Optimize site to load consistently in under 3 secs (now @ 5 secs) WordPress

Clifford P comments:

You can also include some code like this, just for a quicky how to view queries and load time:
<?php // 2011-07-20 from http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/12/01/stupid-wordpress-tricks/#swt_31 and http://digwp.com/2009/08/show-off-your-wordpress-database-statistics/
if (current_user_can('level_10')) {
echo get_num_queries() . ' queries in ' . timer_stop(0,3) . ' seconds';
} ?>


And a plugin that spits out A LOT of data for debugging:
[[LINK href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-queries/"]]http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-queries/[[/LINK]]

Clifford P comments:

That code goes in the footer, not in functions.php.

Graham Kite comments:

One thing I forgot to add above. Moany images have a metadata file created with hold basic information about the file, creation date, settings etc. If you can find a program called jpgcleaner grab a copy and run all your images throuhg it before you upload, it should have a few kb off the load time. It doesn't sound like much but in your situation I would do everything I could to shave load time.

Graham Kite comments:

sorry for th typos, very quick message :)

Graham Kite comments:

WP Super Cache
W3 Total Cache
Hyper Cache
Here are three good caching plugins you mihgt like to try.

Graham Kite comments:

Lots of sites (especially if they use plug-ins) use common JavaScript libraries like MooTools and JQuery. These are JavaScript files that contain all the magical code that makes your site do all the Ajax type stuff like popping up light box windows, opening menu’s, sliding photos etc.

Unfortunately, these can add a fair bit of size to a page as the JavaScript file has to be downloaded before the page can load. Once it has done it the first time, it’s normally kept in your browser cache so you don’t notice it later. However, spiders and first time site visitors don’t have this luxury.

So here’s a little known trick. Rather than loading it from your site, load it from Google itself using their own public code libraries. The beauty of this is that if you load it from Google directly, it will be superfast for the Google spiders. Plus, if that visitor has been to another site that’s accessed the same file, the browser will pull it from the cache, rather than try to download it again, making it faster for the end user too.

Here’s how we do that for Prototype, JQuery and Scriptaculous.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
// You may specify partial version numbers, such as "1" or "1.3",
// with the same result. Doing so will automatically load the
// latest version matching that partial revision pattern
// (e.g. 1.3 would load 1.3.2 today and 1 would load 1.4.1).
google.load("jquery", "1.4.1");
google.load("prototype", "1.6.1.0");
google.load("scriptaculous", "1.8.3");
google.setOnLoadCallback(function() {
});
</script>

Graham Kite comments:

The other thing that is worth trying is consolidate all your and css from all of your pluings into your main stylesheet.
and also minify it, but if you do that keep a backup as it will be hard to edit later.

As Reland mentioned yslow is very good and also firebug for firefox is useful and you can add page speed to it, which might help you also.

Without knowing more about the plugins, settings etc, it would be difficult to add much more. Hope one of these suggestions work.

Graham Kite comments:

Can you post the setting you have in w3 cache please, doing some testing at present.