Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours

Posted in Blogging, Code, Hardware, Optimization, Scalability, WP, Web 2.0, Wordpress by Elliott Back on April 15th, 2007.

People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting and plunk down even more money, take a look at your Wordpress setup and LAMP stack. You can make them better.

My Hardware

I’m not running on a top-of-the-line multi-processor machine with 16 GB of RAM per node. I have a Pentium 4 with 1M L1 cache, 1 GB of RAM, a 160GB SATA2 drive, and 100MB/s ethernet. I get 1.3 TB of bandwidth of month, as well. The hardware is from Cari.net and I pay $80 a month for it.

WP Built-in Object Cache

Did you know Wordpress will try and cache all kinds of database queries as files on disk? It’s so simple. Just add the following to your wp-config.php:

// Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);

This can give a noticeable and immediate performance benefit. Less queries = less overhead and more CPU to go do other things. In case you don’t believe me, I just had a guy whose load average was between 20 and 50. After making this tiny change, it dropped to 2.

WP-Cache

You’ve seen this before, but if you’re not using the WP-Cache WP Super Cache plugin, we shouldn’t talk. It serializes your posts to a file on disk and later spits them back. It’s the classic caching solution. It also knows how to update itself when comments are received, etc, so your site is always the most up to date. Currently 304 posts are cached on this site in the last hour.

Wordpress Plugins

Here is the complete list of plugins that run on this blog:

Content Filters: Adbright BritePic Enabler, Admin Info, Adsense Injection,Auto-hyperlink URLs, Feedburner Feed Replacement, Terms2tags, Wordpress Duplicate Content Cure, WPvideo, WP Fixed Size, WP Adsense, WP-Stats, wp-cache

New Functions: delicious – Bookmark this!, Elliott’s Asides, Elliott’s Feed Tagger, Google Sitemaps, PJW Mime Config, Plugins Used, Relative Dates

Remote Services: Akismet, Extract Terms, Get RSS, Text Link Ads, WordPress From/Where

As you can see, there are just five that have any kind of processing impact. Akismet has to make calls to their webservice to verify spam. Extract Terms uses the Yahoo API to build keywords for automatic tagging. Get RSS performs similar operations per post. Text Link Ads keeps track of an xml file it updates every now and then. WP From/Where archives the keywords used to find every post. The first four cache their results. WP From/Where is the only “expensive” plugin I have, since it adds a query to every page load.

You should go through your plugins, and see if there’s a way to make them faster. To make them stop creating queries and use flat files, or better yet, cache things. If your plugins are slowing down your Wordpress installation, fix them and submit a patch their author. He’ll probably even give you a free link.

You can install something like xDebug to profile your PHP code for bottlenecks, as well.

MySQL Query Cache

The MySQL Query Cache saves results of queries in case the query comes by again. However, it only knows how to save the byte-text of queries, not their compiled versions, so small changes to the query will create different cache entries. Turn this on if you don’t have unique ids in every query. You can enable it by adding the following to /etc/my.cnf:

query_cache_type = 1
query_cache_size = 26214400

This will turn on the query cache and instruct it to use 26M of RAM. After you’ve changed the config, restart the MySQL process by /etc/init.d/mysqld restart and then run these SQL queries to verify that it’s working properly:

SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Qcache%';
SHOW STATUS LIKE 'Questions%';
Qcache_free_blocks  	2960
Qcache_free_memory 	11693192
Qcache_hits 	10433610
Qcache_inserts 	5221850
Qcache_lowmem_prunes 	2113131
Qcache_not_cached 	1335038
Qcache_queries_in_cache 	8765
Qcache_total_blocks 	20976
Questions 	21338215

When I check, I find the Query Cache efficiency is at worst 10433610/21338215, or 49%. That’s not bad.

PHP Opcode Cache

Why recompile our scripts every time, when we can save the bytecode? I use eAccelerator v0.9.5 to accelerate my PHP classes, currently of which 455 are saved. To install it follow these simple steps:

cd eaccelerator-0.9.5
phpize
./configure
gmake (or make)
gmake install (or make install)
add extension="eaccelerator.so" to your php.ini file
add eaccelerator.cache_dir="/tmp/eaccelerator" to your php.ini file
mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
chmod 0777 /tmp/eaccelerator

Their wiki has very clear instructions for how to install it. This extension is a win-win. It uses a bit of disk space, but it also optimizes the opcodes and saves you from having to recompile a script every time. It can shave up to 5000ms off your loading time, depending how bad the php code you’re actually running is. For me, it saves about 650ms per page.

