Caching Plugins – WordPress Plugins from A to Z Episode 36
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John’s Rant:
Before we get into that though here is this weeks rant on:
My goal here is to hit on some subject each week that has been irritating me, it may or may not be related to WordPress but will always be related to the Internet.
This week it is on: is on the plugin Fancy Gallery, this is an excellent plugin to make changes to how your pictures appear using the standard WordPress galleries. What it does is makes all single images and any galleries inserted with WordPress native image manager pop-up in a very nice light-box.
The bitch I have here is how they implement the request for a donation, now I am all for donating and I even do from time to time but when they make themselves so annoying that it interferes with the way my admin runs then it make me not want to donate at all and just continue using the program.
This is exactly what Fancy gallery has done. What they do is place a new box in the top right of your desktop and it will not go away you cannot close it you cannot move it and it knocks down what every you had there. I really like this plugin and what it can do but now it might be a while before I donate simply due to the annoying way they force me to. Now if they want to switch it over to a paid plugin and then ask for payment in that manner I can understand but this underhanded tactic just sucks.
So what do you do to correct the issue it is simple enough, in the wp-plugin-fancy-gallery.php file go all the way to the bottom look for this line //Require_Once DirName(__FILE__).'/contribution.php'; and comment it out or delete save the file and the box goes away now I don’t have any reminders at all.
Introducing our new rating System for plugins we review. Thanks to the comment from Julie we are starting a new rating system for plugins we review. This one hopefully will be unique to us, since everybody does stars, spoon, what every I though we would do something a bit different. Since I am partial to Dragons ours will be a Rating of 5 Dragons being the best and going down not to zero dragons but 5 Knights as the worst. so it is a 10 point scale going from low 1 Knight to high 5 dragons. Nice and confusing I am sure but it will be fun.
Shout Outs: Yea we have some.
Wow am I feeling popular this week with a few shoutouts to go out thanks folks.
from Jim from http://www.delimeimaging.com I will just summarize it out, he recently started listening and started with the back episodes, said he likes them up until Laura joined the show, feels she could do with some improvements to make her better, thinks that the content and density has gone down a bit.. I will add this as a comment to the show notes for all to read. Like I have said send us the good, the bad and the ugly and we will post it and talk about it. Like it is said rarely do folks improve with good feedback all the time it’s the criticisms that allow us to grow and change and improve..
One more time for Kurt thanks for your support.
And another one from Paul Gill @ http://paulfgill.comYea we have a convert….
Just wanted to drop a note that I have enjoyed listening to and using your podcast as a resource for the last month. I just recently converted my website over from a drupal based website to a wordpess selfhosted website. Your podcasts were invaluable to me.
One more from Adam on episode 34 random plugins–A few of these I haven’t seen before, Members and WordPress Popup look really interesting.
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List of Plugins:
W3 Total Cache — On beataction.ca
What they say:
W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
What we say:
Setup is a bit of work and hopefully your server allows the automatic creation of .htaccess rules otherwise it will become necessary to manually do it if you want to take advantage of several features. This plugin will also allow you to connect to a CDN network. Setup pretty easy to accomplish just a few min since most default setting will work for most users not much to change. Well after 3 days the site was still overloading the server so not impressed with he way it was working. Disabled it to see what would happen Site started running a bit better.
Rating: 1 knight
WP Super Cache: on canadianwebdirectory.com
What they say:
This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.
What we say:
Setup is pretty easy enable it then go to the advanced tab and select what you would like aside from the default, reset it then let it run. This plugin also will allow you to connect to a CDN. You can also preload your site by having a set number of pages preset as cache files.
This one also still showing the site as overloading so not sure it’s doing its job either.
Rating: 3 knights
Quick Cache — on citylifeinfo.com
What they say:
If you care about the speed of your site, Quick Cache is one of those plugins that you absolutely MUST have installed. Quick Cache takes a real-time snapshot (building a cache ) of every Page, Post, Category, Link, etc. These snapshots are then stored ( cached ) intuitively, so they can be referenced later, in order to save all of that processing time that has been dragging your site down and costing you money.
What we say:
Setup is pretty easy simply install activate and turn on default setting all good to go.. After 3 days still showing in the overloads so not doing its job
so far 3 of 10
Rating: 3 knights
Hyper Cache – Beataction.ca
What they say:
Hyper Cache is a new cache system for WordPress, specifically written for people which have their blogs on low resources hosting provider (cpu and mysql). It works even with hosting based on Microsoft IIS (just tuning the configuration). It has three invalidation method: all the cache, single post based and nothing but with control on home and archive pages
What we say:
Installation a pretty easy process for the most part it may be necessary to add some code to your wp-config file it will let you know though. It creates a new menu item in the settings menu “Hyper Cache” setting are pretty simple for the most part nothing needs to be changed.
This one seems to be working well Installed it on the site that I had installed W3Total Cache and it has not reappeared n the overload list in over a day
Rating: 3 Dragons
FlexiCache – on cowval.ca
What they Say:
FlexiCache is a fast, full-featured and flexible caching system which will improve the performance and availability of any WordPress site.
It is highly configurable to allow unlimited caching rules – expiring different pages at different times, not caching some pages at all, caching multiple versions of the same page depending on browser, language, and so on.
What We Say:
Creates a new menu item in the settings menu. Does a couple checks to tell you what type of caching you can use and offers control of many options for setup. It has a standalone option see their documentation to understand but here is the gist of it. The plugin adds some code to your htaccess file and runs not as a plugin but separate supposedly speeding up page load times.
This one was still showing in the lading issues with a new twist, one of the files from the plugin showed as sucking up CPU time guess this one is not working well.
Rating: 2 knights
Some Terms here for Caching plugins:
Minify – this will reduce the file size of all your script files helping them to load faster.
CDN – Content Delivery Network, by placing you graphics in these regional cloud servers they can speed up the load times of your site.
In closing here is what is coming in future podcasts:
Membership Plugins
Video Plugins
How to Contact Us:
Laura how can you be contacted:
on my website @ http://www.lauramathes.com/ or you can follow me on Twitter @Tefnuit
or even like me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/LauraMathescom
John can be contacted at:
on my website @ http://www.johnoverall.com/ or you can follow me on Twitter @Ahkonsu or even like me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/JohnOverallcom
Some of the music provided tonight from Mevio's Music Alley. Check it out at ‘music.mevio.com http://music.mevio.com
Jims thoughts on our podcast..
http://www.delimeimaging.com
Hi John,
I recently began listening to your a-z podcast, starting at the early episodes. I am a podcast junkie, having listed to hundresd (sic) of different episodes of dozens of different podcasts on SEO, SEM, Internet Marketing, passive income, WordPress, etc.
I usually just stop listening to a podcast when I find it not to be to my liking. This is the first time I have ever contacted the creator to comment.
I really liked yours until you included Laura. In my opinion, she is a negative for your listeners. Things like hearing soda cans opening in the background, rubbing the mike while you are talking, volume way too high, adding no value to any discussion, long pauses in her response, no valuable opinions,…. I could go on.
You alone was great. Interesting information, good humor, good presentation. But she is not up to your standard. The content density and enjoyability (sic) has really been reduced.
I thought you should know what one of your listeners thought.
Jim
Love the rating system! Creative and clearly understood, even by a middle-aged non-gamer.
Thanks glad it works.
John