If your WordPress site feels slow or the host is complaining about resource usage try these plugins:

WP-Cache 2

I recommend this as a first (and possibly only), easy to install step to significantly speed up your site

WP Super Cache

Unlike WP-Cache 2, WP Super Cache does not use any PHP processing and serves static pages with URL rewrite rules on web server level. In a traditional Apache setup this does not help with memory usage but due to not using PHP more pages can be served on the same hardware.

Differences between WP-Cache 2 and WP Super Cache:

Requirements:

• WP Super Cache requires that you have Permalinks ON
• WP-Cache 2 works with both Permalinks ON and OFF

Installation:

• WP Super Cache may require manual edits
• WP Cache 2 usually installs automatically without manual intervention

Speed Improvement:

• WP-Cache 2 makes your site very fast, and can handle a ton of pageviews
• WP Super Cache makes your site very fast, and can handle even more pageviews

The above mentioned plugins don't solve another issue of typical Web 2.0 sites, including WordPress Blogs, though: A theme might have a dozen extra CSS and JS files all by itself, and every plugin might add another 1-5 so you'll end up with 20, 30 or even more extra files that need to be loaded before your site is ready.

PHP Speedy

PHP Speedy consolidates those many files into ONE CSS file and ONE Javascript file. The speed improvement may be even more drastic than with the Caching plugins. Using both a caching plugin and this "extra file consolidation plugin" should make your site load almost instantly.

Hi,
New here, but I have a couple of questions, one related to WP Super Cache, and the other related to my background images. So I'll post that as a separate question.

Could the mod-rewrite rules to my .htaccess files have tampered with my table zebra formatting on my Conference and Festival pages?

http://www.worldsoftheindianocean.com

Thanks!
Robert

The "alt" class is not being added to every second row by jQuery although jQuery is there. Have you turned on A. Theme Options -> Tables -> Zebra stripe all tables?

Yes, the zebra striping is on in the options. Just to be clear, it seems I've lost all the table formatting, not just the striping.

You seem to be missing the jQuery file. http://www.worldsoftheindianocean.co...y-1.2.6.min.js is "404 not found".

Check if you've uploaded /wp-content/themes/atahualpa/js/jquery-1.2.6.min.js

You are remarkable and amazing and wonderful. Seriously.

I must have inadvertently deleted the whole js folder!

Please let me know if you get my donation. Naturally, your talents and support are worth so much. I'm going to make an additional donation as soon as it's up and running again.

wp-cache2 is not in the wp repository right? what are your thoughts about us installing a plugin that's not in the repository? it would seem that you are recommending us to do so. if such is the case, what are some other "rogue" plugins you'd recommend?

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cache/

There shouldn't be a problem to download from the original author's sites.

It may be dangerous to download from third party sites - sites that belong neither to wordpress nor to the author. Some (not all) of those put some malicious code or ads into themes.

WP-Super-Cache is working perfectly with Atahualpa! I run this on all WP sites

I wouldn't use wp supercache, but the fork wp supercache plus, it's much faster. Especially if you can install xcache or similar on your server (very seldom it is installed on shared hosting though) - there are some Russian hosters that offer servers really streamlined for performance, but on them you probably don't need any additional caching anymore anyhow.

However just one word of advice, don't ever use php-speedy. I got kicked out because of it from my hoster. It reduces pageload time a bit, but if you have many pages (so no simple blog but use Wordpress as CMS) and >30-40 comments a day (thus many users with cookies), the CPU-load will get really really big. When I posted benchmarks comparing my setup at php speedy website showing the cpu load, they got deleted without comments. Heard this happened to other people too. I even crashed my dedicated server (1GB, Celeron 3 GHz) several times due to CPU/Memory overload and PHP Speedy (with only about 5000 Pageviews a day, running WP-Supercache).