Many articles that present methods to make WordPress load faster, recommend efficient solutions like having css and javascript files minified and merged, using CSS sprites and caching.
By following those tips, you can make your blog load twice as fast (and even faster), and score better in yslow performance tests.

There is however, one more thing you may do to improve your blog’s performance, and that is reducing the number of plugins that are loaded into memory for each post and page in your blog.

I love WordPress plugins as much as the next WordPress enthusiast, but when it comes to user experience, I prefer sacrificing the comfort of setting parameters in the WordPress dashboard inteface, than having a sluggish blog that scares visitors away.

Fast-Blog

Why having too many plugins will slow down your blog?

The main reason is that not all plugin developers configure their plugins to be loaded only when the plugin is actually needed.

WordPress goes over the plugins very early in the loading process, and unless there are conditions in the plugin code, telling WordPress not to continue loading the plugin for that particular page/post, WordPress will continue to process the plugin, calling database queries to retrieve parameters you have set in the dashboard, retrieving additional PHP files and loading js and css files when they are not needed at all.

The entire process can even take 2-3 seconds, depending on how many plugins are loaded.
If you add these seconds to the time it takes to load images in your post, the google analytics js file, the comment-reply js file that WordPress loads for threaded comments…well, I think you get the picture.

So what can you do?

Uninstall plugins that load in your blog’s front-end (as opposed to plugins that are meant to customize WordPress Dashboard only) unless you really need them.

When I say plugins you really need, I mean plugins that their benefit to your blog is worth their weight, and what they do is relatively complex or tedious to be accomplished without a plugin.
Arguably, the following plugins are must haves:

  1. Akismet
  2. A good database backup generator like WP-DB-Backup or others.
  3. A good XML sitemaps genrator like Google XML Sitemaps or others.
  4. A versatile SEO plugin like All in One SEO, Headspace or others.
  5. A versatile caching plugin like WP-Super Cache, W3 Total Cache or others.

Note that number 2 and 3 are plugins that automatically perform crucial routine actions, that may otherwise be done manually by the blogger in 2 minutes.
However, they are great time savers for the long run and by using them you minimize the risk of forgetting to do those routine tasks yourself.

Unlike most WordPress plugins, there are still some great plugins that are designed to be loaded only when needed. The excellent Contact Form 7 for example, offers this simple tweaking so you can feel safe to to keep the plugin installed without worrying about performance implications.

Which plugins can be replaced with simple functions and tweaks?

You can add a lot of functionality to your blog by doing a little bit of one time tweaking.
Here are some examples:

  1. Displaying recent posts, popular posts, random posts, top commentators, authors list, tag cloud/list, posts by category or by tag.
    All of these can be displayed in your sidebar without installing a single widget or plugin (e.g. take a look here).
  2. Gravatars and threaded comments have recently become built-in features of WordPress. You can set them in WordPress dashboard instead of intalling plugins. If you want to change the way gravatars or threaded comments are displayed – that’s exactly what filters and actions are for (to change the default Gravatar image for example, you use a simple filter like explained here).
  3. Post count, comment numbers – no need to install plugins for those either (e.g. check this out).
  4. Image Gallery Effects – there are plenty of very nice jQuery plugins for image galleries, slideshows and lightboxes on which WordPress plugins are based.
    Instead of installing WP plugins, you can download the jQuery plugins and install them manually according to the instructions in the plugin sites.
    Check out my next post to see an example of how it should be done.
  5. 301 redirects can be easily configured without installing a plugin. I do recommend however, to install a good plugin for this once you pass the 50 posts point, because you might forget to add those lines to the .htaccess file after updating post permalinks.

To sum it up, you really don’t need to be a PHP developer to add custom functionality to your blog.
There are plenty of blogs that discuss WordPress customizations and provide hacks and functions for copy and paste.

So the next time you want to add a feature to your blog like adding related posts with thumbnails, just type wordpress “related posts with * without a plugin” in Google search (with the quotation marks and the asterisk) instead of a installing new plugin. The first result leads to an easy to do solution.

By the way, the tooltip for the word “hacks” is not a WordPress plugin either, so it loads for the relevant posts only and keeps my blog fast and clean.

Agree with me here? Disagree? Share those thoughts!

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