Static Feed Plugin

Improve the performance of your site by serving your feeds as static (XML) files.

WARNING

If you are not confident with creating/editing files or changing file permissions on your web server, this plugin may not be for you.

Advantages

• Reduces server processing load (reduces PHP and MySQL processing)
• Increases server response time (server promptly returns the feed, no need to wait for PHP or MySQL)
• Faster downloads (presuming you have compression configured on your web server)
• Improves uptime (static files can continue to be served even if PHP or MySQL are offline)

Supported Feeds

The Static Feed plugin can be used for any of the standard WordPress feeds as well as other feeds added by plugins such as Blubrry PowerPress.

Here’s a brief list:

• RSS2 (default) Feed (example.com/feed/)
• RSS 0.92 Feed (example.com/feed/rss/)
• RDF Feed (example.com/feed/rdf/)
• Atom Feed (example.com/feed/atom/)
• Podcast Feed (example.com/feed/podcast/)

Category, tag and comment feeds are currently not supported.

How does it work?

Anytime you modify a blog post, the Static Feed plugin stores the latest versions of your feeds as XML files on your web server. These locally saved XML files are then served directly by the web server, avoiding unnecessary PHP/MySQL processing.

Two Ways Static Feed can serve your feeds

1. As XML files (e.g. example.com/feed.xml)

   • format commonly used by Movable Type blogs

2. As permalinks (e.g. example.com/feed/)

   • format used by WordPress when using the Permalinks feature

Note about Permalink Feeds

To use this plugin with your existing Permalink feeds (example.com/feed/), your .htaccess file needs to be writable. If your .htaccess file is not writable, the Static Feed plugin will give you instructions how to manually update your .htaccess file. If you cannot modify your .htaccess file, then you’re not going to be able to use this plugin for Permalink feeds.

This plugin is not for everyone

If you are using a feed hosting service such as FeedBurner or if your feed includes content that is generated by other factors (such as a star rating plugin), then this plugin is not for you.

More Information

For the latest information please visit the website.

http://www.pluginspodcast.com/plugins/staticfeed/

Contributors

Angelo Mandato, host of the Plugins Podcast – Plugin author

Follow us on Twitter

@pluginspodcast

1. Copy the entire directory from the downloaded zip file into the /wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2. Activate the “Static Feed” plugin in the Plugin Management page.
3. Configure Static Feed by going to the Settings > Static Feed page.

If you plan on serving Permalink Feeds (example.com/feed/), create a folder called ‘staticfeed’ in your wp-content folder and make sure your web server can write files to the newly created wp-content/staticfeed folder.

1. 

   Static Feed settings page

Why Static Feeds?

It’s all about web server performance. It is much more efficient for a web server to serve a static XML file than to dynamically re-create the feed in PHP/MySQL upon each request. Since a blog feed doesn’t change as often as it is downloaded, it makes sense to serve this information as a static file.

What else do you recommend?

Combine this plugin with a web server configured with compression (mod_deflate in Apache) and a PHP Accelerator (such as APC), and you have yourself a real WordPress serving powerhouse!

Will this plugin work with other caching plugins?

It may work, but I wouldn’t guarantee it. If you’re using this plugin with another caching plugin without problems, let me know and I’ll start a list of Static Feed compatible Caching plugins.

Do I need this plugin if I am already using a caching plugin?

Most likely no since the caching plugin may be doing something similar.

Does Static Feed handle category, tag or comment feeds?

Not yet, sorry.

I previously switched from Movable Type to WordPress, can this plugin continue to maintain my original Movable Type feed?

Yes! This is what version 1.0 of this plugin was originally written for. Simply configure this plugin to write to the appropriate xml file on your server and you’re all set.

What is Web Server Compression?

Web server Compression is when the web server compresses the data before returning it to the client (web browser). Compression will shrink XML to more than half its normal size, resulting in less bandwidth and a faster downloading experience for the end user.

You can test your site and feeds for compression by using the What’s My IP HTTP Compression test.

Note: This plugin does not add HTTP Compression to your web server. HTTP Compression is a feature your web hosting providor or administrator would configure.

2.0

• Released on 02/18/2010
• First public release of the Static Feed plugin
• Adds support for serving static feeds through Permalinks via .htaccess ModRewrite rules

1.0

• First private release of the Static Feed plugin