Today I am very happy to announce to all my loyal readers that I have moved my blog from free blogger platform to self hosted wordpress blog actually I could have started my blog straight away in self hosted wordpress itself in the beginning but do you know why I stayed for so long in wordpress? Any idea you might say that it’s free yes it’s free and one of the best blogging platform I have ever used but why I am migrating from blogger to wordpress. then let me tell you the real reason behind it and why I stay for so long on blogger.

Actually you must be knowing that to know something you must get into that completely and without using blogger my blog would have been never reached here where it is right now and I think that I have build my blog straight from scratch without knowing anything about SEO but now I have learned lot means a lot in terms of on page seo and off page seo.

Also my alexa ranking has improved so much I cannot express within 2 months and I am really happy that I used blogger for so long. And now also it’s not that I hate blogger I really love it and there are many bloggers who always criticize blogger platform regarding they are not SEO optimized yes to some extend it’s true but with little hard work you can optimize your blog which I did and all my blog posts are ranking way ahead than many bloggers who are using wordpress and various SEO plugins So I really love blogger and I will continue to use them to build some blogs for testing and then if they succeed I will move it to self hosted wordpress blog

Why Move From Blogger to WordPress Reasons

Why move from blogger to wordpress

1) While working with blogger I was not having all the resources to make my blog look professional enough even for a small tweak in template I had to spend hours to solve that Since I am not a coding geek

2) There were no plugins which makes life much easier in wordpress the moment I started using wordpress I feel like I have more tools in my hand to save lot of time whereas in blogger there are no plugins

3) Blogger can delete your blog without any notice and this was the fear always running in my mind but I was sure that blogger will not delete my blog since my blog was of really high quality with high quality content also it was not violating any webmaster terms and conditions So I was pretty much sure that it will not happen but as we don’t know what will happen tomorrow the same we cannot predict about this also

4) Themes were very limited in blogger and we have to select from only few limited templates whereas in wordpress there are thousands of free themes available which is great with just one click you can change your blog design

5) Regarding SEO also I think that worpress is better just because since I designed my blogger template there were my codes in there which were not SEO friendly but I don’t have to manually add any such codes in wordpress since everything is taken care by lots and lots of free plugins

6) Some time after publishing my blog posts it was not showing in google quickly and I have to manually ping my blog post url but in wordpress there is inbuilt pining service which indexed our new blog post fast in Google and other search engines results

7)I was not able to start affiliate marketing even though I wanted to but I made sure from the beginning that my readers are my first priority I will never promote a product or services which I have never used in past or currently So I was leaving quite a lot of money on the table since there are my lucrative affiliate programs like you can make money by promoting web hosting plans,plugins and themes but since I was using blogger how could I promote hosting package if I myself using free blogger platform. I don’t blog for money I blog because I love to money is the reward which I am making from.

8) Another great and one of the most important reasons is that I don’t love to give fake information to my readers and never ever share information about which I am not 100% sure that’s why you can see all my blog posts I have never ever posted about wordpress because I am not using wordpress and how would my readers fell when they will read it the post where I am giving wordpress tips and tricks despite of me still using blogger.

9) Also I always like to document my learning so that I can help my readers exactly what all problems and challenges most newbie bloggers face to make a successful blog literally from scratch which I did. And while being on blogger I almost cover all major topics and the same I am going to do with wordpress also and I will document all the small small things which I will be learning in wordpress and share this with my blog readers and this will make my blog a ultimate resource for any beginner who want to start blogging

So friends to sum up this were the main reason why you must move your blogger blog to wordpress self hosted blog. Please do share your thoughts and views via comments and I will love to discuss about this. I would like to thank Google for providing such a great blogging platform but situation always demands more and we have to abide by the rule to keep on improving and take our blog to next level of success

Learn Blogging - 05:08

Why You Should Move from Blogger to WordPress Self Hosted Blog

Today I am very happy to announce to all my loyal readers that I have moved my blog from free blogger platform to self hosted wordpress bl...

