It might not be the most interesting subject but it is something that effects all of our users - and that is performance and optimisation.

The next update - version 5.5.1 - will see us continuing the performance improvements we made in 5.5.0. We have analysed our database tables in some depth, tweaked some indexing here and there and hope we have made some general improvements overall. But the main focus this time around has been the Topic View - or the actual display of a topic's posts. Generally speaking - and to some degree depending upon which Simple:Press plugins you have active - the Topic View is the most costly page display in terms of queries and database activity. It has a lot of work to do! The good news is that with some new hooks and filters we have managed to cut the number of database queries by up to around 30% and we are continuing to analyse and trim as we find opportunities to do so.

It sounds like a lot - 30%. But as we have made clear before, the database queries are but one element of a page load and under normal circumstances and with a fully optimised database, queries are seldom the hold-up. But also as we have said before... every nanosecond helps!