WordPress On Speed
Well it seems that I’m not the only one that thinks WordPress is a tad slow. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great package - this site uses the 1.3 alpha - but I’ve often wondered why the package is so big and page generation takes so long.
So far I’ve made a few tweaks to my own install to reduce the number of redundant queries. However, Ludo Magnacavallo has gone many steps further and created his own WordPress Fast Frontend - a lean ‘n’ mean stripped-down version that loads pages way faster than the vanilla release.
I like what he’s done, at least conceptually. I tried it out on my offline site and saw a 10x decrease in page load times. Granted it doesn’t have all of the WordPress bells and whistles, but I really don’t use those anyhow. My only complaint is that the code is really messy, but its only release 0.1 after all. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Jerome, thanks for the review of WPFF. I don't agree on the "messy" part. My aim is to encapsulate the really important functions into classes and leave the rest (which is just a bunch of database queries and templating calls) as a single flow of code, so that you can read what happens from beginning to end (assuming you understand how the db/templating classes work).
I don't think separating code into tons of three-line functions tucked away into tons of include files scattered everywhere is organized, well architected code. Most of the time it's spaghetti code, the result of starting without a clear picture and adding features without ever stopping to look at what's going on in the code, and refactoring it.
Try to understand how the db class works, then the templating class, then read index.php from top to bottom and you'll see you never need to take your eyes off it to understand what's happening.
That said, I have the intention of encapsulating a few things in index.php into separate functions, mainly so that they can be controlled by options keywords (eg if you don't want pagination for archives pages, etc.).
ludo — 01-Dec-2004 02:04Thanks for your comment, Ludo! I haven't had a chance to respond earlier, but I'm looking at your beta release and will post my thoughts soon.
In hindsight, "really messy" was a bit of an exaggeration. Right now WP-FF reads like a shell script - I think more of it should be encapsulated into helper functions (only 1-level deep where possible) so that the basic flow is cleaner and less cluttered.
jerome — 15-Dec-2004 01:06pondere con utilizzatori del nostro progetto come Jerome, il ragazzo canadese che dopo una prima recensione favorevole ha deciso di utilizzare Word Press Fast Frontend per il propri [...]
blogo.it - I vantaggi della trasparenza — 18-Feb-2005 14:52