[theme-reviewers] Question about ob_start and ob_get_clean (Vicky Arulsingam)

[Otto]

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:44 AM, Darren Slatten <darrenslatten at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool, thanks for the tip.
>
> In other words, your argument (again) boils down to "reject GREAT, because
> we've already got GOOD ENOUGH."
>
> You're not solving the problem, you're minimizing it.

Your solutions don't even solve the problem, as I see it, they only
create new ones. Output buffering? I mean, come on. Do you really
think it's better to delay sending content to the page so you can run
a bunch of string manipulation code to modify it, as opposed to simply
creating the content you want correctly in the first place?

Look, running a website, and especially optimizing one, involves more
than just changing the source code of the page. If you're going to
serve things up to the public, there's more to it than *just*
WordPress. Being a webmaster is a full time job for some people. There
is arcane knowledge that you have to learn. And sometimes, that
knowledge lies outside your sphere.

If you don't know to set caching headers properly, then you should
learn it instead of trying to do optimization in other places that
won't even help you nearly as much.

This is kinda like all those CSS-compression things I continually see
people trying to do. If you haven't even gotten the browsers looking
at your website to cache the data properly, then compressing your CSS
doesn't make a lick of difference if they're still downloading it
every single time. You're optimizing the wrong things. Focus on the
basics first. You only have to resort to the silly ideas like CSS
compression once you've exhausted the traditional, and
tried-tested-true, options.

-Otto