Gears Slowed Down My WordPress
August 6, 2008 by Jon
Filed under Everything Else
I’m using WordPress 2.6 to power this blog, as well as several other blogs I run. Being the techie that I am, when WP 2.6 was released, I had to try out all the cool new features. That included the new Turbo feature utilizing Google Gears. Yay… new stuff to play with… and severely slow down my blog’s admin interface. 
The Turbo feature uses Google Gears to download many backend parts of the WordPress administrative interface to your local computer. That way when you want to do something… say publish a new post… WordPress doesn’t have to download files from your web site. They’re all sitting nice and neat on your hard drive for quick and easy access.
Or that’s how it’s suposed to work.
In my case, when I would do something new like click to write a new post, or click the “Save” button, my browser would grind to a halt for upwards of 30 seconds. This happened for me on two different computers (my new laptop and my older workstation) under both FireFox 3 and Internet Explorer 7.
Since I’m no idiot, after 3 weeks I finally decided it was time to disable the “Turbo” feature so my administrative interface would be fast again. 
Except for one problem… I can’t read. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to disable the “Turbo” feature, even though when you click on the “Turbo” link in the Dashboard, it tells you what to do. I even spent time searching Google for instructions on how to disable the darn thing, but was coming up empty. Of course I was! The instructions are right in the WP Dashboard! I was just in too much of a hurry to actually read them.
So just in case you can’t read either, and found this blog post by searching the web trying to figure it out too, I’ll let you in on the secret. In FireFox, you click on the Tools menu and choose “Google Gears Settings.” Then simply click the remove link next to your blog in the list. Pretty simple really. 
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Hi Jon, I apologize for the problem you ran into with Gears! Is it possible to work with you to isolate what happened to help other users? Can you tell me more about the environments you tested this feature on (OS version, browser version, Gears version)? Thanks for your help.
Best,
Brad Neuberg
Gears
Read Brad Neuberg’s last blog post: Open Web Definition (Version 0.4)
Hey Brad,
Just for the record, my intention is not to criticize Gears. It’s just that using the new Turbo feature in WP 2.6 slowed down several aspects of my admin interface, like clicking the “Publish” button. And truth be told, I have a fast connection to the Internet, so I really don’t need to use the Turbo feature. I just like trying out new stuff…
Here’s the requested info from my laptop:
OS version = Vista Home Premium (x86) with SP1
Browser versions = FireFox 3.0.1 & Internet Explorer 7.0.6001.18000
Gears version = 0.3.24.3
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.
A little late on this, but I was searching Google to see if anyone else had the same issue. I also used Gears’ Turbo mode in WordPress and found that it slowed down the dashboard dramatically. It didn’t seem to be a problem initially, but rather one that got worse over time.
Initially I blamed plug-ins, but the problem remained even after these were completely removed. None of my other sites on the same server had an issue. Once I removed Gears, however, everything went back to how I remembered it.
Oh well.
@Tony -
It’s interesting to know that it hasn’t been fixed yet, and that you’re having the problem too. I mean I have a fast connection so I don’t really need it, but still.
I did try it when I was on vacation and had to use a dial-up connection, but I forgot to set it up ahead of time, and it was going to take all night to update the files, so I skipped it.
I’d be interested to hear from someone who successfully uses Gears with their blog…