A Log of Coding Solutions
In WordPress, when a query does not need paging and you only want a limited amount of results, like the last 5 posts, set the ‘no_found_rows’ parameter to true. This prevents WordPress from doing additional work in counting the total matched rows, thus speeding up your query.
This is already built into get_posts, but not WP_Query.
Example:
$last_5_query = WP_Query( array( ‘no_found_rows’=> true, ‘posts_per_page’=>5 ) );
This is not so much of a review, but more of how I came to a decision on WPEngine.
At $29/ month for the Personal plan I would not have even looked at WPEngine a year ago. Why pay that much for hosting when you can find $5/month hosting around every corner? Updates? I can do that. Caching? Backups? check and check. What does WPEngine have to offer?
While in the proposal stage of acquiring a new client, this client got hacked. Luckily to fix the hack WordPress just need to be upgraded. But instead of redesigning the site, the top priority became finding a new host that offers better security. This client was on a reputable host, so $5/month hosting like HostGator or GoDaddy would not satisfy the client’s peace of mind.
My favorite WordPress focused company, WooThemes, had a recommended hosts page. Among the hosts were Pressable (previously known as ZippyKid ) and WPEngine. Pressable was the cheaper of the two offering SSL and CDN on their cheapest plan. As ZippyKid they also touted having great security as a selling point. However, as Pressable, they had no info whatsoever about their security. Not even their “malware scanning”! So wait, how can we justify to the client that Pressable is any better than their previous host? Crap! (I know no host is hack-proof, but we gotta have a reason for choosing a specific host).
Enter research into WPEngine. The first thing I did on their website was search for “security” in their blog. What surprised me was the amount of posts on their blog about security. Do a search on security on their site and you’ll see what I mean. Not only do they talk about recent security issues, but how the community is dealing with security issues and details on how their security system and processes are protecting their clients. That in itself gave me peace of mind that these guys prioritize security. The icing on the cake was reading “WordPress Hacked? We’ll fix it free!“.
I usually have buyers remorse especially when I could have gotten something cheaper and don’t really utilize all the features I have purchased. But last year, before I tried WPEngine, I had a client that didn’t have a website yet, needed SSL and was OK with spending some money on quality hosting. So I went with Pressable with this previous client (especially since the Personal plan at WPEngine doesn’t support SSL). I have since migrated this client to WPEngine. Below are some comparisons between Pressable and WPEngine (as of this posting).
Both Pressable and WPEngine are great, but dollar for dollar WPEngine seems much more worth it. If you have multiple clients, the Professional Plan makes it hands down worth it since you can install SSL and use a CDN for free. Each install breaks down to $10/month. You may be thinking you can do caching, and backups on your own, but what if something goes wrong with those plugins? How many times have you actually restored a backup from that plugin? How many times have you fixed a hack or prevented one? How much is a peaceful mind worth? WPEngine can handle all this for you.
Pre-pay for WP ENGINE HOSTING for 1 year and GET 2 MONTHS FREE!
As you know, I didn’t go to WPEngine because of the speed, but I was curious to see what differences it could make by simply moving a site over. I was pleasantly surprised to see the site loaded almost 40% faster. And believe me, it’s noticeable for this particular site.
To get a more accurate reading of the speed changes you should sign up for a free account at Pingdom and monitor your website for a week or so. Then sign up to WPEngine (60 day free trial) and again try it at pingdom. If you’re not happy with the results you can always back out of WPEngine.
After using WPEngine for about 6 months I am fully satisfied with the security on WPEngine for WordPress websites. WPEngine stays on top of plugin vulnerabilities and they scan your installation daily. here are some examples:
Also, WPEngine hosting is secure enough to be PCI compliant “as long as no payment card data is stored, hosted, or otherwise processed by WP Engine…”. See more at WPEngine and PCI Compliance
WPEngine now offers a tool to test the speed of your website.
Disclaimer: I have become a WPEngine affiliate because I do believe in their product. Links to WPEngine on this site are probably affiliate links.
WordPress has a filter called ‘template_include’ and it also has an action called ‘template_redirect’. The filter allows you to change what template file to use by returning a file path while the action is usually used to write whatever you need to and then exit.
According to this issue for bbPress template_redirect can cause incompatibility issues with other plugins using this hook. Also using this hook exits WordPress abruptly not allowing WordPress to run through it’s normal procedure (according to one blog). It is probably best to use ‘template_include’ unless you have a specific reason not to.
Woocommerce is the best ecommerce solution for wordpress, but it loads a hecka lot of javascript (countries) in each page load. There is a way to get rid of all these extra styles and scripts and just load it for your store. Follow the source below.
source: http://gregrickaby.com/remove-woocommerce-styles-and-scripts/
A great way to take more control of your wp-cron and also slightly speed up wordpress is to disable cron and scheduled a cron job on your server to run wp-cron.php. You just need a server that supports cron jobs.
In wp-config.php add:
define(‘DISABLE_WP_CRON’, true);
Be careful though, sometimes this has a negative effect on your website. For example if you have subscriptions from woocommerce, each user’s subscription is checked on every 12 hours. If you have a ton of users, each of these users has a cron job waiting to run throughout the hour. These jobs will slow down your server if you run wp-cron too far apart.
Setting up your cron command can look similar to:
*/30 * * * * wget http://example.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron > /dev/null 2>&1
source: http://bitswapping.com/2010/10/using-cron-to-trigger-wp-cron-php/
A couple things that may optimize your custom wordpress queries. First there is a parameter called ‘fields’ where you can specify that you only want the ID field back. Something like below:
$some_query = new WP_Query( array( ‘fields’ => ‘ids’ ) );
An even more significant optimization is by caching your data and using WordPress’ Transient API like so:
<?php
// Get any existing copy of our transient data
if ( false === ( $special_query_results = get_transient( ‘special_query_results’ ) ) ) {
// It wasn’t there, so regenerate the data and save the transient
$special_query_results = new WP_Query( ‘cat=5&order=random&tag=tech&post_meta_key=thumbnail’ );
set_transient( ‘special_query_results’, $special_query_results );
}
// Use the data like you would have normally…
?>
sources:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/speed-up-your-wordpress-by-caching-custom-queries-using-transients-api/
http://wordpress-hackers.1065353.n5.nabble.com/Using-WP-Query-to-get-posts-ids-td23952.html
http://codex.wordpress.org/Transients_API
keywords: wp_query only get ids, wp_query cache_results