Apache httpd.conf

First, and perhaps most importantly, comment out any modules you’re not using. Loading them takes time and memory. Your apache config file is usually located in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Some settings to keep in mind:

# Timeout and Keepalive
Timeout 30
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 6

#Maximum Client Connections
<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers       8
MinSpareServers    5
MaxSpareServers   20
ServerLimit      512
MaxClients       512
MaxRequestsPerChild  4000
</IfModule>

There are tons of how to guides out there for configuring apache to maximize performance, but mostly it’s great software that doesn’t need much tuning.

PHP php.ini

PHP is a beast with all kinds of horrible modules it thinks it needs to load. You find the php configuration usually at /etc/php.ini; here are some settings to observe:

;*Hide our info
expose_php = Off
;*Turn off for performance
register_globals = Off
register_long_arrays = Off
register_argc_argv = Off
magic_quotes_gpc = Off
magic_quotes_runtime = Off
magic_quotes_sybase = Off
;*Allow PHP to accept large data
post_max_size = 6M
file_uploads = On
upload_max_filesize = 6M

The real trick is to disable as many extensions as you aren’t using to save memory. You can check out this guide for more information about optimizing a php configuration.

Linux Kernel

Let’s put it this way; you want to be running the latest and greatest versions of all your software. If you’re using a 2.4 Kernel, don’t. The 2.6 kernel is appreciably faster. For me, getting the latest software is as easy as running the yum update command, as I use FC5. If you’re on a different distro, check their documentation for instructions on how to update to the latest version:

[root@fc435152 ~]# yum update
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Loading "skip-broken" plugin
Setting up Update Process
Setting up repositories
livna                     100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
atomic                    100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
psa-8.1                   100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
updates                   100% |=========================| 1.2 kB    00:00
core                      100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
mono                      100% |=========================|  951 B    00:00
extras                    100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
Dependencies Resolved

==================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
==================================
Installing:
 kernel                  i686       2.6.20-1.2312.fc5  updates            15 M
 kernel-smp              i686       2.6.20-1.2312.fc5  updates            16 M
 kernel-smp-devel        i686       2.6.20-1.2312.fc5  updates           4.6 M
Updating:
 alsa-lib                i386       1.0.14-0.1.rc1.fc5  updates           404 k
 cups                    i386       1:1.2.8-1.fc5    updates           2.9 M
 cups-libs               i386       1:1.2.8-1.fc5    updates           180 k
 dhcdbd                  i386       1.15-2.FC5       updates            68 k
 gnupg                   i386       1.4.7-4.1        updates           1.9 M
 gpm                     i386       1.20.1-82.fc5    updates           185 k
 krb5-devel              i386       1.4.3-5.4        updates           954 k
 krb5-libs               i386       1.4.3-5.4        updates           558 k
 krb5-workstation        i386       1.4.3-5.4        updates           858 k
 libX11                  i386       1.0.0-4.fc5      updates           761 k
 libXfont                i386       1.2.8-1.fc5      updates           227 k
 libpcap                 i386       14:0.9.4-4.fc5   updates           207 k
 openssh                 i386       4.3p2-4.12.fc5   updates           279 k
 openssh-clients         i386       4.3p2-4.12.fc5   updates           435 k
 openssh-server          i386       4.3p2-4.12.fc5   updates           251 k
 samba                   i386       3.0.24-4.fc5     updates            16 M
 samba-client            i386       3.0.24-4.fc5     updates           4.2 M
 samba-common            i386       3.0.24-4.fc5     updates           8.5 M
 tcpdump                 i386       14:3.9.4-4.fc5   updates           443 k
 tzdata                  noarch     2007d-1.fc5      updates           451 k
Removing:
 kernel                  i686       2.6.17-1.2142_FC4  installed          38 M
 kernel-smp              i686       2.6.17-1.2142_FC4  installed          44 M
 kernel-smp-devel        i686       2.6.17-1.2142_FC4  installed          13 M

Transaction Summary
=================================
Install      3 Package(s)
Update      20 Package(s)
Remove       3 Package(s)

Total download size: 75 M

Architecture

If you’re serving more than 5 million hits a day, you’ll want to take a different approach than if you’re serving 500,000 hits a day. For a small server, like mine, which can handle up to perhaps 1,000,000 hits a day, you’ll want everything running on the same box:

simple-server.png

For a more complicated server, you’ll split off the MYSQL component onto a hefty box, with Apache/PHP instances on a cluster of loadbalanced other boxes:

complex-server.png

Conclusion

There’s no good reason for Wordpress or your site to be slow, except your own negligence. Cache everything. Monitor performance. Use the latest versions of your software. Configure it intelligently. If you take an active part in every bit of software that powers your site, soon you’ll find things fit together more smoothly than before, and the secrets of a fast server will naturally fall into place.

