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:

[ezt_table] Site[attr style=”width:20px”],Plugins Installed[attr style=”width:75px”],Plugins Activated[attr style=”width:75px”],Site Content[attr style=”width: 250px; text-align:left;”],Theme[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 0,67,29,”88 posts, 7 pages~~’normal’ site~~parent site of the three demos”[attr style=”text-align:left;”],Custom[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 1,49,9,”4 pages, 3 posts, nothing in them. Basic titles for Privacy, Contact, etc.”[attr style=”text-align:left;”],”Twenty Eleven (WP default)”[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 2,49,0,”1 post, 1 page.~~Hello World! and Sample Page”[attr style=”text-align:left;”],Twenty Eleven (WP default)[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 3,0,0,”1 post, 1 page.~~Hello World! and Sample Page”[attr style=”text-align:left;”],Twenty Eleven (WP default)[attr style=”text-align:left;”], [/ezt_table]

Step 1 – Speed Tests without WP-Minify activated:

[ezt_table] Site[attr style=”width:35px”],Firebug Page Speed[attr style=”width:60px”],Chrome Page Speed[attr style=”width:60px”],GTMetrix[attr style=”width:70px”],WP-Minify?[attr style=”width:30px”],Comments[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 0,”74/100″,”67/100″,”72%/72%”,Off,”This is very slow. But activating wp-minify should help.”[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 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?”[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 2,”74/100″,”74/100″,”71/95″,Off,”49 Installed plugins.”[attr style=”text-align:left;”], 3,”74/100″,”74/100″,”73/95″,Off,”0 Installed plugins. Nearly identical results with Site 2.”[attr style=”text-align:left;”], [/ezt_table]

Step 2 – Speed Tests With WP-Minify activated:

[ezt_table] Site Test on Home Page[attr style=”width:35px; vertical-align:bottom; “],Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug[attr style=”width:60px; vertical-align:bottom; “],Google Page Speed in Chrome[attr style=”width:60px; vertical-align:bottom; “],GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow)[attr style=”width:70px; vertical-align:bottom; “],wp-minify Activated?[attr style=”width:30px; vertical-align:bottom; “],Comments[attr style=”vertical-align:bottom; “], 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.” [/ezt_table]

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: [ezt_table] Site Test on Home Page[attr style=”width:35px”],Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug[attr style=”width:60px”],Google Page Speed in Chrome[attr style=”width:60px”],GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow)[attr style=”width:70px”],wp-minify Activated?[attr style=”width:30px”],Comments 1,”62/100″,”56/100″,”51%/74%”,Y,”The theme didn’t make any difference.” [/ezt_table]

Step – Speed Tests With WP-Minify activated:

[ezt_table] Site Test on Home Page[attr style=”width:35px”],Google Page Speed in Firefox Firebug[attr style=”width:60px”],Google Page Speed in Chrome[attr style=”width:60px”],GTMetrix (Page Speed / YSlow)[attr style=”width:70px”],wp-minify Activated?[attr style=”width:30px”],Comments 0,” “,” “,” “,N 1,” “,” “,” “,N 2,” “,” “,” “,N 3,” “,” “,” “,N [/ezt_table]

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