Is your Wordpress blog performing at it's best? How quickly does the page load? Is it sluggish? Your website's performance is one of the key factors in ensuring that the visitors are having a good experience with your site. So I personally think it is worthwhile to spend some time tuning/optimizing the site for performance. In this article I have listed various tips and tricks on how to speed up a WordPress Site. Before diving into the optimization tips and tricks I recommend measuring the current performance of the site so you have some benchmarking figures to compare against after you make the changes and see how it has affected the performance. How to Measure the Performance of a Site 1. I use YSlow Firefox addon to measure the page load time of a site. YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool. So to use YSlow you will have to get the Firebug addon and then install the YSlow addon. The site in question takes about 23 secons to load which is not a very good page ...

Infinity Remix is a multi-functional clean WordPress theme with a simple and unique design that displays the content in a stylish and traditional way. The Infinity Remix theme has a unique home page, consisting of a featured posts section, a blog module and lots of stylish widgetized spaces. When choosing a WordPress theme, I tend to look for the following important elements in the theme: The WordPress theme is Light and clean so it loads quicker in the browser. Standards Compliant (has Valid XHTML + CSS code to the search engine bots can index content easily). Fixed width, two columns and the sidebar is on the right side. The size of the sidebar (if the sidebar is too narrow then it is very hard to fit in the most popular advertisement units such as the 300x250 pixels unit) Unique design (this is important for the blog/site to stand out from the crowd) The Infinity Remix theme was designed keeping all the above points in mind. I tried to keep the structure clean and organized. This theme is perfect for anyone who wants their WordPress blog to stand out in the crowd as this theme has a professional and elegant design. Every theme needs a little tweak here and ...

One of my readers asked me the following question regarding CPM ad network and I thought I would write an article on it: "What CPM ad network would you suggest for a relatively new Blog that doesn't have a lot of traffic?" Before I answer the question and reveal what I use myself, I would like to cover a few other related topics in this article that I think will add value to a lot of other readers. The following topics have been covered in this article: What is CPM ad? Why use CPM ad? List of the  popular CPM ad networks that I know of Which CPM ad network do I use and why? A simple trick when using ADSDAQ CPM ad network What is CPM ad? According to Wikipedia - "CPM is frequently used in advertising to represent cost per thousand (where M is the roman numeral of 1000). When used in online advertising it relates to the cost per thousand page impressions." An impression is a single instance of an ad appearing on a Web site. A blog generating 20,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $2 CPM, will earn $40 monthly from that banner ad unit. Why use CPM ad? CPM ad gives you another means ...

Simple WordPress Stats Plugin to show Google Page Rank, Alexa rank, Technorati rank, Number of Posts, Comments, Trackbacks etc anywhere on your wordpress blog to show off to your visitors. If you don't want the hassle of updating your "Advertise Here" page of your blog every few days with the important statistics then this plugin will come in handy. Plugin Screenshot [caption id="attachment_1324" align="alignnone" width="104" caption="Wordpress Blog Vitals Screenshot"][/caption] Demo You can see a working demo of this plugin on the sidebar of this blog. Installation Unzip and Upload the folder ‘wordpress-blog-vitals’ to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress. Go to Settings and configure the options eg. which stats you want to show off, caching time etc. Use the widget, trigger text or call the php function to show the stats. Usage There are three ways you can use this plugin: 1. Add the following trigger text to a post or page to show the stats 2. Use the following function from a template (.php) file 3. Use the 'WP Blog Vitals' widget from the widgets menu Additional Documentation The following php functions can be used to display/retrieve specific stats: <?php echo vitals_getpagerank(URL); ?> - Displays the Google page rank of the URL specified. <?php echo vitals_get_cached_alexa_rank(URL); ?> - Displays the Alexa ...

In this guest post Lee Otsubo from The Digital Photo Guy writes about how you can take professional quality pictures by adjusting the exposure of your digital camera using Histogram. Lee is an engineer turned professional photographer who has spent over 35 years in high technology and finally decided to do what he enjoys. First, a caveat, there are minor differences in the way different digital SLRs meter the scene so you’ll have to “fine tune” your camera depending on how it reacts. Exposure is the balance of Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. This sounds good in theory but seems to baffle quite a few people in practice. Fortunately, there are several controls that make it much easier to “tweak” the exposure. First and foremost, one of the major advantages of digital cameras is the histogram. Simply put, the histogram graphically shows you how the dark to light pixels are distributed in your image. A quick glance at the histogram will immediately tell you if your photo is overexposed, underexposed or perfectly exposed. To do this, you must learn to correctly read and interpret your histogram. [caption id="attachment_1285" align="alignnone" width="282" caption="Histogram before Adjusting"][/caption] The histogram is of the photo above. In 8-bit files, there are ...

