What’s the Story With Plugins?
Earlier today I had read a forum post where people were talking about how WordPress plugins might impact the speed or responsiveness of your site.
Since I do a lot of work writing custom themes and plugins I’ve always been of the opinion that a well written plugin is no more load on a site than the same code included in the theme. I remembered reading an article on WPTuts, Functionality: Plugins vs Themes, just a few days before and had thought that what they said certainly agreed with my personal experience.
But a person never really knows, do they?
And after seeing that forum post today I still had some doubts. It seems ‘logical’ that more stuff is going to slow things down more, doesn’t it?
Is There Any Right Answer?
I knew it wasn’t a question of there being only one right way or wrong way, but I kept thinking about it. Then suddenly it occurred to me. Because of some things I had been working on I could take a stab at checking this out myself. So I decided to do this post.
I had been working on setting up some demo sub sites for my IM programming and plugins blog over the past few days. I had uploaded three fresh WordPress installs in three sub directories.
I had activated the first and copied over 49 plugins. I had activated 9 of these. On sites 2 and 3 I hadn’t done anything. So I did the WordPress activation on them both, but didn’t do any other setup changes in the WordPress admin panel other than give the sites a name on the original activation page.
Then I installed the same 49 plugins (not activated) on demo site 2. So that was where I was at.
A couple of things before I continue. [check_list]
- I deleted the default akismet plugin on demo 3, so there are no plugins installed at all.
- My hosting for this site is at 1and1. They don’t have gzip compression activated for shared hosting. So I’ve always disliked that. The speed tests hate that I haven’t enable compression.
- The WP Minify Plugin is wonderful. I use it to minify the css on sites.
- On demo 2 and demo 3 there are no pages or posts other than what is included in the initial WordPress install.
- In addition to Google’s Page Speed Test, I used the free speed test from GTmetrix. If you are new to working on optimizing your sites, this is an excellent place to start.
[/check_list]
Step 0 – Before running tests:
Site | Plugins Installed | Plugins Activated | Site Content | Theme | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 67 | 29 | 88 posts, 7 pages'normal' siteparent site of the three demos | Custom | |
1 | 49 | 9 | 4 pages, 3 posts, nothing in them. Basic titles for Privacy, Contact, etc. | Twenty Eleven (WP default) | |
2 | 49 | 0 | 1 post, 1 page.Hello World! and Sample Page | Twenty Eleven (WP default) | |
3 | 0 | 0 | 1 post, 1 page.Hello World! and Sample Page | Twenty Eleven (WP default) |
Step 1 – Speed Tests without WP-Minify activated:
Site | Firebug Page Speed | Chrome Page Speed | GTMetrix | WP-Minify? | Comments | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 74/100 | 67/100 | 72%/72% | Off | This is very slow. But activating wp-minify should help. | |
1 | 61/100 | 56/100 | 52%/76% | Off | Didn't expect this. Slower than Site 0. Is it the Twenty Eleven Theme? Or the 9 active plugins? | |
2 | 74/100 | 74/100 | 71/95 | Off | 49 Installed plugins. | |
3 | 74/100 | 74/100 | 73/95 | Off | 0 Installed plugins. Nearly identical results with Site 2. |
Step 2 – Speed Tests With WP-Minify activated:
Site Test on Home Page | Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug | Google Page Speed in Chrome | GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow) | wp-minify Activated? | Comments | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 89/100 | 82/100 | 91%/82% | Y | I knew activating WP-Minify would make a big difference. But what about the demo sites? | |
1 | 85/100 | 56/100 | 52%/76% | Y | What is going on here? Why so slow? | |
2 | 91/100 | 70/100 | 73/95 | Y | ||
3 | 73/100 | 71/100 | 68/95 | N | Sites 2 and 3 with just bare WordPress installs perform terribly. |
Is it the Twenty Eleven Theme?
Is the reason why the three new demo sites are so slow is because of the default WordPress Twenty Eleven Theme?
I changed demo site 1 to the same theme I use on the main site:
Site Test on Home Page | Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug | Google Page Speed in Chrome | GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow) | wp-minify Activated? | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 62/100 | 56/100 | 51%/74% | Y | The theme didn't make any difference. |
Step – Speed Tests With WP-Minify activated:
Site Test on Home Page | Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug | Google Page Speed in Chrome | GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow) | wp-minify Activated? | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
0 | N | ||||
1 | N | ||||
2 | N | ||||
3 | N |
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