Users with new GD Press Tools versions reported some issues when GD Affiliate Center was active, and this was due to older gdr2 library and few buggy functions in that old version. This is now all OK, and latest library is included. Compatibility with new jQuery 1.7.1 that is part of WordPress 3.3 is fixed and latest jQueryUI included.

Demo Website:
http://www.gdaffiliatecenter.com/
About Plugin:
http://www.dev4press.com/gd-affiliate-center/

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/

Install Panel

Plugin now has Install New panel that will show products available for your API key and is not installed already. And you can install them with a single click. It can’t be easier, all done from WordPress panel.

Update panel works pretty much like as it did before, with some minor styling changes. Another option in the menu is added for checking for updates directly, anytime.

To see new plugin in action, you can check out the video bellow.

Examples bellow are for WordPress 2.9 or newer. This is re-revised version of last years tutorial, this time with added meta info links block. New method is used that doesn’t require for you to check if the filter is executed for your plugin only. New filters already include plugin name in the filter name.

Additional options

Each plugin row on the Plugins panel has several standard actions. You can add more actions like the link to the settings panel or anything else. You need to add filter function that will be used to add this action(s).

<?php
add_filter('plugin_action_links_$plugin_file', 'add_plugin_links');

function add_plugin_links($links) {
  $links[] = '<a href="index.php">Dashboard</a>';
  $links[] = '<a href="edit.php">Posts</a>';
  return $links;
}
?>

Lines 5 and 6 are adding new action to the plugin row. This example adds link to the dashboard and to post edit page, you can change it to whatever you need. Don’t forget to return $links because this is a filter not an action.

Very Important: On line 2 filter has $plugin_file. You need to replace this with the relative path/name of the main file of your plugin. For instance, my plugin GD Press Tools has a $plugin_name: gd-press-tools/gd-press-tools.php. It has folder name, slash, main plugin file name (with extension), and full filter name will be than: plugin_action_links_gd-press-tools/gd-press-tools.php. Same method will be used in the last expand examples.

Plugin Meta options

Description column in the plugins grid have also number of links. This can be expanded similar to additional options from previous block.

<?php
add_filter('plugin_row_meta', 'add_plugin_meta_links', 10, 2);

function add_plugin_meta_links($links, $file) {
  if ($file == "$plugin_name") {
    $links[] = '<a href="index.php">Dashboard</a>';
    $links[] = '<a href="edit.php">Posts</a>';
  }
  return $links;
}
?>

Lines 5 is there to ensure that you add settings only to your own plugin. Lines 6 and 7 are actually adding new action to the plugin row. This example adds same links as previous one, but, you can add whatever you want leading to your own plugin. In the case of this filter, you must check on your own if the filter is run for your plugin.You must $plugin_name on line 5 with the string as described in the first example above.

Additional plugin info

WordPress shows description from your plugin file. And when the new version is available for update, there is no detailed info about the the update. Adding that is not very hard.

<?php
add_action('after_plugin_row_$plugin_file', 'add_after_plugin_meta');

function add_after_plugin_meta($file) {
  $current = get_site_transient('update_plugins');
  if (!isset($current->response[$file])) return false;

  $url = "http://www.yoursite.com/info.txt";
  $update = wp_remote_fopen($url);
  echo '<tr><td colspan="3">'.$update.'</td></tr>';
}
?>

Function checks to see if you add row to your plugin as the previous function does. Lines 5 and 6 will check if there is an updated found for your plugin. If no update is found, additional row will not be added. You can remove this part, and added row will be always visible. My intention with this code is to display details about the plugin update, you can change it to anything else. You need to echo only TD part of the row, WordPress already echoes TR tag. Function will get contents of the file from $url variable and will echo that file in the row.

Example

Example above shows both functions used in GD Press Tools plugin. First row is a standard plugin info, and you can see Settings action added by first function. Second row is WordPress info that plugin upgrade is available. Third row is info displayed by second function that has retrieved this changes notice from my website.

This example uses same $plugin_name method that is described in the first example.

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.

New version fixes number of bugs, include several changes and also adds info on the dashboard within the Right Now widget. Updater works for all premium plugins and xScape themes. To download latest version go to your account panel, Updater page:

Dev4Press Updater Download: http://www.dev4press.com/user/updater/

Edit: 1.0.1 Released

Final release is expected next week, with few more things to implement, so please, test this latest version and report any problems if you find any. To download latest version go to your account panel, Updater page:

Dev4Press Updater Download: http://www.dev4press.com/user/updater/

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.