[wp-hackers] Plugin conflicts with latest version of Jetpack

[Otto]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Mike Schinkel <mike at newclarity.net> wrote:
> If I do an HTTP request using a free Mac tool called HTTP Client I get these headers:
>
> Content-Length: 9216
> Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:02:37 GMT
> Server: Apache
> Last-Modified: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:21:13 GMT
> Accept-Ranges: bytes
> Connection: close
> Content-Type: text/css
>
> That is on a bog-standard CPanel install without a caching plugin.  As you can see, no Expires header.  Given the setup which is pretty similar to a lot of shared hosting wouldn't you expect similar for most WordPress installs?

If you're telling me that you think most servers are not configured
appropriately for serving real-world content, then you'll get no
argument from me.

The "default" setup is never the optimal one. You need to be
configuring your webserver correctly first, before you ever try to
optimize your code or your content. If you're not serving
appropriately from the ground up, then you're not doing it correctly
from the starting line.

A server should be configured to send correct caching headers for
static content (which, note, is served *outside* of WordPress).
Cache-Control. Expires. Maybe Etags if you're having issues (but
generally ETags isn't worth the trouble). These are basics which all
sites should configure appropriately before serving a single byte. And
you can do this via .htaccess or nginx config files, no problems.

I agree that most sites do not have this configured appropriately. But
I don't agree that you should make your plugin slower and more complex
by assuming this to be the case. The principle of KISS applies here:
Keep the plugin simple and doing things appropriately.

Yes, it is not particularly optimal to output a CSS link on every page
(or even a JS link, for that matter). However, it is far simpler, and
the workarounds to make the system smarter about it are complex and
can cause incompatibilities if done incorrectly. And in a case where
the system has been properly optimized, the workarounds cause no
significant real-world gain.


> On the other hand would you not agree that an Expires header does not help with the first page load

Speed is important, but it is not the end-all be-all of the world of
the World Wide Web. Simplicity matters too. Ease of development. Ease
of use. Compatibility. If you have a non-optimal site, then optimizing
it is a good thing, certainly. If you're writing a plugin, then making
it more complex and more difficult to maintain and more incompatible
with other things, in order to shave a millisecond or two off
somebody's non-optimized site load time... probably not worth it.

-Otto