There is a video of his recent talk in a technology conference where he spoke about how web performance is important and also shared his experience on handling these issues, mainly about his experiences in WordPress and how the need for speed is really important.

Matt first talked about how WordPress handles the 404 – aka Not Found page – causes a lot of performance overhead due to the fact that the 404 page generated by WordPress is apparently database driven, unlike other static 404 pages. Matt also talked about how easy for developer to create a WordPress plug-in and how these millions of plug-ins can contribute to the performance issue by introducing redundancies: multiple and identical javascript file inclusions in the HTML header. Therefore WordPress created a new function for plug-in developers as a way to eliminate these redundancies.

He also spoke about how a millisecond can save time of people around the world collectively. He took a real example of his website WordPress.com where millions of bloggers have been using as their blog sites and explained how a small performance efficiency or improvement can indirectly promote a more eco-friendly environment: saving servers processing time thus less power consumption.

Interesting issue he raised is also on his experience when WordPress made a total revamp of its user interface and apparently they faced a lot of issues when viewed on Internet Explorer which I believe most web developers have been having as a painful and frustrating task which we are forced to conform .

He also highlighted a few times on his favourite quote by Joe Clark that reads “We’ve upped our standards, up yours” which was coined at the beginning of the adoption of web standards. Anyway, check the video below for a full coverage of his talk.

Foreword

Experience a spike in usage on your hosting server? Well, my old friend does as he highlighted in his recent post about his decision in switching his theme to a simple one: one that he presumed doesn’t chew up a lot of resources from his shared hosting server . So here’s just my little thought or sharing tips on how to increase your web site or blog site performance for better user experience.

My One Cent

There are few factors in order to achieve this, namely

Server Reliability

Personally I think your hosting server reliability is the foremost element to increase site performance, namely server up-time and connectivity. Essentially without a reliable hosting server, the tips below will not have much impact or in other words pretty useless. Well I highly welcome your input on list of reliable hosting servers to use.

Small File Size

Reduce as much as possible the size of the files used for your site: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and image files in order to save network bandwidth. As a result, your page loads faster.

For HTML and JavaScript

I guess the answer is simple: eliminate white characters (spaces and new line characters) present in the file. One drawback of course, it will be difficult to debug your HTML or JavaScript. Well you can easily solve this by maintaining your friendly JavaScript for your debug purpose and dedicate a “compressed” one for production.

For CSS

The similar approach as the former. However I found some CSS can be quite bloated or in other words huge in size for some reason. And it is more likely that there are a lot of redundancies. If the former case is true, try CSS Framework as your foundation/start in creating your style-sheet.

For Image file

Choose the best compression format (GIF, JPG, or PNG) that is suitable for your images and its purpose. Check this post to find out more about the advantage and disadvantage of the individual format.

If you use a WordPress blog, you may want to install a plug-in called WP Minify but be warned of its drawback which I’m going to explain to you later.

Reduce Round-trip

Wonder what round trip means? Sorry but I couldn’t find a best definition for the term from google, but I found a closest one from wiki and answer.com. answer.com cited that a round trip is

A trip from one place to another and back, usually over the same route.

In Web, number of round trips is calculated based on the number of requests made by a browser before it is complete: one primary request for HTML files and subsequent requests for your JavaScript, CSS, and image files if needed. The solution is easy: use just one file for respective file type. (How’s that possible?) Na… just kidding.

For JavaScript and CSS

If you have more than one files, merge them into just one file.

For Images

One way is to piece those images together and create one bigger image file and use Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to show the respective image to the respective space on your page. CSS background tells you how to achieve this.

Avoid Dynamic pages

Nowadays dynamic pages are inevitable as web audiences are looking for more interactive web sites which serve fresh sets of information each day or even every hour. I guess here I’m not asking you to edit your HTML files for each of your post (for your blog) and I think those were the old days where page scripting had not been invented yet.

Why do I say that? because dynamic pages may consume a lot of CPU power which may cause a hiccup on your hosting server. And worse if your site resides on a shared server, other sites may have to wait (or sacrifice) for your site to complete its computation.

Caching is a way to help reduce CPU consumption. Caching is a process of creating a duplication or copy of  your dynamic pages to be stored elsewhere, thus subsequent request of the same dynamic pages can be fetched from existing cache in order to prevent computation redundancy. For WordPress user, try WP Super Cache plug-in.

Just a note, avoid dynamic compression of your web files to save your network bandwidth as this has its drawback: yields a high CPU usage.

Lastword?

Well, that’s all for the tips. Mike, if you’re reading this, I hope this can be your humble guidance in finding the best theme and plug-ins for your blog.

Ciao!

As a compensation I am going to explain my rationale for removing Snap Shots plugin. First, Snap Shots uses JavaScript to display the snapshot of the url you’re about to visit. And the script being used doesn’t actualy reside on your server but resides in Snap Shots server(s) instead, which means that your browser needs to retrieve the script from their server(s) for the Snap Shots to function properly. As a result, your blog now becomes dependant on those servers. Experienced Google uptime glitch lately? What if Snap Shots servers were down? then your blog will be crippled without Snap Shots. Although at least not paralyzed.

Well to help you better picture the former explanation, lets take a simple example. Say you wish to rent a costume for a Halloween party but your favourite costume rental shop was closed due to unknown circumstances. As a result you wouldn’t able to show up to the fullest without the costume that you’ve planned before. I’m sure you would feel “crippled”. The same notion for blog.

