This is just a heads up that when WordPress 2.7 is released, I will be reformatting my WordPress installation to get rid of the fluff that may be stored in the database and start off from scratch. I’ll once again audit my use of plugins and only install the ones that I think are necessary. Also, if you haven’t noticed already, I’ve changed the design of the blog a little bit because for starters, adding one more step to the post publishing process in the form of filling out custom fields is a drag. Secondly, I think the reformat as well as the simplified theme will finally help this site load quickly than it has before. Not sure what is causing the slow page loads but I am determined to figure it out.
I’ll also be modifying the theme to take advantage of threaded/paginated comments. I’m pretty stoked about 2.7 as I think many WordPress users out their will be blown away by it.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
Hi Jeff,
I’m not sure if you are looking for a critique, but since you are having problems, here are a few pointers to speeding your site up a bit.
You have too much crap in your HTML, both links to external files which you probably don’t need and an excess bunch of code which I doubt is actually doing anything useful. In particular, you have a lot of Javascript in there. I’m not convinced you need most of it, I assume it is stuff inserted by plugins either because they aren’t written well or which you aren’t using any more.
The script I particularly noticed, is that you have two scripts for trigger hovers in IE6, but I’m not even sure you are using them. And you shouldn’t have the script displayed on your pages anyway as you are just forcing everyone to download it which is pointless if only IE6 and lower requires it. So you are best off putting it into a seperate file enclosed in IE conditional comments. If you want help with doing that, head over to my CSS generator http://pixopoint.com/suckerfish_css/ which has instructions on how to do it. If you need help, post a message in my forum. I answer questions about this on a daily basis so am more than happy to help.
You also have the ‘tabber’ JS file in there, but it is not used on all of your pages. Perhaps only serve that to pages which require it. This same advice applies to all of those scripts actually. If they aren’t needed on a particular page, then don’t serve it to the users as it will just increase your load times.
I have no idea what most of the other scripts do, but if you do need them, then if possible try moving them to external files. This will decrease load times for repeat visitors since they will only need to download them once, not every time they load the page which they have to at the moment.
You also have about 12 style sheets! You only need one. By using more than one you are forcing more HTTP requests which slow your site down. Two or three is okay if that helps you organise things better, but 12 is getting excessive and you will probably notice a decrease in load times from that.
I think a basic blog style theme would suit this place quite nice. I always think of magazine style themes as being for news type sites, or sites which users are only likely to want to read some of the content (not all of it).
Don’t forget to warn people that they do NOT have to do a reformat for WordPress 2.7. This is just something that fulfills your personal needs to run a clean site and ensure it is working at its very best.
Don’t start a scare. :D
Having influence to induce panic would be seen as good in the blogosphere. How you use your power is really up to you then I think…
Looking forward to the redesign (When is 2.7 due?).
He would never do that! :) 2.7 does clear stuff out of the database during upgrade if it’s not needed anymore. I do a test first before starting from the start.
Why the need to reformat?
More, it would be great to explain in details the steps you took towards it, wrt the database