If you are new on Dev4Press, Core theme is basically a child theme. Parent or main theme is called xScape Core. We are currently converting all our themes to new Core/Child theme versions. lightScape is next on the list, and is now available in this format. Old, standard theme version is no longer updated. Here is the info about Core conversion: http://www.dev4press.com/2011/tutorials/xscape-framework/xscape-core-themes/. It can happen that after update, some theme template layouts can’t be edited. In that case, you need to reset the layouts for the theme. This is very, very rare and I only have seen it once during tests, and it might not happen at all. If you notice any problems with templates for the theme, or bugs in display, please leave the comment here or in the forums.

xScape Theme Framework 1.8 will be released on Monday bringing massive optimization for the framework loading and few other changes. There will be no new features, just a cleanup and optimization to start with further development in 2012.

If you are new on Dev4Press, Core theme is basically a child theme. Parent or main theme is called xScape Core. We are currently converting all our themes to new Core/Child theme versions. lightScape is next on the list, and is now available in this format. Old, standard theme version is no longer updated. Here is the info about Core conversion: http://www.dev4press.com/2011/tutorials/xscape-framework/xscape-core-themes/. It can happen that after update, some theme template layouts can’t be edited. In that case, you need to reset the layouts for the theme. This is very, very rare and I only have seen it once during tests, and it might not happen at all. If you notice any problems with templates for the theme, or bugs in display, please leave the comment here or in the forums.

In the next week, 3 remaining themes will be converted to Core versions, and with that there will be no more updates for old themes, only core editions will be updated and all new themes will be only core editions. But, more importantly, xScape Theme Framework 1.8 will be released by the end of this month bringing massive optimization for the framework loading and few other changes. There will be no new features, just a cleanup and optimization to start with further development in 2012.

If you are new on Dev4Press, Core theme is basically a child theme. Parent or main theme is called xScape Core. We are currently converting all our themes to new Core/Child theme versions. lightScape is next on the list, and is now available in this format. Old, standard theme version is no longer updated.

Next two themes to get converted to Core will be eScape and photoScape during next week. Rest of the themes will follow soon after that. For themes that have Core version, all old standard themes versions will be removed in the next week or so. I advise that you upgrade to Core versions as soon as they are released. Here is the info about Core conversion: http://www.dev4press.com/2011/tutorials/xscape-framework/xscape-core-themes/.

What is xScape Core?

Main theme you need to be able to use Core theme is xScape Core. This theme has xScape Theme Framework, standard set of template files, shared CSS styling, some shared images and JavaScript. Also, xScape Core contains shared content files and loop elements used by them. Framework loader is first trying to load template files, template content files and loop elements from the Core/Child theme that is active, and if the file is not there, it will try to load it from the xScape Core theme. This means that you can have less files in the child themes.

What are Core Themes?

In simplest terms, Core theme is a child theme for xScape Core theme. Install xScape Core, than install Core theme you want, activate it, and that’s all. Pretty basic stuff. Theme Serenity, our first HTML5 theme is made to use basic templates and content elements from xScape Core, so it is very slim on files. More themes in the future will use same method.

What are the benefits of using Core Themes?

For starters, bandwidth saving for downloads and upgrades. Core themes are typically much smaller. Main xScape Core theme contains the framework, and is about 1MB in size, so the Core themes can be under 300KB. But, most important thing is that theme is separated from the framework, and the re-usability of files bundled with xScape Core, making easier to modify and work with actual theme. Because of all that, all our future themes will be Core only.

Using normal theme with xScape framework, how to switch to Core version?

First make sure that theme you are using has a Core version. If it does, there are two ways to go about it: uninstall theme you are using and want to replace with Core version, install xScape Core and than Core version of the theme, activate it and that’s all. Once you uninstall the theme, you can install both xScape Core than Core theme using Dev4Press Updater plugin.

But, what to do if you made changes to theme files? This is not that easy for plugin to handle, so you must make changes manually before proceeding. Copy all changes you made from your version of the normal theme into the Core version. If you have added all these files into Theme Upgrade lists, even when you switch to Core version, later updates will use the list and will save your changes. Just, the initial conversion to Core theme must be done manually.

If you need help with converting from normal to core themes, please use the forums to explain the problem and I will help you making the transition easier.

New theme Serenity is first one to use loading of shared templates, and updates to functions are changing the way templates are loaded, making easier to update them in the future. xScape Core has bunch of default templates that right now only Serenity uses, but it will be used later with more themes.

All themes are ready for update today. For all non-core themes this will be their last release. Process of converting them started, and all old themes will be available as core themes soon, starting with lightScape and eScape next week. New theme Serenity is coming out soon, and it will require xScape Core 1.7.7. All future themes will be core themes only.