Having said that, bloggers can still benefit something from Snap Shots as explained in my other post, provided the former case doesn’t occur often. So if you’re a new blogger, hope this post can help you make your decision.

Introduction

As a new blogger I always hope I could draw more readers to drop by my site at the same time increase my site traffic or in marketing term “increase your branding”. However I realise I’ll be competing with millions notable bloggers out there and this is not an easy task. Here, I believe my patience and persistence are being challenged. So, if you’re up to this challenge I will share some guidance on where and how to start. But do take note though that there is no guarantee that my guidance will definitely do the magic.

To start off, I believe that first you have to begin with your own blog – get yourself ready first. It’s just like constructing your home or house: first you start with building a strong foundation and thereafter you can easily stack up your block. Once you think you’re ready to go, then you start publicizing your blog with confidence.

I must admit these guides are not totally created by my own, instead I collated based on other sources I found, along with my own intuition. I’ve separated the guidance into two: What to prepare and How to publicize.

Prepare your Blog

Timeless is Everlasting

Means do write posts that will be readable in a year or more. A constructive and useful post may not immediately catch readers’ attention (just as this post) but sees it in long-term view. Personally, I know that there are millions posts out there with the same topic as mine, but here I did not think of marketing this post but instead regarding this as my future reference.

Create Sitemap

Sitemap (or a site map), according to Wikipedia, is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users as this helps search engine bots to find pages on your site. For WordPress user, you can easily achieve this by installing a plugin called “Google XML Sitemaps” mentioned in other post. Think of sitemap as shortcuts for search engine bots.

SEO Compliant

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. What does this mean? This means that any websites including your blog has to be SEO compliant in order for search engines out there (like Google) can easily index your pages and return your pages when people search. Again, a WordPress plugin called “All in One SEO Pack” is the magic wand.

More Ping Services

This may be the simplest one to do. In WordPress what you need to do is go to “Settings > Writing” and look for the ping list text-area and add more ping services into the box. This is to notify the ping service providers when you published a new post. You can easily find a long list of them from Google or you may refer to my sources below.

Be Opportunist

As opposed to my previous point, if you think there’s a very interesting topic that may grab some-one’s attention immediately, do attempt. Short announcement may be a short-term branding selling strategy.

Be Social

Give social readers option to promote your post if they like it. These readers may come from other sites, like twitter, stumbleupon, digg, technorati, and alot more. In WordPress, a plugin “Add to Any” will help you fill the job for free and hassle-free.

Be Smart

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not talking about how you dress here instead how to dress your blog. Impress your readers with unexpected catch. Fortunately in WordPress you can easily fulfill this with the power of plug-ins. Kindly refer to this post for the list.

OK, that’s my last point on what you need to do first with your blog. Next thing is to start to publicize your blog.

Publicize your Blog

Submit to Blog and RSS Directory

First is to submit your blog – tell your existence. Blog and RSS directory provides a catalog of blogs or posts for readers to find on a specific topic or category. Submitting to these directories will definitely help you climb up the ladder in search engine results too because these directories may be more popular and therefore make your blog quickly recognised.

Contribute

Make contributions to other blog posts. Contribution doesn’t mean to dig out your pity pocket and donate, instead post your comments to the blog posts if you find it interesting and useful. Give kudos to the authors for their hard work in sharing their ideas.

Be Proactive

Join free Internet community out there, namely facebook, twitter, technorati, digg, stumbleupon and many more, and market your blog in your profile. These communities grows bigger and faster than you could imagine.

Appreciate and Respect

Appreciation and respect are what people always look out for in office, and even in your daily life. And here in cyberspace, the same rules apply. If you post a topic in your blog with sources from other blog, do include the URL to their site in your post to allow pingback/trackback – a way to notify the author your token of appreciation. As a result they feel encouraged and may post more stuff for your feed.

My One Cent

Lastly just my one cent, always think outside the box because I’m pretty sure you can do better than my above list which may be less effective as time lapses. And also keep in mind that this virtual space will always evolve, just like our life.

Hope you find this useful and I welcome your feedback or help me complete the list. Don’t forget to leave your rating or comment below. Thanks and Cheers!

Sources

• Promoting Your Blog – Blogger Help
• How to get traffic for your blog
• How to write an effective blog description and keywords?
• 9 Ways to Make Your WordPress Blog “Smart”
• Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
• RSS Specifications – Submit RSS feeds
• WordPress Ping List
• Top Ping URLs & Update Services

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as tweets.

If you are familiar with friendster and facebook, well I guess this is just another social networking site with different sets of features, in my opinion. I might be wrong but I’ll find out about Twitter more and let you know more in this post.

Well if you’re new to blogging and wish to publicise your blog, you may want to make full use of Twitter to expand your network. And to do that, as usual you need to register to the site to create a new account. Registration is quick and easy, despite of having to verify/authenticate your email. But yeah that is it! And Twitter is ready for you.

Ok now I have my blog and my twitter and wish to publicise myself via these media. Well I think it’s really a hassle to maintain two sites with probably the same posting and I simply do not have the luxury to spare. Luckily just found a service which saves me time from doing the task. This service is called twitterfeed. It gives you the convenience to feed your blog entry to the twitter automatically with just a few mouse clicks and keyboard press.

All you need to do is to sign up, authenticate to your twitter account, and finally add your blog rss feed url as one of your feeds. That’s it! and your twitterfeed is ready to feed your twitter with your blog entries regularly.