Other Resources

Call me Lorelle; I’m going to link every other optimization guide for Wordpress I can find:

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is tagged with performance benefit, object cache, database queries, tiny change, processor machine, content filters, admin info, sata2, digg, pentium 4, plight, 100mb, hosting plans, l1, 1m, node, stack, complete list, bandwidth, config. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

109 Responses to “Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours”

  1. DrUnKtAnK says:

    Great article. Dugg — Thanks.

  2. max says:

    Nice article, this should help me since I have 3 servers now because of load problems but now maybe I can follow some of your PHP hacks!

  3. test says:

    test test test test

  4. Jason says:

    Thanks for the link to my article. Here comes the hordes, hope it stays up!

  5. Hooray! A front-page “how to survive digg” article that actually loads!

  6. Jeremy says:

    Nice article.. Gives me something to think about for future WP installations.

  7. Dave says:

    I wrote a plug-in a while back that provides some additional insurance against a digging/slashdotting, etc. It allows you to automatically utilize the Coral Content Distribution Network for readers that come from specified domains.

    http://theblogthatnoonereads.tunasoft.com/coralize/

  8. Mark DeCarlo says:

    Wordpress plagued me too for a while.

    After that, I just quit.

    I go to Tech CX alot now.

    http://www.techcx.blogspot.com

  9. BIll Larson says:

    I had some problems with WP-Cache as it was not showing the comment form on articles for registered users, if the page cache was triggered by a un-registered one. So you might wanna be aware of that….

  10. Majic says:

    Good post! I always find it amazing the people’s solution to any problem is more. Looking at what your doing, and making sure you’re getting the most from any system is vital

  11. Ken Savage says:

    Great article Elliott.

  12. Lee says:

    yeah I left wordpress a while ago :( Cool article though!

  13. Arne de Boer says:

    I rely on gninx:

    advertisement:
    Capitalists: we will make tofu from your balls:

    http://www.google.com/alerts

    Search terms: Bush took suicide pill

    Type: News

    How often: as-it-happens

    Your e-mail:

    Create alert

    *************************Be the FIRST to know!*************************

  14. Arne de Boer says:

    nginx that is.
    btw, Bush took red suicide pill ;-) ))

  15. Bork says:

    I just wanted to see if the comments were live and not just permanentally cached.

  16. Elliott Back says:

    No, they’re live really! ;)

  17. hl says:

    ah, how painful it must be to have so many hits! =P

  18. GNC-2007-04-17 #259…

    Really wild show I actually recorded the podcast while at the same time having a live stream with people watching the show. It was really weird yet distracting at the same time. I will have a link to the video…….

  19. subcorpus says:

    so i guess i shudnt think about migrating to movabletype …
    but i’ve heard so much about mavabletype being the holy grail of blogging software …
    guess i’ve heard wrong … hehe …

  20. Let’s see how’s is your wordpress performance(almost 1000 digg). Good to share :P

  21. Keith says:

    I tend to like WP-Cache until it decides to give me some problems. Now, I decided to do without it.

  22. Thanks for the great post. I’m going to implement most of your suggestions as soon as I can.

  23. Arne de Boer says:

    Welcome to the DIGITAL age, mr. bussh.

    I’ve got + worker_connections 10240
    ;-) )), and I need them!
    serving more than 7 million hits a day

  24. Mark Krynsky says:

    Great info Elliott. A few days late for me since I use Wordpress for my site and felt the pain when I made the digg front page on Sunday for the first time. I went down for a little but with the help of my host was able to debug a bad plugin and quickly installed WP-Cache and was back up running fine after that. I can appreciate the fact that you are very lean on plugins. You also offer some great tuning and load balancing tips here. I’m sure other fellow Wordpress users appreciate this.

  25. Rishi says:

    Thanks a lot for the useful hacks . I was trying to avoid digg because I didn’t want to over run my shared server but with this help I shouldn’t have to worry about digg crashing anymore.

