5 Great WordPress plugins to boost your performance

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wordpress-boostToo many plugins means a slow WordPress site. But we need plugins to make a quality site, right? Now what to do? Well…. the following five plugins will help you to solve this problem once and for all… shall we?

Before going into these plugins, note that some plugins should be installed with care! Please read the notes  written in red, its very very important!

DB Cache Reloaded

This plugin caches every database query with given lifetime. It is much faster than other html caching plugins and uses less disk space for caching.

I think you’ve heard of WP-Cache or WP Super Cache, they are both top plugins for WordPress, which make your site faster and responsive. Forget about them – with DB Cache Reloaded your site will work much faster and will use less disk space for cached files. Your visitors will always get actual information in sidebars and server CPU loads will be as low as possible.

This plugin is a fork of a DB Cache plugin. Because his author did not updated its plugin to WordPress 2.8, I finally (after almost three months since release of WP 2.8) took his plugin and updated it so now it works with newest WordPress version. Additionally I fixed few bugs, cleaned up the code and make it more secure.

This plugin was tested with WordPress 2.8. It may work with earlier versions too – I have not tested. If you perform such tests, let me know of the results.

WP-DBManager
Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

All the information (general, changelog, installation, upgrade, usage) you need about this plugin can be found here: WP-DBManager Readme. It is the exact same readme.html is included in the zip package.

WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users, but because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment those requests are handled by PHP. Static files are served to:

1. Users who are not logged in.

2. Users who have not left a comment on your blog.

3. Or users who have not viewed a password protected post.

99% of your visitors will be served static html files. Those users who don’t see the static files will still benefit because they will see regular WP-Cache cached files and your server won’t be as busy as before. This plugin will help your server cope with a front page appearance on digg.com or other social networking site.

If for some reason “supercaching” doesn’t work on your server then don’t worry. Caching will still be performed, but every request will require loading the PHP engine. In normal circumstances this isn’t bad at all. Visitors to your site will notice no slowdown or difference. Supercache really comes into it’s own if your server is underpowered, or you’re experiencing heavy traffic. Super Cached html files will be served more quickly than PHP generated cached files but in every day use, the difference isn’t noticeable.

Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache is a new cache system for WordPress, specifically written for people which have their blogs on low resources hosting provider (cpu and mysql). It works even with hosting based on Microsoft IIS (just tuning the configuration). It has three invalidation method: all the cache, single post based and nothing but with control on home and archive pages invalidation.

Some features:

  • compatible with the plugin wp-pda which enables a blog to be accessible from mobile devices
  • manages (both) plain and gzip compressed pages
  • autoclean system to reduce the disk usage
  • 404 caching
  • redirects caching
  • easy to configure
  • Global Translator compatibility
  • Last Modified http header compatibility with 304 responses
  • compressed storage to reduce the disk space usage
  • agents, urls and cookies based rejection configurable
  • easy to integrated with other plugins
Web Optimizer

This application is aimed to automate all clientside improvements for website that should significantly increase load speed of its pages. Main Features:

Simple 1-click installation

  • overall website acceleration in 1 minute;
  • express install requires no advanced knowledge;
  • default options guarantee optimal performance;
  • monitor for traffic / visitor’s time savings;
  • average speed up is 300-500% (up to 1000% or 98 by YSlow).

And many more…

Note : Use this plugin with care! If the plugin mess up your system do the following :

  • In the Web-Optimizer settings page deselect all the settings and save.
  • Then go to the plugins page and de-activate the plugin.
  • Finally delete the plugin

If you combine the power of these plugins (note : do not use more than one cache plugin) you can make your site super fast! Very useful for people who have very slow servers. That doesn’t mean that others don’t won’t these plugins, note that customers with slow connections will get frustrated of your slow loading site. So use them and save both your server and the customer!


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Author: Pubudu Kodikara (280 Articles)

Pubudu Kodikara is a writer at Tech Hamlet (www.techhamlet.com), a state of the art tech blog which is powered by the Earth Organization, which have a main target of educating people about the latest technology. They post latest tech news, tips on how to resolve problems, tricks and hacks to improve what you do, tutorials to learn new things and many more.

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