Demo Website

Test all themes, and try them with a free test drive, for both front end and back-end before deciding what is right for you. Free registration is disabled, so you need to send the request for the test account using the contact form.

Demo Loader: http://xscape.info/load/
Demo Home: http://xscape.info/

To check the results from first part of the benchmark, go the this post. There you have test setup and results for memory usage, page generation speed and executed SQL queries.

Test 4: Generated Page Size and JavaScript

This test will show how the big pages are, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript and images send to the browser. There is a slight increase in the data send, but this not a big deal, considering the results from Test 5 you can see later. More JavaScript shows that interaction is better, and more elements are now using AJAX or animate for better user experience.

Generate Page Size: WP 3.0 makes slightly larger pages

Page JavaScript: WordPress 3.0 adds slightly more JS

This is not very important test, because standard Internet connections today are broadband everywhere, and that can handle a bit bigger pages. But, it’s a good idea to keep the track of everything and don’t allow to grow out of control.

Test 5: Client Side Execution

Well, new jQuery and better JavaScript code payed of and the WordPress 3.0 executes faster now. But, this is highly dependent on the browser and there are big differences in speed. My measurements are done with Firefox 3.6.3, and here is the chart:

Clientside Page Execution: WordPress 3.0 is faster

WP 2.9.2 is a bit faster on post edit panel, but in WP 3.0 there is much more going on there, more AJAX, so this is not a big surprise. In all other cases WP 3.0 is faster. But, if you want it fast that don’t use Firefox! And don’t use MS Internet Explorer. Opera 10.5/10.6 is 3-4 times faster than Firefox, and in Opera a page renders usually under 3 seconds. Google Chrome 4 is 2 times faster than Firefox, and Chrome 5/6 is 4 times faster. Safari 4/5 is 2 times faster than Firefox. Internet Explorer (even IE8) in some cases can take 20 seconds to render some pages in WordPress.

For administration of all my WP websites I use Opera, and I always get frustrated when I have to use Firefox because it slows me down, since I am so used to Opera and speed it provides. Browsers race in improved JS speed is a good thing, and with every new version Opera, Chrome and Safari keep getting faster. I don’t know what’s wrong with Mozilla, but Firefox right now is very slow compared to these 3 browsers, and I hope that Mozilla will make some important changes and get back in the speed game with Firefox 4 (for 3.7 is already too late, and it’s not faster than 3.6).

Conclusion

So, WordPress 3.0 is faster now and gives much better user experience, and more things are changed and improved to provide better administration features. AJAX is used much more, and there are more interactive elements all over. Despite some problems with memory usage and other things I talked about in previous part of this benchmark, there is no doubt that WordPress 3.0 is the best and most important release of this platform in last 2 years.

Most issues so far were caused by the lack of memory for PHP causing not only upgrade to fail, but some memory hungry pages also. Also, compatibility of many old plugins caused upgraded websites to break, pointing to a big problem with most plugins that are not in development anymore but still widely in use and preventing many websites owners to move to new and better WordPress.

Test setup

Tests are done using fresh installations of WP 2.9.2 and WP 3.0. Only one plugin was used, and that is GD Press Tools Pro 3.7 that is used to perform some of the measurements for the benchmark. At the end I did some testing using 10 plugins. My test server uses Apache 2.2.11, PHP 5.2.9 and mySQL 5.1.37. I have tested following (and most important) admin pages: Dashboard, Posts, Post Edit and Comments.

This first part will focus on WordPress administration because most of the issues are there, and this time PHP used memory, page loading and number of executed SQL queries.

Test 1: PHP Used Memory

WP 3.0 uses more memory than WP 2.9.2. On all pages WP 3.0 uses 2MB more, and on some it can use between 3-4 MB more than in WP 2.9.2. This difference is the same regardless the number of plugins active.

Used Memory: WP 3.0 uses 2MB more than WP 2.9.2

Activating 10 plugins, memory rises by 8MB. On this website that has 20 plugins active, WP uses 41MB on average. Most WordPress websites use 15 or more plugins, and that means that standard setups with 32MB for PHP are not enough to run WordPress. This is very important requirement for WordPress, and yet it’s not stated anywhere on official website, and most users will find out about this the hard way and unprepared. WordPress.org MUST state somewhere how much memory you will need under different setups, because right now WordPress 3.0 can’t be run at all on default PHP installation with minimal 16MB.

Another memory issue is upgrade from 2.9.2 to 3.0. If you have more than 11-13 plugins active and only 32MB and you are on host that prevents changing of PHP memory, automatic upgrade will surely fail. I tested 2 of my websites locally with memory limited to 32MB, upgrade failed in every case. Also, if you upgrade your website with all plugins disabled first, you need at least 30MB (!) for PHP for auto upgrade. So, realistic minimal PHP memory requirement for WordPress is 32MB. With many plugins active, you need at least 48MB or 64MB for PHP. And this all will make a lot of problems to all users on shared hosting.

