditional print design. Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to have worked in almost every aspect of Web development for national and internationally recognized Web sites.
By William Guth
on Mar 9, 2009 | Reply
I recently attended a Site Optimization lecture at Critical Mass in Chicago, IL and we discussed exactly this. How to optimize your site’s load time and visibility. Aside from y-slow, programmers can also put their javascript on the page last, before the end of the body, rather than traditionally in the head; as well as minification of external javascript and CSS files. All good techniques for reducing your load time, and keeping web surfers from surfing elsewhere while they wait. Happy to share the notes from that lecture.