Slides from the talk given at WordCamp Chicago 2012. These slides have since been updated. Please review - http://www.slideshare.net/mccreaja/21-ways-to-make-wordpress-fast

1. 21 Ways to Make WordPress Fast

2. Who am I?
Jason McCreary
http://jason.pureconcepts.net
jason@pureconcepts.net
@gonedark
• Web and iOS Application Developer
• Louisville, KY
• Web Developer since 1999
• PHP since version 3
• Active StackOverflow member
• Push WordPress as Development Platform
• Founder of LouPUG

3. “I hate slow sites. I hate them. I hate slow
sites even more than I like fast sites. And
there’s a difference…”

4. Yes, WordPress is slow.

5. But you can make WordPress fast!

6. But first, weight…

7. #1 Valid Code

9. #2 Permalink Settings

11. #3 Use Less Plugins

12. #4 Reading Settings

14. #5 Move CSS to the top,
JavaScript to the bottom

15. #6 Use CSS Image Sprites

16. .nav-logo-large #nav-logo {
background-image: url(https://cdn.amazon.com/images/BeaconSprite-US-01.png);
background-position: -119px -9px;
height: 35px;
width: 111px;
}

17. #7 Compression

18. AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE
text/html
text/plain
text/xml
text/css
text/javascript
application/javascript
application/x-javascript

19. #8 Minification

20. #9 Content Delivery Networks

21. #10 Multiple/Static Domains

23. #11 Sharing Widgets

24. #12 Comments and Gravatar

26. #13 Resource Caching

27. Header unset ETag
FileETag None
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 6 months"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 6 months"

29. #14 WordPress Caching

30. #15 PHP Caching

31. #16 Database Caching

32. #17 Database Optimizations

33. #18 Extra Data

35. #19 Redirects

36. #20 Apache Optimizations

37. RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

38. FallbackResource /index.php

39. #21 Hosting

40. Tools and Resources
• Firebug with YSlow!
• siege and ab
• www.wpspeedometer.com
• Yahoo! Performance Rules
• Google PageSpeed
• High Performance Web Sites / Even
Faster Web Sites

41. “Sometimes you have to work with what you have.”

42. Ask Questions!