  26. Hitsugaya Toshirou says:

    Thanks Mark! I really needed http://techcx.blospot.com!
    Keep on blogging!

  27. Hitsugaya Toshirou says:

    Whoops, mis spelled the blog site!
    http://techcx.blogspot.com

  28. Tim says:

    This is great. We’re not quite there yet with tektag.com, but I’m bookmarking this for when the day comes.

    Thanks,

    Tim

  29. 11amDesign says:

    Bookmarked …

  30. Is there anyway to implement memcached with wordpress?

  31. Elliott Back says:

    YES! But memcached is pretty hardcore ;) Take a look at this article or the svn package.

  32. trung says:

    Thank you sir. I will optimize my wordpress now.

  33. Ted says:

    This page was slow to load for me.

  34. Elliott Back says:

    Yes, but you’re from Guam. That might be the first problem. 24/7 monitoring in place shows that this page is loaded in entirety on an average of about 1.5 seconds. Then the images all come in, which takes more time.

  35. Another blog i run has been having severe load issues, and its something i have struggled to understand – i set up the cache and it caches pages but how does it deal with new comments ? Does it recreate the cached pages each time a new comment is posted? I ask becasue i have threads that can generate close to 600 comments in about 5 hours on a particular article _ does any one know where i can find this kind of information ?

    Or is the article cached and the comments dynamic or do i need to re do my theme to fit this kind of functionality in

  36. Top wordpress tools of the month…

    Wordpress is the phenomenon (yeah I do believe it is one) that made a lot of dreams come true. It created a bridge between people without any kind of programming knowledge and the fact of being live and writing for people. The road is so much shorter f…

  37. sufehmi says:

    @GrandMaster — the easiest way which will decrease your server’s load most (I assume you;re running Wordpress / similar cms) is to install an edge server / reverse proxy solution.

    An easy to follow tutorial regarding this can be read here.

    It constantly amazes me how people keep on prescribing the hardest way with minimum return to be done first.
    Squid (and other edge server solution) are easy to implement, takes only minutes, and easily drop a double digit server load to a single digit.

    Yes, you may not be able to do this on a shared webhosting environment; but so does many of the tips mentioned in this article.

    Hope it helps.

  38. Sakimichi says:

    Thanks for the tutorial :D

  39. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott Back – There?s no good reason for Wordpress or your site to be slow, except your own negligence. Cache everything. Monitor performance [...]

  40. ChangeLog says:

    [...] WP Built-in Object Cache [...]

  41. [...] If you would like some more advice on how to optimise your blog, check out these post: 6 ways to speed up your blog Why my wordpress site is so much faster than yours [...]

  42. [...] Maximize your server architecture.The amount of traffic your blog gets can determine the best way to set up your server. For some, it may be better to run everything on one box, but for others, splitting up the components into different boxes can speed things up. [...]

  43. dada says:

    Nice Site!

  44. Speed Demon says:

    [...] But, I implemented some of the great tips from this blog – notably installing the wp-cache plugin for Wordpress, enabling caching in MySQL, and disabling some additional PHP options (although I doubt this last thing has any significant impact). [...]

  45. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott C. Back Nette Zusammenfassung. [...]

  46. [...] People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can ’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting andread more | digg story [...]

  47. [...] Mr. Back has some other suggestions at his blog which may be helpful for the WordPress BlogMaster — take a look, in particlular at his “PHP OpCode Cache” technique at that link. Note that I could have classified this under “WordPress Issues”, but the idea of looking at a cache fix using PHP is generic, and probably will work across a range of applications and Content Management Systems. [...]

  48. [...] This object cache supposedly caches database queries to disk to reduce CPU and database overhead. This should increase performance in most cases unless your disk I/O performance is very poor, like Dreamhost’s NFS storage system. This feature seems to be undocumented and had security issues in the past, but is commonly recommended as a safe way of increasing performance. I have heard that the object cache hardly improves performance, but I’d never imagined that it would slow my site down by 10x or more. [...]

  49. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott C. Back [...]

  50. artofnet says:

    Hi,

    Thanks for writing this article, because I have the same performance trouble and now I have installed wp-cache plugin. Glad find your articles from google…

    Cheers…

  51. [...] Mr. Back has some other suggestions at his blog which may be helpful for the WordPress BlogMaster — take a look, in particlular at his “PHP OpCode Cache” technique at that link. Note that I could have classified this under “WordPress Issues”, but the idea of looking at a cache fix using PHP is generic enough, and probably will work across a range of applications, that I have included it here. [...]

