If you have a post with a lot of comments, surely it must be some speed gain from just showing, say ten at the time? To test this I installed the Paginated Comments plugin by James Maurer and created a test post with 12 comments. I configured the plugin to show only 10 comments (this is in fact the default setting), and started testing.
I first timed the loading of the post with the plugin turned off. The average loadtime was 1.18s. I then timed it with the plugin turned on, and after clicking the show all link, thus showing all 12 comments. This time the average loadtime was 1.2s. Not much difference, but a slight increase in loadtime as was expected.
Now I timed the page with only 10 comments showing, and this time the average loadtime was 1.09s. I also timed the page with only the 2 remaining comments showing and got an average loadtime of 1.03s.
So it seems you can indeed decrease the loadtime of the post by limiting the comments.
Note that this test was done on a fresh install of WordPress, and the 12 comments used were just short ones. I would love for someone to do a similar test on a post with ALOT of (long) comments. If you do, let me know!
Speed up your postview using paginated comments
If you have a post with a lot of comments, surely it must be some speed gain from just showing, say ten at the time? To test this I installed the Paginated Comments plugin by James Maurer and created a test post with 12 comments. I configured the plugin to show only 10 comments (this is in fact the default setting), and started testing.
I first timed the loading of the post with the plugin turned off. The average loadtime was 1.18s. I then timed it with the plugin turned on, and after clicking the show all link, thus showing all 12 comments. This time the average loadtime was 1.2s. Not much difference, but a slight increase in loadtime as was expected.
Now I timed the page with only 10 comments showing, and this time the average loadtime was 1.09s. I also timed the page with only the 2 remaining comments showing and got an average loadtime of 1.03s.
So it seems you can indeed decrease the loadtime of the post by limiting the comments.
Note that this test was done on a fresh install of WordPress, and the 12 comments used were just short ones. I would love for someone to do a similar test on a post with ALOT of (long) comments. If you do, let me know!