I don't need to tell you the importance of using strong passwords when creating user accounts online. Passwords are keys to accessing your online accounts or your computer. Using strong passwords are vital in protecting your identity and stopping others from hijacking your account. In this Post I have shared a trick to create strong but memorable passwords that I learned a few days ago. What is password strength? According to WikiPedia: Password strength is a measurement of the effectiveness of a password as an authentication credential. Specifically, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to correctly guess it. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and randomness. How to create a Strong Password? We all know the common guidelines for choosing a strong password: Include numbers, symbols, upper and lowercase letters Password should be more than 8 characters long. Avoid any password based on repetition, dictionary words, letter or number sequences, usernames, relative or pet names, or biographical information (birth day). Now the problem with creating random strong passwords are that they are very hard to remember. So once you start having to memorize a number of them it ...

WordPress eStore and WordPress Paypal Shopping Cart Plugins can now be integrated with the NextGen Gallery Plugin to create a Digital photo store similar to the demo given below: [nggallery id=10 template=wp-eStore] The Shopping cart will appear below this line when you add an item to the cart. The shopping cart can also be found on the sidebar. The images have been resized to 800x600 resolution using the NextGen Gallery resize utility. An watermark has also been applied to the image using the NextGen Gallery 'Effect' option to prevent stealing. Once the purchase is complete the encrypted download link for the original image (1920x1200 resolution and no watermark) is emailed to the buyer. Just to clarify... You don't necessarily have to sell digital photos to use the gallery. You could be selling anything and still use the Gallery as a means of displaying the products where each thumbnail is the icon of the product you are selling. How to Integrate NextGen Gallery and WordPress eStore Plugins What Plugins do you need? You will need the WordPress eStore v1.4 or above and NextGen Gallary Plugins. This guide assumes that you have used NextGen Gallery Plugin and know how to use it. If you don't know how to use ...

If you ever get into a situation whereby you need to open/view an Excel 2007 file (.xlsx) but the computer you are using does not have Excel 2007 installed then these tricks could come in handy. This was particularly very helpful to me when I was checking my email from my friends computer and I received an Excel 2007 file as attachment that I wanted to view immediately but my friend's computer didn't have Office 2007 installed. Option 1 If the computer you are using has Excel 2003 installed then you are in luck. You can just download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack which automatically converts the excel 2007 file and let you open, edit and save workbooks using Excel 2003. Option 2 What if you don't have Excel 2003 installed on the computer? Well you can download and install the Excel viewer from Microsoft which lets you open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed Option 3 You can use Open Office to view the excel files. OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. The same trick can be applied to Microsoft Word 2007 files too. Do you know ...

In this guest post Korin Iverson from Antique-hq.com writes about how anyone can easily make nice, shiny and eye catchy high resolution wallpapers by just using Photoshop paint brushes. Photoshop paint brushes are a cool thing if you know how to use them. In this photoshop tutorial I have provided a step by step guide on how to make amazing wallpapers by just using Photoshop paint brushes. I have included the paint brushes and the photoshop file (psd) that I used in this Photoshop tutorial in the download section below if you wish to download them. You can look at some examples of wallpapers that you can make by just using photoshop brushes on the Wallpapers page of this blog. In this tutorial we are going to look at creating the following wallpaper: So open your Photoshop application and let's get started. Step One: Creating a New Canvas First Create a new canvas. There are two ways you can do this 1. Go to File -> New and a window will pop up. Enter in the dimensions that you want to use. 2. You can use the Photoshop shortcut “ctrl + N” this will also bring up the window to select your dimensions.  I use 1920 x ...

I have had a few requests from some of the users of the WordPress eStore plugin (to Sell digital content from your blog securely) to write up a step by step startup guide so they can be up and running and selling their products in less than five minutes... So here it is. If you prefer a video tutorial then take a look at the WP eStore quick installation and usage video tutorial Before you dive into playing around with all the various settings of the WP eStore plugin I recommend getting up and running first by following the simple startup steps outlined below. 1. Once you get the product download link in your email go ahead and download the zip file. 2. Extract the zip file and upload the 'wp-cart-for-digital-products' directory to your '/wp-content/plugins/' directory. 3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress. 4. After you activate the WordPress eStore Plugin, the settings/options menu can be found on the left hand side menu similar to the following screenshot (on WordPress version 2.7 or above) 5. First go to the 'Settings' menu and configure the general, email and digital product delivery options. Most of the default settings should be enough to get you going but ...