Test 2: Number of SQL queries

This is very much improved in WordPress 3.0, and on average WP 3.0 executes less queries and that’s good because your mySQL server can run with more requests in the same time. Both number of queries and time needed for all of them is faster in WP 3.0.

SQL Queries: WP 3.0 is better than WP 2.9.2

This points to many optimizations behind the scenes, and new WordPress will have less impact to mySQL server performance than previous versions including WP 2.7, WP 2.8 and WP 2.9.

Test 3: Page Loading, server side

Some time is gained by lower mySQL execution time, but it’s lost on the PHP side, so overall loading time is a bit slower than before. Difference goes up to 10%, but in some cases loading time is the same. Number is average of 10 measurements.

Server side execution: WP 3.0 is a bit slower than WP 2.9.2

Conclusion

This is the first part of these tests. Second one is coming tomorrow, and the third will be in a couple of days. These tests show you measured facts about new WordPress, but you mus be aware of all the changes in new WordPress and everything added, because all that comes with the prices: performance. You can’t add tons of features and expect nothing to change. But, I think that big problem is that existing WordPress users were not prepared to that fact and many of them blame WordPress developers for the problems they had with upgrading to WP 3.0.

Over the last 2 years, WordPress needs more resources with every new version, but there is nothing about that on official WordPress website, and until you experience the problem first hand, you have no idea that WordPress needs more and more resources to run. And all that is just bad work from everyone working on WordPress.org that needed to prepare users for the new release and what they can expect. Same mistake with every release, and that’s not good.

But, before you go on, here is the reminder of previous posts:

• Test environment setup [ read more ]
• Results from administration tests [ read more ]
• Results from testing blog pages [ read more ]

Administration memory usage

Administration

First batch of tests will focus on WP administration pages. I used the same setup for these tests, and comparison between two versions of WP are on this first chart. As you can see, dashboard page now uses some 5MB less memory in both clean version and with all plugins active. Main reason for this is because feeds are now loading data through AJAX only if they are needed.

Pages are now prepared by PHP much faster, and this is noticeable on, more or less, all administration pages. Generated pages sizes are mostly the same size as with WP 2.8, with few exceptions where the generated page is much smaller, like with the dashboard, because feeds are now not a part of the page. Same speedup is visible on general settings page, and now time zone settings are loading very fast.

As you can see not all pages show memory decreasing, but that is to be expected, not all parts of WP 2.8 were problem, only some of the pages needed to be fixed. But as I said, many of the improvements are visible all over the administration. For the past few days I have been using 2.8.1 on my blogs, and I am very pleased with latest changes.

It’s important to mention, that this time I had no problems with auto upgrade as I had with updating from 2.7.1 to 2.8, so that’s also a big plus for 2.8.1

Blog Pages

The other part of the test is testing of actual blog pages. Again, many things depend on the theme you use and on the loading optimizations theme might (or not) use. As I said before, very few themes right now are improved in that direction. So, I decided for this WP 2.8 against WP 2.8.1 tests to focus on default theme and number of queries executed.

Number of queries on blog pages

As for the other tests like size of the page and used memory, there is almost no difference between two versions. But, as I said in first post on the subject, WP 2.8 is already excellent as the blog pages goes.

But in most cases, WP 2.8.1 needs less queries then WP 2.8. I am not sure exactly what is done to cause this improvement, and I really don’t care, as long as WP 2.8.1 is better. And less queries it takes, means that less resources will WP use, and server will be able to serve content to more visitors in the same time.

Last week I have published similar tests for WP 2.8 and my GD Star Rating plugin, and you can see in that post how much SQL queries will that plugin add to the blog. Tests are done to show the value of cache and prefetch methods I developed into the plugin to minimize the queries.

Conclusion

Now that we have WP 2.8.1 released, there is no more reasons for you to wait with upgrading your blog(s). WP 2.8.x uses more resources then previous versions, but that is, in my opinion, good trade off for much better interface, much easier to use panels for posts and comments, better dashboard, better user interaction and most important faster blog pages that your visitors see. If WP 2.8 was problematic in terms of using too much memory, WP 2.8.1 solved all that problems and even improved in some areas. Overall, this is the best release of WP yet, and a good sign that next versions will be, as expected, even better.

I hope that I will be able to complete (soon) testing of JavaScript performance and testing of some of the plugins to complete the series of benchmark posts trying to give you a better look at WP performance.

