Complicated shortcodes slow to load

Thanks for a good question that has a large number of answers, all starting with “It depends…”

There’s a recent topic with some guidance on performance in the admin screens:

“Assistant” page is taking too long to start loading

It’s conceivable that disabling where-used reporting can help you, but not that likely.

On the front end, [mla_gallery] shortcodes can vary quite a bit depending on the site’s database size and complexity. The most common problem comes with taxonomy parameters, e.g., attachment_tag. MLA lets WordPress compose the database queries (using WP_Query), and some of the taxonomy-related queries can be slow. Here’s an example:

REALLY Slow Queries…….. Help! ??

You can find the solution to that topic in the /media-library-assistant/examples/alexa-paige-plugin.php.txt example plugin. I have used a similar approach on a site with over 400,000 images and 50,000 tags.

I am happy to give you more specific help if I can get more information about your application. I am traveling until 9/25, so there may be some delays in responding. Thanks for your understanding and your patience.

David, thanks as always. I’ve finally figured out/found the example plugin. I had no idea that it was part of the install! I was looking through the docs and on the plugin page. haha, that’s my mistake – anyway, now that I’ve found it, I have no idea what to do with it. Do I just drop this code into my functions.php file?

Thanks for your update and for tracking down the example plugin. I gave the topic and the plugin as an example of the type of problem and solution you should consider, but if you can expand on your first post I can be more specifically helpful.

You wrote “are there any suggestions to make the plugin run faster?” Because you followed up on the example plugin I assume you want to make your [mla_gallery] shortcode(s) run faster on the site’s front end; is that right?

If so, can you post the source text of your shortcodes so I can look at them and see if the example plugin will be effective? It works for applications that have a large number of Media Library items with terms assigned in the Att. Categories and/or Att. Tags taxonomies. If that applies to your application, can you tell me how many items and terms your site has?

Once I know more about your application I can work with you to find a good solution. Thanks for any additional details you can provide.

It has been two months since my last post in this topic and I have not seen anything further. I assume you have found a solution that works for your application.

I am marking this topic resolved, but please update it if you still need help with this topic. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.