Optimizing your Wordpress account - 1

In 2 previous posts where I described problems with my Wordpress account, the preliminary solutions prescribed were:
- Keep your Wordpress account updated to the latest release
- Keep spam to a minimum, including emptying the Akismet spam folder on a regular basis

These are just temporary solutions, given that Wordpress is supposed to be not yet including optimization code in it and as a result, takes more CPU than required (see a description of Wordpress optimization deficiences on this page).

What are some of the other things you can do:
1. Review the list of plugins that are in use. A number of users download a number of plugins and keep them active. Each plugin is a performance hit of some sort, and you should review your plugins to see which of these plugins are really necessary vs. plugins that do not add much value and are a performance hit.
2. Use some sort of caching in order to prevent each page hit querying the database and slowing down the server. You can use WP-Cache (link) or you can use Word Super Cache (link)
3. Using graphics. If you have a number of graphics, those are additional graphics that need to be served to your users. As an example, refer this calculation from Wordpress Codex:

For example, let's say the front page of your blog calls upon 8 graphics to create the "look" of your blog's design. Add to this number the various WordPress template files it takes to build your page. You've got the header, sidebar, footer, and post content area at a minimum. That's four more "calls" to files on your site. For 100 visitors, those files get loaded 1200 times. For 1000 visitors, those files are accessed and loaded 12000 times. This increases your bandwidth and server activity.

4. Use spam filters such as Akismet to prevent comment spam
5. Try and get others to host your content. You have some great graphics or some analytics that need calculation which are done at run time. These also take server processing load, and is preferable to get content from elsewhere. For example, analyics information is also availabe at sites such as Google Analytics and all the calculation is done on those servers.