I made few changes to each of the WP installations so that the measuring rendering time is more accurate. Also, I changed few things in GD Press Tools also, and the Arthemia theme for the next part when the benchmark will be done for the actual blog. For some of the plugins I used older versions for WP 2.6.5, as recommended by the plugins authors. All results displayed on the charts are mean value from 5 measurements. I used Opera 9.64 browser for time and memory tests, and Firefox 3.0.11 with Firebug 1.3.3 for size of the output (personally I don’t like Firefox at all).

For test configuration and setup check the previous post: Benchmark Setup. On all 3 charts, first 3 columns for each page is for WordPress without plugins (only GD Press Tools is active), and the next 3 columns are for WordPress with all 15 plugins active, list of plugins in setup article.

Why benchmarking?

The reason I made these tests is because it’s obvious that no one in WordPress development team didn’t do anything like this. In fact they even claimed that WP 2.8 is much faster, and that’s simply not true at all. Take a look at this page, and notice that one of the highlights is speed of the admin pages. Speed can be gained using Turbo with Google Gears, and in that case browser needs less time to render the pages. But Opera, Safari, Chrome and Firefox are very fast already and will render very fast anything you throw on them. Browsers can’t speed up server response time. And Gears is not an option for Opera or Safari users (hopefully we will see better Gears browser support soon), not to mention problems I had with Gears in Firefox and that I don’t plan to start using it any time soon.

WP 2.6.5 is used only as a reference, in most cases you can’t really compare it with WP 2.7 or WP 2.8 because interface and some other things are rewritten, but it’s interesting to see how WP 2.6.5 compares to latest releases in terms of performance.

Page load times

First series of tests are to determine how much time PHP and server needs to generate a single page. Some of the things were problem to measure with WP 2.8, but I will get to that later. Even when the pages are partially loaded from cache this time is more or less the same. I noticed some 10-20% drop in WP 2.8 for reloading the same page, but that’s still too high.

WordPress load times

WP 2.8 is more than 2 times slower than previous two WordPress versions. On some pages difference is even bigger. I have measured 4 pages, 3 are WP native pages, last one is Settings panel from GD Press Tools, and it’s the fastest in the group because it doesn’t load a bunch of things most WP pages do.

But, there are some pages that need much more time. General settings page takes more than 10 or 15 seconds to load, because for some reason WP developers decided that the time zone list needs to be populated from WordPress website. This list could been included in the WordPress code. Right now it gets really frustrated to change any of these settings and need to wait all that time. That’s simple unacceptable.

Used memory

Things are pretty much the same with memory usage. As you can see 15 plugins add a lot to the memory used. WP 2.6.5 uses much less memory in both cases but that’s not a big surprise.

WordPress memory usage

WP 2.7 and WP 2.8 have totally rewritten interface and because of that it needs more memory. But the problem is with WP 2.8 that more or less should have the same memory usage as WP 2.7 because the changes were not that significant to cause this difference. Dashboard is the biggest problem and it uses some 25% more memory than WP 2.7. On some pages like the the general settings I mentioned earlier in some cases I noticed memory leaks and memory use increases to 45-55 MB. On one instance loading failed meaning that it exceeded preset 64MB. And again, that’s most likely caused by the timezone code.

WordPress output size

Page size

Finally this is something where WP 2.8 is actually better than WP 2.7. Again, WP 2.6.5 pages are smaller because of the different front end, but it’s interesting to see how much the interface ‘costs’.

WP 2.8 generates smaller pages compared to WP 2.7 mostly because of better optimization of JavaScript and CSS loading and joining several files into one. And in the same time that’s one of the reasons for slower loading and increased memory usage with WP 2.8.

Conclusion

There was a discussion on Weblogtoolscollection website about using 1 or 100 plugins, and it’s obvious that number of plugins active will increase used resources and time needed for page to be rendered. Another post that will investigate this much deeper. It will take some more time to prepare but it’s coming soon.

Based on all this is clear that in terms of speed and memory usage WP 2.6.5 administration is much better than the latest WP versions. On the other hand these are not actual pages that blog visitors see, and next post present results of blog benchmark under same condition, so I am not going to give some definitive judgement right now. I know a lot of people that still use WP 2.6.5 because they can’t increase memory every time WP is released. When WP 2.8.1 is released I will do a benchmark against current WP 2.8, to see if indeed developers managed to solve memory usage increase and lower speeds.

I use WP 2.8 on all my blogs right now, but I must say that I am not happy with performance of the administration compared to older versions. Interface IS much better, and to some point I understand and accept that the performance is a trade off for the interface and better work flow. But only to a point. I will be very disappointed to see WP 2.9 some 7-8 months down the road that instead of 40MB needs 50MB or more to work.

So, tell me what you think about data presented here, and about your own experiences with last 3 versions of WP, and especially with WP 2.8. And stay tuned for more benchmark results.