Within the first week using WordPress I had over two dozen plugins and also noticed that the site took several seconds to load a page.

I downloaded FireBug for Firefox and installed YSlow but was still getting low scores. (C/D grades and 65-72 in terms of scoring). I then realized that YSlow scores based on connections, javasacript, CSS, etc. At this point I realized that caching would be a possible answer.

I tried out various caching plugins – WP-Cache, WP SuperCache and W3 Total Cache. In the end I choose Hyper Cache, simple and easy to use. It took my scores into the 90s and really speed up my site a good bit.

But, WP Tuner was still showing slow load times on my sidebar and footer. Sometimes my page loads took 3 seconds with my sidebar taking two-thirds of the time. I analyzed things and by stopping all plugins then starting thrum up one at a time, I found two big time eaters. (no names, but it was a Twitter plugin and a share link button) … Sidebar load time went from 800ms to under 40ms!

Performing this exercise over a few hours was great to understand the need for performance tuning on WordPress even with no posts. Now some pages load in under 1 second and most well under 1.5 seconds, which is great.