How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for Beginners

We often get compliments from users on how fast our site loads. Everyone wants to know the secret behind a fast loading WordPress site. Aside from good web hostingand well-coded plugins, you have to make sure that you’re using proper caching and have a CDN (content delivery network). For our setup, we use a plugin called W3 Total Cache. Due to a high volume of request, we have decided to create a step by step guide on how to install and setup W3 Total Cache for beginners.
In this article, we will show you how to install W3 Total Cache and set it up properly to maximize the benefits. We will also show you how to combine W3 Total Cache wit ha CDN service to make your site load even faster.
Before you begin, we highly recommend that you check performance of your site by using Google Page Speed and Pingdom Tools. This will give you a before and after comparison.
Below is the screenshot of our Pingdom results:
WPBeginner Pingdom November 21st

Lets get started with our setup of W3 Total Cache.

What is W3 Total Cache?

W3 Total Cache is the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. Trusted by many popular sites including: AT&T, Mashable, Smashing Magazine, WPBeginner, and millions others. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Installing W3 Total Cache in WordPress

Before you install W3 Total Cache, you need to make sure that you uninstall all other caching plugins (for example WP Super Cache). If you do not do this prior to installing, the plugin will have issues upon activation.
We have a very thorough guide explaining how to install a WordPress plugin which you can follow. Or you can follow the brief guide below:
Go to your WordPress admin panel and click on Plugins » Add New. Search for “W3 Total Cache” and you should see results like the image below:
Installing W3 Total Cache plugin for WordPress

Installing W3 Total Cache plugin for WordPress

Click on the Install Now button and then activate the plugin.

Settings and Configuration of W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a very powerful plugin, so it has tons of options. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. For those who know how to use these options, they are a gold mine. For most beginners, these options could be quite tricky and confusing. We will visit each of these options in detail, so you can properly set up W3 Total Cache. Lets start with general settings.

General Settings

You can go to the General Settings page by clicking on the Performance menu button in your WordPress admin panel. This is where you will set up the plugin by configuring basic settings. Make sure that you’re on the general settings page and not the promotional Dashboard page that this plugin has.
W3 Total Cache General Settings Page

What is Page Cache?

The first option that you see on this page is Page Cache. It is responsible for creating static cache pages for each page that is loaded, so it is not being dynamically loaded upon each page load. By having this enabled, you will significantly decrease your load time. Refer to the image below to see how Page cache works:
What is Page Cache?

As you can see normally when a user comes to your site, WordPress runs PHP scripts and MySQL queries to the database to find the requested page. Then PHP parses the data and generates a page. This process takes server resources. Having the page caching turned on, allows you to skip all that server load and show a cached copy of the page when a user requests it.
For shared hosting which most beginners use, the Disk:Enhanced method is highly recommended. You should check the Enable Page Cache box, and save all settings.
Setting up Page Cache in W3 Total Cache for WordPress

Setting up Page Cache in W3 Total Cache for WordPress

For most folks, this is all you need to do with page caching. Since this guide is for beginner level users we will skip the advanced settings of page caching because the default options are sufficient enough.
We will also skip through Minify, Database Cache, and Object Cache. The simple reason is because not all servers provide optimized results with these settings. Next option you will see is Browser Cache.

What is Browser Cache?

Every time a user visits a website, their web browser downloads all the images, CSS files, JavaScripts, and other static files in a temporary folder to enhance the user experience. This way when the same user goes to the next page, it will load much faster because all the static files are in their browser cache.
Browser Cache option in W3 Total Cache sets a time limit on the Browser Cache. Considering you don’t change your logo every day, having static files like that cached for 24 hours does not hurt you. Simply check the Enable under Browser Cache option and click Save all settings button. Once you have done that, then lets visit the Performance » Browser Cache page for more settings.
Setting up Browser Cache options in W3 Total Cache

Setting up Browser Cache options in W3 Total Cache

As you can see in the image above, we pretty much enabled everything except for the 404. When you save the settings, all settings below on that page will automatically take care of itself.
In our free WordPress setups, these are the default settings that we turn on.

