Custom Sidebars + Speed?

[KevinOH]

I'm in a niche that has various sub-niches under it. I'm thinking of implementing dynamic sidebars to better target the users with relevant offers and content.

But I'm worried about speed. From the looks of things, I may end up with about 20 custom sidebars for the different subniches. Would 20 sidebars dramatically reduce my site speed?

Thanks

 

[ToffeeLa]

Well, it depends very much what platform you are using and the ability to customise it (or not).

But, if all you are doing is something along the coding lines of "if category is green display green sidebar", I don't see why it should. All you are doing is calling a different include.

 

[DanSkippy]

But I'm worried about speed. From the looks of things, I may end up with about 20 custom sidebars for the different subniches. Would 20 sidebars dramatically reduce my site speed?

If the content from the widgets is dynamically generated every single time for each individual user it will definitely slow things down.

For now let’s assume you’re using WP. You can speed things up by caching the transients.
WP Transient api

 

[BCN]

Depends on the DB queries. If you run 20 sidebars with 20 wp queries, with a ton of filtering on the same page, it will slow it down a bit. But not too bad I think.

If it's just swapping a sidebar depending on category=x then show sidebar=y, it won't impact it at all.

 

[KevinOH]

Forgot to mention, I'm using WP.

The content on the custom sidebars will basically be email capture forms, links to articles on my site in that subniche, downloadable assets, and display ads.

From the answers you've given, I take that there is nothing to worry about, right?

 

[Ryuzaki]

You should already be using a caching plugin. If you're not, I highly suggest you do it. WP Super Cache is what I prefer. It's very easy to set up and you can even just press "enabled" and be fine for the most part.

That will solve the issue of slowness. It will do the database querying and PHP execution, then save all of that as an HTML file, and then serve that to the user. With caching, you'll have zero speed concerns based on what you've described.