Common culprit for a sluggish WordPress site
Many factors can affect the loading speed of a WordPress site, but in my experience it usually boils down to plugins.
WordPress is an excellent CMS in no small part due to its ease of customization. As users explore the full spectrum of possibilities, it’s easy to find oneself with a host of plugins that were added after the installation of the WordPress core files.
Simply put: less is more.
Most plugins will slow your site’s load time. Only install and activate plugins that are absolutely necessary.
Can plugins slow down your site even if they are deactivated? Some say yes. Others say no.
I tend to think that if a plugin is installed but deactivated, it can likely be deleted. Make it a best practice.
If you want to run some plugin load testing, developer Dave Clements suggests the P3 Plugin Performance Profiler and details its usage.
Site fully integrated with WordPress
After polishing up my custom WordPress theme this morning, I happy to report that this site is now backed by the WordPress CMS.
I built Rick Markus 1.0 from scratch to mirror the look of the site when it was ran solely on HTML and PHP files, so returning visitors might not notice much of a difference.
It’s fulfilling to break away from pre-made themes, especially considering the popularity of WordPress around the Web.
How to use JavaScript in WordPress pages, posts
Because WordPress tries to clean up raw code entered on pages or posts under default settings, it will take your JavaScript code and break it. Therefore, the first thing you have to do is make sure those “features” are disabled:
- In your dashboard go to Users, choose your profile and then check “Disable the visual editor when writing.”
Next, you have to install a plugin that lets you choose to keep your page in it’s raw code form. I chose Text Control, as recommended in the WordPress codex. Note: There seems to be a newer version (2.3) if you choose to install the plugin from inside the WP dashboard, but I couldn’t get it to work properly.
- Install Text Control.
- Go to the page you want to include JavaScript on and make sure there’s a saved version/draft. The plugin options may not appear in the backend of the individual page until there is a saved version.
- From Text Control’s two drop-down menus, choose “No Formatting” and “No Character Encoding”. Read More>>
Embed RSS feeds into your WordPress page or post
If you are running a WordPress powered website, and you would like to add an RSS feed to a page or post, your life just got a lot easier.
Forget Yahoo! Pipes, or Google modules or RSSinclude. There’s an WordPress plugin called Embed RSS that is all you need.
It places a button up in your post/page editing links that lets you enter an RSS feed on the fly. You can choose the number of items posted and whether to include post content, author or dates published. The drop down menu appears to limit users to posting 1-20 or 100 links, but if you edit the number in HTML view, you can choose mid range output, like 50 links.
This plugin would have saved me some time, but it hid from me quite well over the past month.
Make your WordPress blog printer-friendly without plugins
After using the Print Friendly and PDF Button plugin for a recent WordPress re-theme, I discovered one major flaw: embedded Google ads.
Most clients will reject third-party ads on their site. Otherwise, the plugin runs smoothly. Although I didn’t like the print popup box’s green color (which isn’t quickly changed in settings), I considered removing the ads legitimately with the plugin’s ad-removal fee ($4 a month).
I also tried some other print friendly plugins, but liked them even less. Read More>>