What is a CDN?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network which allows you to serve your static content from multiple cloud servers rather than just one hosting server. This enables you to reduce server load and speed up your website.
We have created an infographic on What is a CDN and Why you Need a CDN for your WordPress site. We highly recommend that you check it out, so you can make an educated decision.
W3 Total Cache supports MaxCDN, Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, and Amazon Cloud Front. WPBeginner is using MaxCDN (why we use MaxCDN). This section will only apply to sites that are using CDN, or are planning on using CDN. If you think you will be using a CDN, then we recommend MaxCDN (use coupon “wpbeginner” for 25% off).
First thing you need to do to is create a Pull Zone in your MaxCDN dashboard. Log in to your MaxCDN account, click on Manage Zones and then click on Create Pull Zone button.
Configure W3 Total Cache - MaxCDN Settings

Configure W3 Total Cache - MaxCDN Settings

On the next screen you will be asked to provide details for your pull zone.

Pull Zone Name: Simply give any name to this pull zone so that you can identify it in your MaxCDN panel.
Origin Server URL: Enter your WordPress website’s URL starting with http:// and ending with a trailing slash / at the end.
Custom CDN Domain: enter any subdomain, for example: cdn.wpbeginner.com
Label: Provide description for this pull zone.
Compression: Enabling compression will save you bandwidth so it is highly recommended that you check this box.

A screenshot of how the above mentioned settings will look like:
MaxCDN Pull Zone Details

Click on the Create button and MaxCDN will create the Pull Zone. On the next screen, it will show you a URL like this one “wpb.wpbeginner.netdna-cdn.com” copy and save this URL in a text file using notepad because we will need this later.
Now that we have created a Pull Zone, the next step is to set up content zones. You can do this by going to your MaxCDN dashboard. Click on the manage button next to your pull zone that you just created. On the next screen, click on the Settings tab. The purpose of creating content zones is to add subdomains, so that we can improve user experience by queuing content from different subdomains into user’s browser. To do this click on the button labeled Custom Domains and add multiple subdomains. See the screenshot below:
MaxCDN Multiple Subdomains

Once you have added custom domains simply click on the Update button.
The next step is to set up CNAME records for the subdomains. Most of our recommended WordPress Hosting providers such as Hostgator, Bluehost, etc provide a cPanel to their clients to manage different settings of their hosting. We will describe how to set up a CNAME record in cPanel.
Log in to your cPanel dashboard and then click on Simple DNS Zone Editor under Domains.
Configure W3 Total Cache - Adding a CNAME Record

Configure W3 Total Cache - Adding a CNAME Record

On the next screen you will see a form with two fields. Enter the subdomain name you entered while creating the content zone. For example you will put cdn for cdn.wpbeginnner.com.
cPanel will automatically fill in the full domain. In the CNAME field enter the URL provided by MaxCDN when you created the pull zone. It is the URL we asked you to save in notepad.
Configure W3 Total Cache - Adding a CNAME Record

Repeat the process for all your subdomains, e.g. cdn1, cdn2, etc. Remember that only the name field will change each time and the CNAME field always have the url provided by MaxCDN for your pull zone. Once you have created CNAME records for all subdomains, it is time to go back to WordPress and setup MaxCDN with W3 Total Cache.
Go to Performance » General Settings. Scroll down till you find CDN configuration box. Check Enable and select MaxCDN from CDN Type drop down menu. Click onSave All Settings button.
Enabling MaxCDN in W3 Total Cache

After saving settings you will see a notification informing you to provide information for “Authorization Key” and “Replace default hostname with” fields and select a pull zone. Click on “Specify it here” link and W3 Total Cache will take you to the CDN page.
W3 Total Cache specify settings for MaxCDN

W3 Total Cache specify settings for MaxCDN

On the next screen click on the Authorize button. This will take you to MaxCDNwebsite where you will generate an authorization key. Copy and paste this key back in W3 Total Cache. In “Replace site’s host name with” enter the subdomain you created earlier.
Entering MaxCDN API key and setting up hostname in W3 Total Cache

Entering MaxCDN API key and setting up hostname in W3 Total Cache

Save all settings and that’s all. Your site is now configured to serve static files using MaxCDN. Now if you load your site, the image URLs should be served from the CDN subdomain rather than your site’s actual domain. For example:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/w3totalcachecdnconfig.gif
would be replaced with:
http://cdn.wpbeginner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/w3totalcachecdnconfig.gif
Now if any of your static files are not loading with the CDN, then it probably means that you will need to specify it in the custom files list setting in W3 Total Cache. We had to do it for OIO Publisher plugin that we use for serving ads. If you go to the CDN settings page, you will see the Advanced option:
Advance CDN settings in W3 Total Cache

Simply add all the files/folders that you want to include for CDN. Also if you notice, there is a rejected file list. When you make a small design update, your style.css will not update right away. So you can put that in a rejected file list for the time that you are making changes. If you just want a one-time purge, you can do that from yourMaxCDN dashboard.
Everything that we have covered up till now, will work great on most web hosting accounts. However, W3 Total Cache comes with many other options. We will try our best to explain what they are, and why we do not enable them on all sites.

