4 ms·

There's plenty of caching plugins that make Wordpress run just fine at higher traffic. This site likely just doesn't have one installed.

Rjevski 8y ago
Would you buy a new car if it needed duct tape just so it can stay in one piece while driving on the highway? So why would you think it's acceptable for a CMS to require third-party "cache" plugins just to be able to handle traffic?
- exikyut 8y ago
  Computers and cars are both solutions to problems, but the complexity of computers is yet to be routinely contained without targeted effort. This is especially true of the Web. Wordpress is the single most installed CMS (and kitchen sink, at this point), it's a massive attack target, and it's installed by people who don't really know what they're doing. Between being a kitchen sink (and having to deal with the internal/external API/architectural [compatibility] baggage that comes with any long-lived implementation) and having to be the CMS equivalent of Windows/macOS, it's a... difficult ask for a WP installation with (say) 30 poorly-constructed addons to to run smoothly. Possible, yes, absolutely, but it'll need tuning. Caching is simply the simplest bandaid that can be tacked on. If the caching is tuned properly, it'll fix everything else. Yes, this will mean the underlying configuration/state will be the digital equivalent of a giant wound you just want to clean out and fix up, but, err... it works. :/
- rahimnathwani 8y ago
  The vast majority of WordPress-powered sites have no personalised content: the only authenticated users are 1-2 administrators, and 1+ people who add/edit content. For this use-case, it's hard to beat WordPress for features and ease-of-use, especially when you consider the ecosystem of plugins that can add commonly-needed functionality. Sure, you could roll-your-own, and then add some code to generate a sitemap.xml etc., but there's no need. Sure, it doesn't scale without adding caching, but it's trivial to add caching with either a plugin, or by putting varnish or similar in front on the same machine, or using a CDN. Sure, if you have dynamic or personalised content, you'll need to cache further down the stack (e.g. at the database level), and that's less efficient (because you're probably running multiple php files to generate a single HTTP response), but that's not the usual situation.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  That analogy really has no real relevance to the discussion as far as I can see. Caches help dynamic sites scale up to meet large amounts of traffic. If you don't want to use a WP plugin then use Varnish instead.

Rjevski 8y ago

Would you buy a new car if it needed duct tape just so it can stay in one piece while driving on the highway? So why would you think it's acceptable for a CMS to require third-party "cache" plugins just to be able to handle traffic?

exikyut 8y ago
Computers and cars are both solutions to problems, but the complexity of computers is yet to be routinely contained without targeted effort. This is especially true of the Web. Wordpress is the single most installed CMS (and kitchen sink, at this point), it's a massive attack target, and it's installed by people who don't really know what they're doing. Between being a kitchen sink (and having to deal with the internal/external API/architectural [compatibility] baggage that comes with any long-lived implementation) and having to be the CMS equivalent of Windows/macOS, it's a... difficult ask for a WP installation with (say) 30 poorly-constructed addons to to run smoothly. Possible, yes, absolutely, but it'll need tuning. Caching is simply the simplest bandaid that can be tacked on. If the caching is tuned properly, it'll fix everything else. Yes, this will mean the underlying configuration/state will be the digital equivalent of a giant wound you just want to clean out and fix up, but, err... it works. :/
rahimnathwani 8y ago
The vast majority of WordPress-powered sites have no personalised content: the only authenticated users are 1-2 administrators, and 1+ people who add/edit content. For this use-case, it's hard to beat WordPress for features and ease-of-use, especially when you consider the ecosystem of plugins that can add commonly-needed functionality. Sure, you could roll-your-own, and then add some code to generate a sitemap.xml etc., but there's no need. Sure, it doesn't scale without adding caching, but it's trivial to add caching with either a plugin, or by putting varnish or similar in front on the same machine, or using a CDN. Sure, if you have dynamic or personalised content, you'll need to cache further down the stack (e.g. at the database level), and that's less efficient (because you're probably running multiple php files to generate a single HTTP response), but that's not the usual situation.
SquareWheel 8y ago
That analogy really has no real relevance to the discussion as far as I can see. Caches help dynamic sites scale up to meet large amounts of traffic. If you don't want to use a WP plugin then use Varnish instead.