[wp-hackers] 5 minutes to a faster blog

[Sebastian Herp]

Matt Mullenweg wrote:
> Sebastian Herp wrote:
>> - activating wp-cache (the plugin) increased performance by a factor 
>> of 6 (on my blog from 5 request per second to 30 request per second)
>
> 30 * 86400 = 2,592,000 PHP pageviews a day on a singe server. Digg + 
> Reddit usually only send 50-100k. Properly done caching can have 
> benefits many times the effect of higher-level changes. Make sure you 
> focus your attention in the right place.
Except that Digg sends this kind of traffic within a shorter period than 
one day ;-) Sometimes it can bring a webserver to a halt if only 100 
users decide to visit your blog at the exact same time. But if one wants 
to prepare for digg/slashdot, nothing beats a proper cache that serves 
more or less static pages.

>
> On WordPress.com, unless something is broken, SQL usually only 
> accounts for 5-15% of page generation time.
That may be the reason a switch to innodb isn't doing that much 
performance-wise. Accelerators help a lot and having wordpress not 
format every post on each view (http://vapourtrails.ca/wp-preformatted) 
helps too. But - as seen - caching beats everything, even a badly 
configured server ;-)
>
> Bonus tip: Perceived speed is more important than real speed. Make 
> sure there isn't too much Javascript, ad crap, and external widgets on 
> your blog slowing down the loading time for clients.
>
+1, but I cannot get rid of all these little things ... so cute, and 
helpful, slow ... damn it :-)