Minify

Minify simply reduce the size of your static files to save you every single kilobyte that you can. However, sometimes generating that minified file can be more resource intensive then the resource it will save. We are not saying that it is a horrible function. We are simply saying that it might not be the best fit for every server. If you are like us (NOT SAVVY with server lingo), then listen to your web hosting provider.

Database Caching

Database caching reduces the server load by caching SQL queries. This eliminates the processing time of querying the database (which may not be a lot for smaller sites). When we started using this, it seemed to put a lot of load on our server. Our host recommended us to turn it off. Instead, they ended up turning on the built-in SQL caching for us. Again, use this option at your own risk. You can try it out and see how it impacts your site load time. Then simply turn it off, if the impact is not significant enough. Most hosts do not recommend this for shared hosting accounts.

Learn Blogging - 00:35

How to Setup customize and W3 Total Cache Plugin

We often get compliments from users on how fast our site loads. Everyone wants to know the secret behind a fast loading WordPress site...

Web hosting is one of the most important aspects of your website. Going with a good web host is always recommended so you get a great price and the required features for implementing search engine optimization, graphics and links.

Going with a bad web host not only affects your search engine rankings, it could cost you money in the long run. The truth of the matter is that your web hostingis going to play a huge role in your online authority. There are certain signs that can tell you whether or not you have a bad web host.

Here are the top five signs that you have a bad web host.

1. Too Much Downtime

One of the most important aspects of running a website is making sure that the website has a good uptime. The uptime for your site can directly affect sales and conversions. If your website is down frequently, it should reflect in your traffic statistics as well as in your conversions. Nobody wants a website that is down more than 10% of the time.

Every second that your website is down you are losing money. Most web hosting companies offer you a promise that the website will be up for a certain uptime percentage. However, this is fairly difficult to gauge as there is no way of actually checking the uptime before you sign up for an account with the company. Find a web hosting provider will that will guarantee you have an uptime of 99% as well as good reviews from customers.

2. Poor Customer Service

The customer service for your web hosting should be available 24 hours a day seven days a week. Whether you just have a question about the billing cycle or you are experiencing adware, viruses or other malfunctions on your site, the customer service department should be able to guide you in getting your website back up and running or answer any questions about billing to your account. If you cannot get in touch with the customer service department of your web host there is a problem.

Good web hosting companies will offer you technical and customer support 24 hours a day and on holidays. Having a company that cherishes you as a customer is essential tokeeping your website updated and on the Internet. If you cannot get in touch with your web host company’s customer service department, it’s probably time to go with a new web hosting company.

3. Slow Load Times

The amount of time that it takes for your website to load can be a determining factor in whether or not customers convert into sales. There is nothing more annoying than waiting for a website to load when with the simple click of a back button you can have other websites within a couple of seconds. Chances are if it’s taking your site too long to load there’s not enough bandwidth across the host server. Cheaper web hosting companies will sell shared hosting packages to multiple websites and bog down the processors and amount of bandwidth across the server making the websites slow. If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, change your web host company.

4. Poor Security

Security on your website should be top notch. If your web host company is not offering features such as firewall technology, antivirus software and anti-malware applications, you run the risk of losing all of your information or getting hacked. Cheaper web host companies will not offer security applications leaving your site open to being hacked on the Internet.

Go with the web host that is going to offer you the best security in order to keep your information and your data safe. Remember, if you’re running an online store, it is not only your data that is in jeopardy, it is also your customer’s data. Go with the web hostcompany that is going to give you and your customers the proper security features needed to keep data safe across the servers.

5. Lack Of Features

The features of your web hosting company should be on par with the price you’re paying per month. Having the ability to implement PHP scripts, Joomla, Media Wiki or b2evolution technology into your website is essential to staying with the trends in the market. Features such as WordPress, Drupal and vBulletin are fairly commonplace with most good web hosting companies. If you are paying for a hosting company and you do not have these features, or access to install the features yourself, you need to find a new company that will suit your needs.

