Comments on: Code efficiency and Javascript in WordPress

By: Donace | TheNexus

Donace | TheNexus — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:42:20 +0000

I got like 30 though of those only 3 are ‘functionality’ based and not SEO/Speed/Security Based.

Think i’ll have to hire you and Jeff sometime to make me a killer theme and optimize it!

By: Gry dla Dzieci

Gry dla Dzieci — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:43:18 +0000

Code efficiency is especialy important when doing anything in JS. If it’s done the wrong way it can slow the wole browser down to the point that the visitors will never come back.

By: John @ Professional Web Design

John @ Professional Web Design — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:15:21 +0000

Great thread. Different ideas just keep on coming. Thanks for being so informative on your posts!

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http://www.jsws.com.au/web-design

By: stratosg

stratosg — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:58:05 +0000

@Funny Stuff: Well it all depends on the functionality you want your blog to have. More complex things need more plugins. Plus, things like Sociable icons on the bottom, for a non techie one, need a plugin too… So, 25 is not recommended but definitely reachable….

By: Funny Stuff

Funny Stuff — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:53:40 +0000

I use about 15 different plugins, but I’m thinking about getting rid of a couple I don’t really use anymore, but never got around to removing them. I don’t know how you manage to use 25 plugins Kim, what kind of plugins are you using?

By: stratosg

stratosg — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:16:55 +0000

@Richard: I think this is the best bet. Convincing coders to write efficiently. If i might add convince web masters to choose wisely

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:38:48 +0000

Thanks statos for your comment. I guess one of the best options is to try to entice developers to adsopt good code practices. Ideally we would see wordpress have some standards QA to qualify plugins as approved or not. That’s a whole other subjecyt, I know.
@ PC you may want to see http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/footer-javascript/ which loads javascripts in the footer. Won’t work if the script uses document.write to insert part of the page’s content though.

By: stratosg

stratosg — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:38:14 +0000

@Sire: I am really glad it has been resolved now. I hope you get some ideas here to implement in order to get some more functionality Thanks for dropping by!

By: Sire

Sire — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:23:01 +0000

Hi Stratos. Nice little discussion you are having here. As you know I was having some problems with some of my other blogs using too much CPU, and that has all been fixed, mainly by deleting a whole lot of plugins. The blogs load so much faster now but I do miss some of the plugins.

I’ve incorporated some of your ideas to speed my other blogs up, like the sociable links, and will come back regularly to see what else I can learn

By: stratosg

stratosg — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:47:44 +0000

@Richard: First of all thanks a lot for taking the time and effort to comment on this one (it must have taken ages to write in this tiny panel). Now to the point.

1. I will have to agree with you on that one. But, the essence of what i said in the post is that if you get to have that much overhead then probably you must think of reducing your plugins. And now that i’m thinking about it you can also search for alternatives on the plugins that cause the problem.

2. That is not totally true. Chrome for instance spawns a whole new process just to download and run scripts. On the other hand i will agree again. Too many requests = slow response times. Still, think about reducing your plugins

3. WordPress get’s it’s power from the hundreds of the devoted fans and coders out there (and in here ). Having a fan code a plugin can give you power but there is a trade off. He is not that good so the product might not be as optimized as possible. That can cause problems on slowing the rendering time. But, in my opinion, that’s fair enough to have some extra needed functionality added. Some rubbish on the options table is nothing compared to the rubbish post revisions saved on the posts page.

4. All these problems rely on the expertise and code efficiency of the coder (that’s why i titled the post like this). If you enqueue the script with the right version WordPress will load it only once. But, if you go on and import your own one, or even worse (yes i’ve seen that) dump it within your code with a simple script tag then mayhem will erupt. But still, that is for the developer to decide and not the end user.

In my oppinion, wp_enqueue_script is fair enough. I don’t think there is a need to add more control since this would add a bigger burden on a platform that has to do too much already. I am sorry to sound so negative but this is how i see things as a developer right now….. Again thanks for commenting and leaving feedback for a valuable conversation

@PC: The loading of the components relies solely on the browser it’s self. The only way i can see us doing it is by creating a new small JS that will run on loading completion and then start loading the other JS with Ajax. Still, i don’t see that as a solution…. Thanks for dropping by!