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Friday, 01 June 2007 |
The sad fact of the matter is that there are still many people using Dialup, even today. Considering that the languages and techniques applied in modern web design are bigger than those of the days of old (in general), it makes it hard on this large population of Dialup users. This is my reasoning for staying away (as much as possible) from Ajax, as well as any unneccessary Java or flash content. I still do all the tweaking I can to make my site fast, not just for broadband users, but for everyone who visits.
How do I do this? First, you need a good host. Hosting aside, an important step is to look at the code involved in your template files, assuming you are using a Content Management System. Clean up the PHP code. Remove comments you don't need, remove code that doesn't do anything, do everything you can to make the code clean, small and efficient. As for your CSS, remove any unneeded style information, and run it through a CSS compressor, such as this one. Then, if you have gzip enabled on your site, add the following to the top of your CSS file(s):
<?php ob_start ("ob_gzhandler");
header("Content-type: text/css");
header("Cache-Control: must-revalidate");
$offset = 60 * 60 ;
$ExpStr = "Expires: " .
gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s",
time() + $offset) . " GMT";
header($ExpStr);?>
Rename the CSS extensions to .php (ex. template.css -> template.php), and change all of the references to the CSS in your PHP files to point to the renamed files. This should considerably speed up loading time.
Assuming that you have access to a program capable (I just use Photoshop) you should make sure your images are as small as they possibly can be. Photoshop has a great function under the file menu, "Save for Web." This allows us to choose many options to make sure our image looks great, yet is still very small. For multicolor images, like my logo, I used the high quality JPG compressor, and played around with the quality slider until I had the right balance of compression and quality. As for images that don't have many colors, like the backgrounds on my menu headers (the green rounded corner box things) I chose the GIF file format, and restricted them to only two colors, white and the green color. Play around with the image settings until you get good quality with the highest possible compression.
If you use a MySQL database, you should on occasion log in, and remove any tables from uninstalled components to your CMS, and remove any other junk that you don't use. Following that, select all of your tables, and use the optomize command to make sure they are all in good working order.
Now comes the most important part: caching. Caching can dramatically speed up (90% in some cases) page load times. For my CMS, Joomla, I use a component called Page Cache, by Ircmaxwell, which is amazing. After one hit on any page in my site, I have the component set to keep a cached copy of the page for 24 hours. The component can use the Database to store the cached information, or use APC. Similar plugins and addons are available, such as WP-Cache for Wordpress, and many CMS'es already have the feature built-in.
Finally, if you feel brave, or have a webhost that has it preinstalled, a product like eAccelerator or APC is always a good idea. They both optomize, accelerate, and dynamically cache PHP, thus adding even more speed. I personally haven't gotten this far, as my loading times are fine, and I don't feel like recompiling PHP, but to each his or her own.
That said, go make your site fast, so that poor dialup users (like me when I am at home!) can easily browse it!
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Wednesday, 30 May 2007 |
I forgot about this screenie I took back in my Dialup only days, but yes, this is an authentic non-Photoshopped image of what Windows reported my speed to be on a Dialup connection I made in the past. Though I doubt it is accurate, I just can't help but poke fun, and add that I still think Kubuntu is far superior to Windows. This has happened to me more than once, too...hard to believe, isn't it?
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Tuesday, 29 May 2007 |
I am so sorry about all of this. I know that many of you are getting 404 errors for links from other sites, and that is because I migrated to a different CMS and am using a different SEF extension as of today. I will look over the logs and 301 redirect all of the links that send you to erroneous pages, so that they will send you to the correct page. Hopefully Google will reindex soon and this whole nightmare (supplemental pages + having to migrate) will be over. Keep checking back!
As I have recently re-structured my
site (hopefully the last time), and with Google's recent update, I am
having issues with Google putting me in the supplemental index. If you have a website, blog, or MySpace page, I ask a favor: that you would put a link to http://www.mattparnell.com on it. In return, I will post a link to your site in my Links/Friends area, just email me when you link to me. Thanks!
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Tuesday, 29 May 2007 |
Apparently, Joomla and Mambo aren't good when it comes to staying out of Google's supplemental index (appropriately named "Google Hell"), especially if an unaware webmaster enables the PDF and print icon options. I was previously unaware, and found that of my 700-800 links in Google's index, 699 of them were supplemental, meaning they are displayed at the very back of all of the search pages, and are rarely scanned by the Google spider. The cause of such a problem is either having duplicate content in large quantity, having lots of "nofollow" links (appear to Google as "spammy"), as well as links that appear to be purchased for PageRank purposes. Google sees these things as "spammy," a characteristic of the recently banned "Made For Adsense" sites. There are probably other reasons a site may be cast into this terrible place, but they are unknown, as Google likes to keep it's secrets.
The Joomla/Mambo specific problem is mainly the print and pdf function. As Google's spiders crawl the printable versions and PDF versions of pages, it sees them as duplicate "spammy" content. Thus, the PDF and the original content page counterpart are sent to Google Hell. To fix this problem, you need to do a few things:
First, and most simply, hide the print and PDF links by going into your Global Configuration area, and select the Content tab. Choose "Hide" for the PDF and Print icons. From now on, as Google scans your articles, it won't see those links.
The problem now is that a lot of your content is still in Google's index as "duplicate content" in PDF form. To fix this, you have to give Google an error the next time they scan the PDF's location. To do so, add the following to your main .htaccess file:
# Getting Rid of PDF Files
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^option=com_content&do_pdf=
RewriteRule ^index2\.php$ - [G]
# Getting Rid of print preview Files
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^option=content&task=view&id=
RewriteRule ^index2\.php$ - [G]
Note that this will disable completely the ability to view PDF and print versions of your pages.
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Monday, 28 May 2007 |
I ran across PageRank10 while browsing today, and it is an interesting site. Whoever the person that owns it is, he/she has an interesting goal: get from PageRank 0 to PageRank 10 in 730 days. Currently, the site has 327 days left and has a PageRank of 6. The site relies on inlinks from other sites, with the top referring sites listed on the front page. Why not drop a link to their site, and sign up! It won't hurt anything, and may even end up getting you more traffic to your blog or site! I am personally skeptical, as I am not sure it can be done, with Google's recent retooling of their algorithms. Whatever the case, take a look!
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