Slow blog because Plugins Load even when not needed

  • Resolved Jonathon N

    (@imagiscapeca)


    17 years, 4 months ago

    Plugins such as Coolplayer, WP-Grins, WP-Polls and WP-Table load whether they are needed on the page or not.

    My site is slow, and I believe this is a prime reason.

    Why do they load when they aren’t needed?
    Can I edit them so they don’t?

    For example, see https://www.imagiscape.ca/blog/category/arts/poetryliterature and it’s source.

    I disabled Coolplayer (9.01) because of it’s slowness. Could I speed it up by copying the javascript file it fetches from its site and locating the file on my site?

    Anarchy Media Player, if I’m not mistaken, also loaded on every page whether there was media to load or not. I disabled it.

    CoComment also makes my blog slow.
    (I deactivated the Show CoComment plugin and widget, but I once upon a time added some code from a CoComment.com integration/installation instructions. I’ll use the grep command via PuTTY to search for the code, and remove it. From the blog directory: grep -r ‘cocomment’ * .)

    ClickTracking also slowed my site – but reasonably. I hope to reactivate it when I’ve got other issues resolved.

    AddThis sometimes slows things down, but it didn’t the last time I checked.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • For WP-Polls, it is impossible to know whether will there be any polls in the page at the time the page is starting to load and hence it can’t be done.

    You site is slow can be due to other reasons also.

    Thread Starter Jonathon N

    (@imagiscapeca)

    I expect my site’s slowness is not entirely due to plugins, but having used Firebug and YSlow extensively, it seems to me the plugins are the primary problem.

    WP-Grins‘ images are super-small but often take a long time to load.

    GamerZ, Why can’t WP-Polls etc load the javascript only if it is called for? Why can’t the script be loaded by the poll itself?

    I want a few polls on my site, but only on perhaps 1% of my page views. Even if it’s only 1/8 second for one of these plugins to load, if I have 10 plugins which insert script into the header, that’s 2.5 seconds – on every page view.

    Not all plugins inject script into the header. Since others don’t, why do these?

    I could slightly speed up load times if I add wp-cache, but then when I make changes, I can’t see the effects until the cache updates.

    Most plugin inject script into the header because they need CSS/JS file to be loaded. If they do not need CSS/JS, they do not need to inject anything at all to the wp_head();

    WP-Polls can’t know whether will there be a poll in any page because a page is executed from top to bottom. There are ways to overcome this, but it is to tedious.

    Your site slownesses can be due to your CPU specs, server specs, internet connection and some other factors. Facebook has like a dozened of CSS and JS files and it loads fast for me.

    Thread Starter Jonathon N

    (@imagiscapeca)

    I’m not clear why the javascript for WP-Polls must be loaded within the header. I have script attached to some of the widgets – it is not loaded in the header.

    If I have a poll on 3 out of 1000 pages, and yet the script loads for all 1000, that seems inefficient.

    (Most of my site’s speed issues are now resolved, as detailed elsewhere. I removed all plugins in one swoop via phpMyAdmin. I loaded them all back in and now everything’s okay.)

    By the way, thank you gamerz/Lester for your many great plugins.

    imagiscapeca: No problem, Normally the right way to load JS file is before the </head> tag. I will try to compress the JS file in the next release.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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