JamesSpratt.org

Wordpress: Hosting, Widgets and Plugins

Posted on the October 9th, 2007 under Geek by jamesspratt

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Geek entry, move along unless you have an interest in blogging software…

I stopped using Movable Type’s blogging software a while back and went over to Wordpress. Really wish I’d done it way back as it’s so much more intuitive and less codey to the layman. The only thing I miss about MT is the fact that it produces static pages of any amount (i.e. pages, categories, archives, etc.) of your site you need whenever you want it to.  So this relieves much of the pressure on the server because there no repeated database queries as there is with WP.

Hosting

My hosting had kindly been looked after as a freebie by a small tech support company called MHX (I recommend them for small company tech support). After a few years though I realized there were inexpensive hosting companies out there who could respond a tad quicker. My site was also being hosted on Windows IIS which created a few problems, including the irritating permalink structure.

So I moved over to Dreamhost which also includes the one-click installs for wordpress and other common personal software. All cool. Then I realized how much my site has slowed down, and part of this was all the fun plugins. Reading up on Lorelle on Wordpress and came across an article about speeding up your WP blog (also worth following this posting as seen on OneMan’sBlog). Counted that I was using a total of 84 php queries per page call. That’s nuts. No bloody wonder the site hadbeen grinding.  I knocked this down to forty odd and there’s a noticeable difference but would still like it to be quicker.

Widgets

I love the concept of widgets, just being able to chuck in a plugin, slip it into a sidebar and bobbarella’s your aunt - it’s there. That’s neat. The downside is that whatever php it’s calling into to be used is just another drain on system resources as the database gets hit for another query. That and they can also screw up any formatting you’re trying to keeep on your site, in my experience it’s just not worth the hassle trying to correct them.

Plugins

For various reasons, whether I was trialling, thought I’d come back top but never did, had saved for a rainy day, decided I definitely did not need, etc., I deactivated and deleted a whole bunch of plugins. I’ve now a grand total of 25 plugins installed on this site right now. That may sound a lot because it is. I especially recommend the following:

Audio player

FriendFeed Activity Widget

Lighter Menus

Quotes Collection

WP Super Cache