  52. [...] People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can ’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting andread more | digg story Mac vs. PC: How Would Linux Fit? » Sorry, no comments yet. [...]

  53. That’s:

    // Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
    define(’ENABLE_CACHE’, true);

    It needs quotes around ENABLE_CACHE.

  54. CDN Net says:

    Nice ideas and tips. You didn’t mention moving to CDN service all static content. It provides extra performance (lowers your server load), thus you can serve more web visitors with easy.

  55. [...] People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can ’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting andread more | digg story [...]

  56. [...] People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can ’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting andread more | digg story [...]

  57. [...] According to these numbers, my dual core server can do 750 requests per second, fulfilling each within about 150ms each. That’s pretty fast, probably because I know the secrets of Wordpress Optimization. If you make every layer as fast as it can be, and cache heavily, you too can see lightening fast Wordpress installations! zeus technology ltd, adam twiss, apache http server, apache software foundation, apache installation, concurrency level, document length, concurrent requests, suitable answer, server hostname, document path, apache 2, server port, man page, server software, benchmark, wordpress, wp, bench, and methodology [...]

  58. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott C. Back (tags: wordpress performance optimization) [...]

  59. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours by Elliott C. Back (tags: wordpress performance optimization) [...]

  60. Ian says:

    Another big gain is to switch from Apache/mod_php to nginx+fastcgi.

    It’s smaller, and more free RAM means a couple extra php processes, should you so desire, plus the inherent speed boost you get from using nginx.

    In a (wholly unscientific and useless) benchmark, using nginx with 3 php fastcgi processes, eaccelerator, wp-cache, a properly tuned mysql, etc.

    /usr/sbin/ab -n 10000 -c 64 http://host.name/

    … gives back ~1500 requests a second at around 525mbit/s total transfer… which puts the limiting factor squarely on my network card.

  61. [...] For more advanced methods of caching and speed improvement, visit Elliot Back’s “WordPress Improvement: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours” [...]

  62. Lu says:

    Nice graphics / pictures!

    Which software did you use?

    Greetings,

    Lu

  63. [...] People everywhere complain that Wordpress is slow, or that they can ’t survive a digg. They die if they get more than 10,000 visitors a day, their hosting providers ban them for using too many resources, and they cry because they have to purchase expensive hosting plans. If this describes your plight, before you run over to Survive Digg hosting andread more | digg story [...]

  64. [...] Google Gruppe om webhoteller Et lille Servage.net trick Wordpress performance tricks Posted in Teknik | Leave a Comment [...]

  65. Lurid Cinema says:

    This give me a lot of stuff to go over. My site is fine most of the time & some times VERY slow. I am on shared hosting and my site is getting only a few hundred hits a day. I am ready to migrate to my own server…..GRRR headaches.

  66. Blagovest says:

    Check out the recently launched WP-Offload plugin. You will see a dramatical speedup especially if your posts have a lot of static content (images, documents, movies, etc.). It will completely redirect all the requests for static content to external cache servers, so the load on your web server will decrease significantly.

  67. Mirc says:

    Thank you

  68. Mike says:

    Hi, Do you still recommend Cari.net ? I’ve heard of several people having problems with them. I am about to switch from my previous hosting company Eapps. BTW I recommend Eapps, but I am switching because I need a dedicated server and Cari.net prices are far more cheap than Eapps… almost 90 times more cheap for what I need.

    So, if you were about to switch from another hosting company, would you switch to cari.net?

    thanks!

  69. lulz says:

    Hi elliot can you otimize my server for me please? i’ll pay of course, please contact me via the email i provided here thanks.

  70. To turn off all needless apache modules, you will have to go to the /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory also and rename module files like: squid.conf to squid.off or ssl.conf to ssl.off This way, httpd will not include this modules during startup.

  71. Nice! Will try this out :)

  72. Hi there,

    I found this rather late, but it saved my page. I struggled getting my wp log working on my rather slow firewall-server-mail-web-thingy. I applied almost all your tweaks and it speaded up my site tremendously. In fact, it stopped my httpd from crashing every time i loaded more than one admin page at the same time. http://wkossen.nl/weblog/ still won’t live through a digg frontpage episode though… (it’s a alix amd geode 256MB embedded little box with centos 5, so slow by nature..)
    In fact, the most effective change was from eAccellerator php plugin. that made THE difference….

