May 19, 201023

Plugins to Speed Up Your WordPress Site

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Wordpress, Wordpress Plugin
Plugins to Speed Up Your WordPress Site
Speeding up your WordPress blog goes a long way to improve its popularity. As the website loads faster, your visitor enjoys browsing, driving high traffic and generating revenue. While there are many proven ways to boost a site's performance (a lot of these are explained in the WordPress Optimization Tips and Tricks post), in this article we will take a look at some WordPress plugins that allows you to perform critical front-end and back-end optimizations, within the comfort of your WordPress dashboard. In the first section of this article I have listed the well known WordPress caching plugins and my recommendation. The next section has a list of few nice utility type plugins which you might find useful (depending on your situation). Please note that you don't need to install all of the plugins listed here on your site (Just pick whatever fits your needs). Top WordPress Caching Plugins W3 Total Cache A lot of people still use the WP Super Cache plugin. WP Super Cache is a nice plugin but have you tried the W3 Total Cache plugin yet? If you are using a WordPress caching plugin and you have never tried the W3 Total Cache then you seriously need to give this ...
May 9, 201012

When Themes Go Wild – Importance of Using a Properly Coded WordPress Theme

Categories: WordPress Theme, Wordpress
When Themes Go Wild – Importance of Using a Properly Coded WordPress Theme
It is surprising to see how many of my customers/users do not use a properly coded WordPress theme. Using a properly coded theme on a WordPress powered site is very important without any doubt. So I wanted to quickly make a blog post to highlight a few points to make sure you don’t go down the path of using a wrong WordPress theme only to regret it later. Remember, just because a theme looks good to the naked eye does not mean it has been properly coded. Why is It Important to Have a Proper Theme? Before I talk about some of the main points, here is the summary – The amount of time you will be spending to fix issues that all stem from the bad theme is just not worth it! Issues with WordPress Plugins It is common to have issues with WordPress plugins that uses JavaScript for example to do various things when your theme is poorly coded. So you will think that the problem is with the plugin but actually the theme is the true culprit here. Example1: I have had many clients who complained about the WordPress Simple Shopping Cart’s variation not working properly on their site. After I finished my ...
Apr 13, 201012

Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search
Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips post and put some plan of action in place. Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage. There are several research statistics that show that decreasing your site load time on pages leads to an increase in sales which we all want. There are three things to take away from what Google is doing. Speeding up your website is a good general practice. Think about how many times you have waited for a site to load. When the site takes too long you usually end up closing the browser and moving on. This change will have a small impact on most sites, so don't panic. Small constructive changes can have a direct impact on improving your site and user experience. Instead of wasting time where it ...
Apr 6, 20106

Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using

Categories: Site Optimization Tips, Web development
Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using
If you are running a small website, chances are you've already heard of Web Analytics. If you haven't, it is a tool for measuring traffic of your website. It provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc to gauge the popularity of the site. For many people, using analytics is limited to watching how many more visitors have come to the site, and repeating the figures to potential advertisers. If used smartly, analytics is also a marketing tool, an e-commerce tracker, an ad tool, and the list goes on. In this article, we'll have a look at basic ways to use the analytics. Choosing an Analytics Software First of all, you need to have an analytics software set up for your website, which mostly means signing up for an account of an analytics provider, and adding a few lines of javascript code to your pages. Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool. It's also free and integrating it in a WordPress site is just a matter of adding a plugin to your site! If you like to have choices, you can search the Internet looking for some other alternative solutions. This article lists a number of analytics software ...
Jan 25, 20109

10 Common HTML Mistakes to Avoid

Categories: Web development
10 Common HTML Mistakes to Avoid
The following is a list of common HTML mark up mistakes made by front end developers. Whether you are a newbie web designer, or a programmer who wants to try his hands in UI designing, try to avoid these mistakes. 1. Don't place Block elements within Inline elements An HTML element is displayed as Block or as Inline by default. Block elements, such as divs and paragraphs, make up the structure of the document. Inline elements reside in these blocks, such as anchor and span tags. So you should never put blocks inside inline elements. Wrong: <a href="#"><h2>Block inside Inline</h2></a> Right: <h2><a href="#">Inline inside Block</a></h2> 2. Always have the alt attribute for image tags The ALT attribute is a required one for IMG tags, it describes the context of the image. It helps your user on a screen reader or with a slow connection to decide whether or not the image is important. It also makes the web crawler index your contents better. If the images is just for show, use an empty ALT attribute like alt="" Wrong: <img src="profilepic.jpeg"/> Right: <img src="profilepic.jpeg" alt="Profile pic of the user"/> 3. Don't use line breaks to show a list If you wan't to show a list of things in bulleted or numbered ...
Sep 15, 200930

