WordPress Update Progress

November 2nd, 2006

I’m still making updates to this Webomatica blog (which runs on WordPress) in reaction to the double “digg effect” over the previous weekend. I thought I would mention how things are going.

In a previous post I outlined some improvements I wanted to implement. Here’s the progress on each item, one of which has been eliminated, perhaps permanently.

1. Adjust my theme to use less images.

Haven’t done this yet.

2. Optimize the remaining images, crunching them down in the interest of smaller size over aesthetics.

I did this for my background and header images. I’ll go further, but for now it looks like the WP-Cache plug in will help speed up page loads too.

3. Have the main theme images stored on another server (Coral cache or other), and write emergency header file that points to these images.

Haven’t done this yet.

5. Rethink the use of all my plug-ins that are slowing down page loads (lightbox JS comes to mind. Also the hit counter).

I nuked the hit counter, digg, and reddit plug ins (reason for the latter two is given below).

6. Use the WP-Cache plug in (see below).

I just installed the WP-Cache plug in and it looks like it’s working as advertised. It basically stores a cached version of each page. The cache version is created the first time the page is viewed.

The plug in looks like it’s smart enough to figure out when a page is updated, even with a comment, and generates a new page. There are some options for deleting cached pages and keeping some pages outside of the cache.

Lastly, if you’re paranoid that it isn’t working, if you do a “view source” on any of your blog pages, at the very bottom is a little comment listing the time it took to generate your page. Anything under a second is good news to me.

Here’s some more reading (here too) on the subject.

7. Look into Feedburner.

Haven’t done this yet. This is a service that is supposed to help you keep track of the people subscribing to your RSS feeds, help with promotion, and standardize all your content. I’m not totally sure if I need it yet, and need to do more research.

~~8. Look into a social bookmarking bar.~~

Just as I was about to load up a bar with many icons to social sites I don’t know about or use, I read this post at 37signals. I thought a bit about why I wanted a bookmarking bar as a blogger, and then from my own perspective as a reader. Here’s my list of reasons against installing a bookmarking bar:

When I’m reading someone else’s site, after the bar gets past four icons, I just get confused. I unfortunately only follow digg and reddit, and don’t even know what the other icons signify.
I really want to digg or vote up a story, I’m willing to make the effort to do so without a bar.
I still got dugg without a bar.
I need to limit the number of plug ins in order to reduce loading time.
Content is ultimately more important than the number of icons under the story. Nobody is going to link to a post just because of a bookmarking bar. It might help if you have quality content, but maybe the time worrying about a bookmarking bar might be better spent writing.

So I’m holding off on the bar for now, and for the same reasons, I’m removing the digg and reddit plug ins I was toying around with.

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