    Cheers!

    Willem Kossen

  73. [...] For more tips on how to improve your Wordpress performance, check out Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours. Another interesting WP caching plugin is Batcache, which uses the memcached backend to serve requests out of a cluster of machines’ RAM memory. [...]

  74. nullrend says:

    I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and just now made the connection of yours to cari.net. They’re my current employer, *cof cof*

  75. [...] Dans la suite de l’article, je m’arrêterai à l’optimisation de WordPress et de son environnement (thème, plugins, …). Pour l’optimisation d’une plateforme d’hébergement complète, vous pouvez consulter l’article de Elliott C. Back [...]

  76. fak3r says:

    nice article, besides the db caching you list, I've found great success using Xcache with PHP5, running on the nginx webserver and multiple fastcgi processes on Debian. I don't get that much traffic, so right now I'm still hosted on a home dsl line – but I have a number of sites all chewing off the same stack.

    I used to run varnish as a reverse proxy, but with nginx and it's ability to auto cache images, I've dropped it for now, but I recommend you checkout varnish if you have a busier site.

    Oh, and one more thing, I've started to use Flickr as my CDN for images, I only have a couple on there, but I know the more I offload, the less will have to squeeze out via my 2 copper wires! ;)

  77. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  78. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours, April, 2007 [...]

  79. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  80. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  81. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  82. Nice info. As always I suggest testing the performance and benchmarking when all is set-up.

  83. Parcel says:

    Sorry, but you have 22 external Javascript files and 16 CSS background images. Try to use css sprites, css cacheer and maybe phpspeedy to reduce your HTTP requests. You got an F Grade from ySlow. Hmmmm….

  84. Jojo says:

    Very cool tricks! Thanks for sharing.

  85. [...] Dit weblog geeft aan dat er veel cacheable is en dat dat de website aanzienlijk kan versnellen [...]

  86. quellish says:

    How strange that you advocate load balancing. Word press does not work properly behind a load balancer, even the WP guys own up to this. wordpress.com uses a different codebase.

  87. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours [...]

  88. taxact says:

    Nice. Implemented a few things.. seems to work. Thanks for the article

  89. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  90. LarsN says:

    This is one of the pages I used as I got started with my new hosting environment. I settled on nginx as the web server, APC OpCode cache, and rather than use the WP-SuperCache plugin, I stuck Varnish in front of the whole works.

    Thanks for the great post! and I look forward to reading more.

  91. [...] Wordpress Performance: Why My Site Is So Much Faster Than Yours [...]

  92. [...] own negligence. Cache everything. Monitor performance. Use the latest versions of your software. Configure it intelligently. If you take an active part in every bit of software that powers your site, soon youll find [...]

  93. spenser says:

    Nice.

    This should be required reading for all those who are whinging about their site performance. Not least of all to us.

  94. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Backs site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  95. [...] a few quick Google searches, I found this article. The author details several of the tools needed to improve Wordpress performance, but the one in [...]

  96. Hund says:

    2 THINGS:

    1) Please don’t tell people to edit the Wordpress engine. That messes otber stuff up. Instead, make a plugin.

    2) Could you test the difference in performance? That would make this post much more interesting.

  97. [...] using this guide, I allowed caching of database queries which just requires an addition to the [...]

  98. very nice article..Thanks for the great post! and I look forward to reading more.

  99. mind author says:

    great article..thanks for info, Implemented a few things.. seems to work

  100. [...] #5: You can find even more tips&tricks on Elliot Back’s site (and he plays DOTA too, how cool is [...]

  101. Chris says:

    WOW. I feel really stupid. Thank you for exponentially speeding up my SNAIL of a Wordpress site! Just enabling the built-in cache, installing the WP Super Cache plugin as well as the WP Widgets Cache plugin exponentially increased the speed of my site. I really appreciate this! Thanks!

  102. [...] Utiliza un servidor web rápido como nginx para servir contenido estático (es decir, imágenes), mientras que utilizas otro servidor para el contenido dinámico, que es otro truco que se suele usar. Nota 1: Más recursos interesantes. Optimización del tiempo de carga de página y una serie de tutoriales sobre la mejora del rendimiento web. Nota 2: Puede encontrar más consejos y trucos en el sitio de Elliot’s Back [...]

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