Web hosting is one of the most important aspects of your website. When you go with a cheap host you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage. If your web host has any of these attributes, cancel your subscription and go with the host such as HostGator.

Web Design - 02:18

5 Signs Of A Bad Web Host Servers

Web hosting is one of the most important aspects of your website. Going with a good web host is always recommended so you get a great pric...

How fast is fast enough?

While 1-second load time would be nice, if you manage to get a load time under 3 seconds, you’re doing fine. If it’s under 7 seconds, it’s okay too (but you have to try to improve it). Over 10 seconds and you’re losing money in noticeable quantities.

According to Strangeloop, who tested the load times of the top 2,000 retail websites, web pages keep getting bigger, and the average site takes 10 seconds to load. Typical leading eCommerce sites take 4.9 seconds to serve usable content.

So how fast should your site be? While Jakob Nielsen says people can handle up to 10 second load time, consider this:

47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less.
57% of visitors will abandon a page that takes 3 seconds or more to load.
At peak traffic times, more than 75% of online consumers left for a competitor’s site rather than suffer delays.
According to this scientific study tolerable waiting time for information retrieval is approximately 2 seconds. Adding feedback, like a progress bar, can push tolerable waiting time to 38 seconds (so if your site is slow, add progress bars or equivalent).
A site that loads in 3 seconds experiences 22% fewer page views, a 50% higher bounce rate, and a 22% fewer conversions than a site that loads in 1 second. While a site that loads in 5 seconds experiences 35% fewer page views, a 105% higher bounce rate, and 38% fewer conversions.
8% of people cite slow loading pages as a key reason for abandoning their purchase.

Only 25% of the Alexa 2000 uses a CDN. A fifth of sites fail to implement relatively simple performance-enhancing techniques. Some sites are of course fast. The fastest of them (according to Strangeloop study) were CVS.com (1.02s), Polo.com (1.9s),eCrater.com (1.95s). Amazon’s page load time was 3.26s.

Tools to analyze your site speed:

Pingdom. Test the load time of that page, analyze it and find bottlenecks
Google PageSpeed insights analyzes the content of a web page, then generates suggestions to make that page faster.
Yahoo! YSlow
WebPageTest

A thing to remember here is that scores don’t matter – it’s how fast your site is what makes a difference. These scoring tools let you look at potential issues and advise on best practices, but they will not solve your site’s problems for you.

How to make Google Analytics speed tracking more accurate

You’ve probably seen that Google Analytics will tell you your site speed, page speed etc. Pretty useful stuff. I urge you not to just look at average page load time, but go deeper (e.g. look at the Distributions tab to see page load speed distributions). ‘DOM Timings’ reports are useful as they show how long it takes for your pages to become usable.

Its’ pretty accurate since all load speed data in Google Analytics is taken from users’ browsers. The problem is that it only takes in data from about 1-5% of the visits, and hence it’s often not a statistically valid sample size. Instead of 5%, you could store it for 100% of visitors without any downsides. You only need to add this little line to your Google Analytics script:

_gaq.push([‘_setSiteSpeedSampleRate’, 100]);

Add it above the ‘trackpageview’ line in your Google Analytics code (hat tip to Dan Barker). Make sure you don’t break your Google Analytics code when adding this :)

Note that not all browsers support it (Safari), you will never see a 100% sample rate, but this will increase it significantly.

Impact on conversions

Main point: faster sites get higher conversions.

Check out these studies:

Conversion rate increases 74% when page load time decreases from 8 to 2 seconds (real user monitoring data from 33 major retailers)
Aberdeen Group study showed that a one second delay in page load time equals 11% fewer page views, a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction, and 7% loss in conversions.
One guy got an 8.47% conversion rate improvement by moving his landing page onto a faster host.
Shopzilla sped up their site by 5 seconds and increased the conversion rate 7-12%.
Shaving 2.2 seconds off Mozilla’s landing pages increased download conversions by 15.4%, which they estimate will result in 60 million more Firefox downloads per year.
Amazon reported already in 2006 that they got 1% revenue increase for every 100ms of improvement.

