Performance optimization Intro
Measure before you fix: the first thirty minutes
Optimising by intuition usually improves something. The trouble is that it was rarely the bottleneck. Start by splitting the request into segments and getting numbers.
Technote
Profiling WordPress performance
Turning "it feels slow" into numbers — finding which queries and hooks spend the time, and stacking cache layers in the right order.
8 articles
Performance optimization Intro
Reading a query profile: slow versus duplicated
They sit side by side in the same panel but they are not the same problem. One needs the query rewritten; the other disappears with a cache. Telling…
Performance optimization Practical
The N+1 problem: get_post_meta in a loop, and priming
WP_Query primes caches for its own results only. A hand-built list of IDs gets none of that for free — and that difference decides your query count.
Performance optimization Practical
The object cache: what Redis actually removes
Repeated identical lookups disappear. One slow query does not. Miss that distinction and you will wire up Redis and then ask why nothing got faster.
Performance optimization Practical
Transients: caching hands you an invalidation problem
Storing takes three lines. Deciding when to delete is the hard part, and there are at least two events. Miss either one and the symptoms differ sharply.
Servers & infrastructure Practical
Page caching belongs on the server layer
The layer that stores finished HTML only pays off in front of PHP. Stack a plugin cache on top of a server cache and you now have two…
Performance optimization Advanced
Autoloaded options: finding what rides on every request
Options marked autoload are read and unserialised on every request. One large blob quietly taxes the entire site, and nothing on screen says so.
Performance optimization Advanced
A front-end budget you can actually hold
Pages do not get heavy in one go. They get heavy through small, individually reasonable additions. A ceiling you actually check is what stops the accumulation.