Tagged: content management

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Steps to speed up WordPress

WordPress website development is usually fun except when your website gets broken into by stow-aways using brute-force. Installing way too many WordPress plugins can be really temping because of the CMS’ auto-installing feature. I weigh on the side of excessive when it comes to using plugins. Here are steps which have been recommended by one of my WordPress/PHP programmer contacts to speed up a WordPress website.

If you can access your WP admin…
(usually at  http://www.your-web-site.com/wp-admin/  )

  • Reduce the number of posts which display on your Blog home page. If you have the blog page set to load 100 posts, your website may take a long time to load.
  • Turn off Trackbacks and Pingbacks! This can improve WordPress site speed. Just go to Admin>Discussion and uncheck the “Allow link notifications…”.
  • Delete old revisions by using a plugin like Better Delete Revision. Did you know that there are tons of Revision files saved by WordPress? Here is the notification I recieved the last time I removed redundant post revisions on Fatty Matt Brewing:

Since you started using Better Delete Revision, 260 redundant post revisions have been removed!

  • Ask yourself “what plugins I can live without?”
  • Go to the Installed Plugins page at  .../wp-admin/plugins.php  
  • Deactivate all the plugins which you don’t absolutely need.
    • Plugins to leave activated might include
      • Theme support plugins like Widget Saver or Theme Companion
      • Google XML Sitemaps
      • Anti-spam plugins like SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam and Akismet
      • Social bookmarking plugins like SexyBookmarks (by Shareaholic), Twitter Widget Pro or AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
      • Security plugins like WordPress Database Backup, AntiVirus, Better WP Security, Semisecure Login Reimagined or Secure WordPress

In the case of Fatty Matty Brewing, I run a rather large collection of family photos using Coppermine Photo Gallery. With all this web space dedicated to personal photos (I now prefer putting family pics on Flickr or Picasa) a good step to indirectly speed up WordPress performance is to cruise the coppermine install to save then delete all these pics/movies.

With the case of WordPress, it does not hurt to go through your Media Library at /wp-admin/upload.php and remove any pictures, movies or PDFs which are not used on your website. You can verify if photos are used [or not attached] in your WordPress website by looking in the “Attached To” column in the Media Library and remove any media files which read “(Unattached)”.

Choose a web host provider which doesn’t SUCK!

  • In the case of WordPress, DO NOT use Godaddy but rather DO use Bluehost. Bluehost has been recommended to me repeatedly by my WordPress developer contacts.
  • Why does hosting matter you might as? If your WordPress website is slow, get hacked or just stops working, you will want support. Many website hosting providers like Godady or Hostgator provide support which is like getting on a hampster wheel with no real solutions.

Best WordPress CMS Plugins

This post about the best of the WordPress Plugins for a CMS website was originally published on the Fatty Matty Brewing brewlog on June 19, 2009.

After using WordPress for so long on this Fatty Matty Brewing blog, I decided to use WordPress as a CMS (content management) with a few new clients’ websites including Greenspirit Farm and Free Congregation of Sauk County. Each of these unique clients has different business communication needs from WordPress and with the huge amount of WordPress plugins available, I knew I could pretty much accomplish any requests for website customization.

This list of WordPress plugins gives your website flexability to perform tons of fat website functions.

My Favorite WordPress Plugins

(tested on WordPress 2.7.1)

Plugins Used on the Fatty Matty Brewing Brewlog

  • Akismet – A must have spam catcher for ALL WordPress websites!
  • BrewPoll – For all you beer bloggers… Adds a BrewPoll icon to each post on your blog.
  • WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Have you backed up your WordPress database today? Do this before you upgrade to WordPress 2.8!

WordPress Plugins Used on the Greenspirit Farm website

  • All in One SEO Pack – Improve your website’s popularity on Google with super SEO.
  • Force User Field Registration – Forces new users to register additional fields. As a WordPress admin, it is nice to know that your website’s members are human.
  • Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO!.
  • Login Configurator – Sick of looking at the WordPress logo on your website? Get your company logo on the WordPress registration / login page.
  • Multi Column Category List – Want to create a WordPress Page with a list of categories? See the Recipes Category list at the bottom of this page. Requires the use of WordPress Page Templates and some custom coding.
  • Page Links To – This plugin allows you to point a post or page to any URL you want. Very useful if you want a WordPress Page to link an external URL.
  • Simple Login Widget – If you are using WordPress as a CMS, this simple widget will show just the login/logout and register links instead of all the RSS and Meta Feed crap.
  • WP Render Blogroll Links – Display your blogroll or WordPress links on a page like this!

Plugins Used on the Free Congregation website

  • Drop-down menu – Add a cool drop down style page menu to your WordPress theme.
  • Event Calendar – After a ton of searching for the perfect Event Calendar plugin – this one is the BEST!
  • Inline Posts – Allows you to include dynamic WordPress posts in your static WordPress pages (and in other posts). See an example here.
  • Simple:Press Forum – as far as I can tell (and there are not many to choose from) the best WordPress Forum Plugin. See a brand new installation of this WordPress Forum plugin here.
Check out some of our other favorite Free WordPress Plugins.