Cool WordPress .htaccess Tips to Boost Your WordPress Site’s Security

Categories: Blog Setup, Site Optimization Tips
Cool WordPress .htaccess Tips to Boost Your WordPress Site’s Security
You have started a blog to share your opinion with the World Wide Web. Someone stumbles upon one of your articles. He likes it, and posts it on Digg. Now it gets everyone's attention. Visitors come pouring into your site. Your revenue starts to go up. Definitely good news! But now there is a catch. You are now the target of the 'bad crowd' of the Internet, spammers, hackers and leechers. It's time to toughen up your innocent little Wordpress site. The .htaccess file is the easiest and the cheapest (actually it's free!) solution to secure a Wordpress blog. What is a .htaccess File? The .htaccess file is a configuration file for use on web servers running the Apache Web Server software. When a .htaccess file is placed in a directory which is in turn "loaded via the Apache Web Server", then the .htaccess file is detected and executed by the Apache Web Server software. It is often used to specify the security restrictions for the particular directory. In this article I'm going to show you how to strengthen your site's security by adding/changing a few lines in this file. Before you make any changes, it might be a good idea to take a backup ...
Sep 2, 200915

2 Simple WordPress Blog Optimization Tips and Tricks

Categories: Site Optimization Tips
2 Simple WordPress Blog Optimization Tips and Tricks
I have been pretty busy with the WordPress plugin development lately, so didn't get a chance to write any posts for a few weeks. I think it's about time I share a simple but effective website performance improvement trick with the readers of this site that I have been using on all my sites. If you haven't read the WordPress site optimization tips and tricks already then you should read that first. This trick involves changing some of the dynamic wordpress queries to static ones which in turn reduces the number of database queries and improves site performance. This does require a little bit of PHP knowledge but it's really basic stuff. In your WordPress theme's header and footer you will see many statements similar to the following: bloginfo('home') This queries WordPress for the home URL of your blog (eg. http://www.your-site.com). Now, how often do you think your home URL is going to change? Most likely never! So why not replace it with the static information which is "http://www.your-site.com" and make one less database query? Saving one database query may not sound very convincing but you probably have many statements like the following that can also be replaced: bloginfo('html_type') bloginfo('charset') bloginfo('name') bloginfo('version') bloginfo('stylesheet_url') bloginfo('rss2_url') bloginfo('template_directory') bloginfo('home') Now multiply that by every page load per ...
Jul 13, 200952

How to Add Far Future Expires Headers to Your WordPress Site

Categories: Site Optimization Tips
How to Add Far Future Expires Headers to Your WordPress Site
Few weeks ago I wrote on how to optimize your WordPress site for better performance which has some tips and tricks on how to speed up a WordPress Site. I received a few requests to elaborate on some of the points as not all of them are obvious changes. In this article I have explained how you can add far future expiry header to your image, css and javascript files to speed up your site. Adding expires headers do not affect the site load time for a first time visitor but you will be surprised how much the page load time decreases (faster page load) for subsequent page views/return visits from that visitor. Expires header specifies a time far enough in the future so that browsers won't try to re-fetch images, CSS, javascript etc files that haven't changed (this reduces the number of HTTP requests) and hence the performance improvement on subsequent page views. If your server is Apache (most web servers), you can use the 'ExpiresDefault' directive to set an expiration date relative to the current date. ExpiresDefault "access plus 2 months" This sets the expiry date of the file 2 months into the future from the current time. The following values can ...
Jun 28, 2009285

WordPress Affiliate Platform Plugin – Simple Affiliate Program for WordPress Blog/Site

Categories: Wordpress Plugin
WordPress Affiliate Platform Plugin – Simple Affiliate Program for WordPress Blog/Site
It is a known fact that having an affiliate program is the most powerful way to market your products or services online (Read more on the benefits of affiliate program). If you own a WordPress blog/site and your answer to the following questions are 'yes' then the 'WordPress Affiliate Platform' might just be what you need: Do you sell products or services online from your WordPress blog/site? Do you want to increase your sales and explode your profits by using an affiliate program? Do you want to have your own affiliate program so you can cut the middle man? Plugin Summary The 'WordPress Affiliate Platform' is an easy to use WordPress plugin for affiliate recruitment, management and tracking that can be used on any WordPress blog/site. This plugin lets you run your own affiliate campaign/program and allows you to reward(pay commission) your affiliates for referred sales. The admin can upload/configure banners/links which the affiliates can use on their blog/site to drive traffic to your site. All the clicks, leads, sales etc are tracked by this plugin. If you are running online ad campaigns for your products and services then you can use the affiliate platform plugin to measure the true conversion rate of each campaign to ...
Jun 24, 20096

How to Fix the Character Encoding Problem in WordPress

Categories: Wordpress
How to Fix the Character Encoding Problem in WordPress
I recently changed my web hosting again in an attempt to speed up the page load time of my website. I had to do it as the former hosting's page response time was horrible. It was taking 9 seconds for my home page to load with the former hosting. Now my home page loads under 4 seconds! It's amazing the difference it makes... now I don't get angry when browsing my own site (I wonder what my visitors were thinking while waiting for the page to load!). Anyway, The transfer was smooth but I had a slight issue that I noticed after the transfer. There were special characters similar to the following scattered throughout my blog posts: I was pretty sure that this was a character encoding mismatch problem. I got a little scared thinking it would take a long time to fix but then I found a really easy way to solve it. Fixing the Character Encoding Mismatch Problem in WordPress Open the 'wp-config.php' file in a text editor such as notepad (the wp-config.php file can be found on the directory where you installed WordPress). Find the following two lines and comment them out: define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8'); define('DB_COLLATE', ''); They should look like the following after ...
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