wjwood64

Ummm…MacMacken, I DID check the WordPress site and the Widget Cache plugin is fine.

Also, I’ve decided to include ALL of the links for all of the performance things I use.

Here are the performance plugins I use… I’ve also done some manual changes to my .htaccess file for better performance. One other thing, the Super Cache plugin (like W3TC) makes .htaccess changes as well.

It will be VERY important that your WordPress installations are in their own separate folders. You can’t have WordPress loaded in your root folder. If you load WordPress in a root folder and do ANY kind of .htaccess changes you may have trouble with other applications on your web site. The .htaccess settings cascade down into the lower level files and directories.

DB Cache Reloaded Fix
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/db-cache-reloaded-fix/

Use Google Libraries
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/use-google-libraries/

WP-Optimize
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wp-optimize/

WP Minify
Don’t see it hosted on WordPress for now. Waiting to hear back from the author. This one works REALLY well!

WP Super Cache
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/

WP Widget Cache
https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/wp-widget-cache/

MacMacken, I guess someone forgot to tell me because I’ve been using them for quite some time. And I have them both installed on the current version of WordPress… Would you like me to post a screenshot?

–> IMPORTANT UPDATE <–

As a result of my post I have gotten a LOT of responses from folks wanting to know how to speed up their site.

BEFORE I start going down the path of caching there are a LOT of preliminary fixes that most sites must do.

So if you are interested in really fixing your site,

1. Go to https://www.webpagetest.org/ and test your site.
2. Once the test is complete, click on the WATERFALL IMAGE that is generated to see the details of where many of your problems are.
3. Start addressing and correcting those first.

For example, I had one person who asked for help but their real problem was less about caching than about the silly JQUERY install that WordPress does. Solution?

Just add this plugin: https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/use-google-libraries/

This adds the Google Libraries plugin to your site. It will REALLY help with your load time. It is served from Google’s site. And it is the most compressed and up to date. On top of that, MANY large sites use it so it is very likely that your users will already have it cached in their browser even the first time they visit your site.

==============

Another person was so in love with their FLASH picture changing that they would not do anything about it. Another one was in love with their Google Partner plugin which was taking up LITERALLY 30 seconds of load time. Whoever did that plugin created a bunch of JUNK! But they are hooked on it and won’t change it.

There are a LOT of fixes you should do before EVER putting in a caching program.

So, please check out your site first and be sure you are willing to fix some of what you find before going down the caching route. If you have trouble I’m okay with helping on that too. But if you don’t want to address the underlying issues with your site first then there is not a lot that many caching programs can do well for you.

And I almost forgot, my site is SUPER optimized for SEO (a couple plugins and TONS of hand coded changes to the theme nobody else seems to be using).

I have a LOT of popular keywords where I am in the first position, and a BOATLOAD of popular, expensive keywords where I am on the first page of Google, Bing, and Yahoo…

NO black hat SEO either. All old fashioned hard work and lots of coding…

Superfastwhiteboy & gooma2

IF you are interested I would be happy to walk you through a lot of steps that will RADICALLY increase your site performance.

Will do it for no charge, only a front page link to my site. And will do it offline through e-mail correspondance if you like. If you are interested in the site performance increase go to my site at

https://www.r3now.com

Then send me an e-mail message either from the contact form or from my e-mail address (which you will have to manually type since it is an image to avoid SOME of the spam e-mail harvesters).

Bill

I had been using WP Super Cache for a while and switched to W3TC. I saw a major performance hit compared to W3TC.

HOWEVER, just to be clear here, I use a few separate performance plugins and get pretty decent performance.

WP Super Cache
WP Minify
DB Cache Reloaded
WP Widget Cache

Here is what I found by using each of these plugins separately RATHER than W3TC (which I commend as a great product).

1. By using the separate plugins each of them is separately supported and each developer focuses on their niche products like a laser. Fixes, improvements, etc., come much quicker and are more narrowly focused.
2. By using the Widget Cache as a separate plugin the widget cache, CSS/JS combine-minify are not processed for each page that is cached. This allows for better performance overall because after the cache is cleared any single page can regenerate any of these objects. Also, each of these items has separate expiration / regeneration times so that unless I manually clear all of them they are not re-generated at the same time. Now the architecture of W3TC may allow for some of this but I am pretty sure the widgets, and the separate expiration timings are not accounted for in W3TC (although they may be).

However, one other thing I have done is to manually adjust several of the HTACCESS rules by hand. I’m sure I could have done a lot of that with W3TC but I’m pretty familiar with these plugins and am happy with them.

====================

Results: About a year ago my site would take anywhere from 8 – 15 seconds to 100% load even from a location close by.

After many, many changes, tweaks, adjustments, and enhancements around the plugins and some hand coding I now have it consistently under 2 seconds from nearly anywhere in North America. It is also under 3 seconds from most anywhere in the world except for a few 3rd world locations with REALLY bad communication infrastructure.

Many times my site will load in close to 1.5 seconds for locations fairly close by in the U.S. As an added bonus, after the first visit, repeat views of the site load in about .5 seconds because of a bunch of the hand coded HTACCESS rules. That’s right, 1/2 of one second!

====================

I’m sure I can do more but my goal was to get consistently under 2 seconds. If I play around with cloud flare I should be able to get that globally but will wait on that for a while.

Overall I am happy with the current setup and performance is great. For me, even IF W3TC is a superior product the risk of experimenting with it for any small additional gains I might get are too high.

That is my analysis.

Check out the site yourself at https://www.R3Now.com
You can test the page speed from WebPageTest.org

IF it is still there, check out today’s performance result (retrieved Jan 8, 2012):

https://www.webpagetest.org/result/120108_TF_2SGN5/

PLEASE IGNORE — SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY the Check-box to activate the terms management was turned off.

Overall I LOVE this plugin! It is one of the most useful I have after all of the performance related items.

I **believe** this may be related to a couple of changes made in the way posting data changes are handled in WP 3.0.

In wp-admin\js\post.dev.js this post boxes section is MISSING (replaced) in the new version of WP (around line 240 in the NEW file IF it were included):

// postboxes
if ( post )
postboxes.add_postbox_toggles(‘post’);
else if ( page )
postboxes.add_postbox_toggles(‘page’);

Previously appeared just before this heading:

// multi-taxonomies

———————————-

IN wp-admin\js\post.js the references to POST and PAGE have been replaced by “pagenow.” You can see this in the post
NEW version around character position 4242:

{var b,a,f=””;postboxes.add_postbox_toggles(pagenow)

PREVIOUSLY the reference showed these options (pagenow, post, AND page were all referenced with variables).

{var d,a,b,h=””,i=”post”==pagenow||”post-new”==pagenow,g=”page”==pagenow||”page-new”==pagenow;if(i){postboxes.add_postbox_toggles(“post”)}else{if(g){postboxes.add_postbox_toggles(“page”)}}