The first release candidate of the WordPress Fast Frontend has just been released and Ludo is already working on the next one. I loaded it up on my test server to try it out: less queries, faster loading. Is it a touch slower than the alpha? Possibly, but it might just be my imagination.
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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.