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.

The stuff that I like about this theme are:

Minimalist

Typogriph has a clean and minimal look and feel which hopefully results in more lightweight pages in order to give a faster loading and browsing experience – without relying so much on catchy images as well as heavy style sheet to appeal your readers.

Just a Switch

Changing to Typogriph from Fusion is just like pressing a switch. There was no hassle or other settings to make your pages to work correctly. With my activated plug-ins and just one or two tweaks to my AdSense widgets and there I have it, my new theme.

Fluid

Typogriph is a fluid theme which means that it makes full use of reader’s browser real estate and automatically adjusted when re-sized. This is definitely beneficial to meet various screen resolutions.

Browser Compatibility

Tested to render well across various browsers like Firefox, IE (6, 7, 8), Apple Safari, and Google Chrome.

On the contrary Typogriph does not render your page links well if you have pages as sub of other pages. The links were a mess so I had to fix that by moving sub pages as parent pages to quickly solve it. And everything else was acceptable and I love the arrangement of the widgets on the front page that showcases all my desired widgets, recent comments, and most popular posts.

In case you’re interested to explore other minimalist themes. Here are the sites I stumbled to.

• 40 Stylish, Minimal and Clean Free WordPress Themes
• 18 Minimalist Design WordPress Themes

So how you feel about this theme? Let me know

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

Essential

Akismet
This plugin is definitely the most popular one for filtering spam comments. For senior bloggers, they definitely need this as their blogs are becoming more popular and spammers are becoming eager to “sneak” into their site by submitting bogus comments. These spammers nowadays have become smarter and more sophisticated.

All in One SEO Pack
The purpose of having my own blog is to publicize the blog as much as possible to the readers out there and we are talking about millions readers out there. And this definitely helps optimise your blog entry to be search friendly by search crawlers like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Wonder what SEO means? Check our friend wiki.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO. This is also one option to promote your SEO goal and has several helpful settings too.

Recommended

FD Feedburner Plugin
This is used to redirects all feeds to a Feedburner feed. Feedburner is a service provided by Google to help track subscribers to your feed. You need to register to Feedburner before you can use this plugin.

Google Analytics for WordPress
If you are Google Analytics user, then this plugin is a must to help you track your visitors. The advantage of having this plugin is that this plugin adds Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.

Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form
Do you want your readers to be able to communicate with you privately? This plugin is the answer as it provides a powerful yet easy-to-install contact form features exceptional accessibility and usability while still providing extensive anti-spam and anti-exploit security features. A marriage of communication and peace-of-mind.

WP-PostRatings
This is just a tool for your good readers to participate in your blog – how they like your posts. Rating helps you identify whether that specific post is favourable. Hint: find out your readers’ likings.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
This plugin returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. This helps promote more page hits to your internal pages. Spice your readers into reading more of your posts.

Optional

Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress
Aha! This is only applicable if you’re a software developer and wish to include your code inside your post. Google Syntax Highlighter definitely help beautify the look of your ugly code.

Snap Shots™ Plugin for WordPress.org
Snap Shots enhance links with visual previews of the destination site. This helps your readers stay longer in your site by taking a peek of the site before choosing to leave for another competitor site.

I hope this list is useful for you. I’ll be updating this post as I go along and find out more interesting plugins.

Signing off!

Not only that, if you use Google Analytics to help you track and analyse your site hits, this definitely will help you identify which posts are more interesting to your readers and at the same time increase the number of page views.

I found a few good articles on how to enable this, which may be of use for your blog. These articles give very clear and complete information on how to display excerpt on your front page and other pages as well.

Here are the links:

• Display Post Excerpts Only in WordPress
• Template Tags/the excerpt