The problem that I had, however, was that WP Minify completely jacked up my blog. I don’t know why, but I just removed it and the site is running REALLY fast.

Thanks!

With most premium themes started their life from a photoshop canvas, we’re starting to see huge themes.

I bought one that websiteoptimization.com said is around 600 KB (without any content at all).

I ran smush it on all my images folder. The result ?

80 Kb. A whooping 520 kB saved !

Lessons learned: Be sure to check if your blog is working correctly after installing plugins!

I’d love to see some hard data on how much speed improves, database call are reduced, & how long it takes the php to render on the server.

Here’s some code if anyone wants to play around. It tell s you how many database calls you are doing & how long it takes the php to load on your server (not how long it actually takes the page to render for your users):

queries in seconds.

Kinda fun for techies…

I’ve been playing around a lil bit.on my server. Some slow down my perceived load time (when I see something on my screen the first time by a second), Some spike my CPU severely, yikes…

You’re right – this list is not all compatible with each other (for example, W3 Total Cache versus WP Super Cache). These are the plugins I’ve used over time on my blog.

I was using WP Super Cache until this weekend when I saw Hyper Cache mentioned in the comments, and also because I had an interesting discussion offline about W3 Total Cache. I’m experimenting with both of this week, but typically I use WP Super Cache and WP Minify.

Some people are not comfortable with *any* kind of caching, however in those situations I still feel that using gzip for example would be useful, hence the recommendation =). You are correct in that you could use .htaccess and php.ini, however I like to do as much configuration as I can through plugin UI screens – I am a software engineer and capable of editing the files directly, but I set up lots of blogs for friends. Using plugins is easier for most people.

Thanks for your recommendation for PHP Speedy WP – I remember using it and having some issue, I think specifically with JS files that used document.write. I may be wrong, and perhaps that has been fixed (it seems like it would be a very difficult problem to fix though, as that’s really an issue with my rogue JS file as opposed to the plugin). Since many plugins include JS document.write, I opted not to use it. WP Minify has a similar issue, but has an easy way to exclude rogue files in the UI.

Thanks for the excellent question and discussion. I don’t always get everything right, and if I’m wrong here please let me know – this is just my experience with the plugins, and I’m sharing it hoping to improve people’s websites, and the experience for their readers. I will perhaps give PHP Speedy WP another whirl down the road.