jpjp222

@amandato thank you for this comprehensive post! This is very helpful. I apologize for not being more clear in my first post.

I think your static feed plugin is more of what I was thinking when I was talking about caching the feed.

Here’s more about my setup:

I did not do “Do not allow other plugins to modify podcast feeds.” So I will try that. Update: This fixed it, see below.

I do have accelerate and maximize checked

For show most recent, I have that set to 50 but I’d like it as high as possible which is probably what my issue is.

I barely use any categories or tags.

The hosting I have is managed and optimized for wordpress. It has nginx and varnish.

Update: just tried this and it made a huge difference. I didn’t realize this was a speed related feature. Even upping my episode count to 300 it’s not killing my server anymore!

Thanks a lot for your help and how thorough a response you gave. I’m sure that will help a lot of others trying to solve the same problem.

Also just wanted to note that I’m running on a powerful server so ‘just get a better server’ isn’t the solution I’m looking for. 🙂