Stupid WordPress trick

June 26, 2006 | Posted by Sapphire

Recently, one of my WordPress powered sites got really sluggish in the admin panel. As I typed my entries, the response time of the cursor would get slower and slower, until it took several seconds for it to move from one place to another, or highlight a word on double-click. I noticed my browser’s status bar was acting like the page never fully-loaded.

This site is getting big, so I figured it was time for some database optimization. I did that. I also removed a couple of tables created by plugins I’m no longer using. I went back, expecting that to have done the trick.

No such luck. It was still looping instead of loading.

I noticed my host was having some slow load times in the morning – when they do backups, and I like to write posts. But when I tried posting later in the day, it was still wonky.

Then, finally I remembered: some webhosts like to stick extra returns at the ends of your php files every once in a while, just to see if you’re watching. Just kidding, I have no idea why that happens, but it does sometimes. And WordPress can react very, very badly to extra lines in its php files. So I went to the wp-admin/post.php file, and sure nuff there was an extra space at the end – several, in fact. I deleted them, and all’s been well since.