What will a 1-second delay cost you? Find the answer on the image below:

Image credit

Tagman has a conversion loss calculator so you can work out how much revenue you could gain by speeding up your site.

Are you thinking about mobile users? You should.

Let me say that I have Google Analytics access to hundreds of sites across the world. I see how many mobile users there are on these sites, and I always look at the growth rate. In my experience, for most sites in the US mobile visitors add up to around 30%-40% of total viewers. The trend is up everywhere. Back that with the global statistics that say web surfing on mobile devices will surpass desktop computers by 2015, and you have a serious case on your hands.

Mobile users usually have slower connections, but they expect sites to load just as fast. To be precise, 85% of mobile users expect pages to load as fast or faster than they load on the desktop.

11 Low-Hanging Fruits for Improving Site Speed

#1 Start using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

It’s so worth it, especially if you have a decent amount of traffic. Your audience will thank you with extra dollars.

Check out these options:

MaxCDN – Lots of people say good things.
CacheFly – Another trustworthy provider.
Cloudflare. Part CDN, part security tool. I use it on ConversionXL.
Inscapsula – similar to Cloudflare, but has shown to offer a much better level of security / protection according to research.

Here’s a great article on how to pick a CDN.

#2 Host your static files in the cloud that uses a CDN

Serve static content from a cookieless domain, backed by a CDN. Why cookieless domains? Every time a browser sends an HTTP request, it has to send all associated cookies that have been set for that domain and path along with it. Static content, such as images, javascript and CSS files, don’t need to be accompanied by cookies. You can decrease latency by serving static resources from a domain that doesn’t serve cookies.

Check out these 2 options:

#3 Install Google PageSpeed on your server

Tell your web host guys to set it up, you’ll love the results.

PageSpeed improves web page latency and bandwidth usage by changing the resources on that web page to implement web performance best practices. It will automatically apply web performance best practices to web pages and associated assets (CSS, JavaScript, images) without requiring that you modify your existing content or workflow. Plug’n’play.

#4 Tell your hosting provider that you wantMemcached installed

Memcached is an open source high-performance distributed memory object caching system intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

Consult with your system admin first about your particular setup, but in most casesMemcached will be a great help (or alternatively look at Redis).

Unlike PageSpeed, this doesn’t do anything upon installing, so you need to configure your sites to use it. If you use WordPress, it plays nicely with W3 Total Cache plugin and you can set Memcached to do the caching.

#5 Optimize your images

Images can be large, and make your website slow to load. That’s why you need to reduce the file size of your photos that you use on your blog posts and other content, logo files, graphics etc. The good thing is that you can significantly reduce image size without compromising quality.

If you use WordPress, use a plugin like EWWW Image Optimizer which optimizes your images as you upload them (can also optimize them in bulk in Media Library).

Everybody else check out Kraken as a great image optimization service.

#6 Use a fast web host

Not all web hosts are made equal. In fact, your web host makes a huge difference.

If you have a decent amount of traffic, you should not be on hosts like Bluehost, Hostgator, GoDaddy and other low budget web hosts like that.

WP Engine – Web hosting made for WordPress. Blazing fast, fanatic support, stuff that dreams are made of. If you run WordPress and want a fast site, this is it.
LiquidWeb – Shared hosting, dedicated hosting, cloud hosting, CDN. They have it all.
SingleHop – Best dedicated server host I’ve come across.
Hetzner – Best deals on dedicated servers.
Storm on Demand – The best priced cloud hosting service out there. Runs ConversionXL too. Great support.

#7 Minimize round-trip times (RTTs)

RTT refers to all the requests required when a user accesses your website. This is not a size of file issue, but a number of requests issue. Each asset that needs loading – css files, javascript files, images files etc – is requested individually. So your browser sends a request to the web server, which sends information back. The same for each file. That’s why an important strategy for speeding up web page performance is to minimize the number of round trips that need to be made.

Google has a handy manual for doing it all. Here’s a quick summary (have your web guys take care of it):

Combine all your javascript files into one to minimize requests. If you’re technically inclined, check out Google Closure Compiler.
Combine images with CSS sprites. The higher the number of images used on a page, the more roundtrips there are between visitor’s browser and the web server. Ideally you merge all tiny background images into one, and use CSS to show them. Your front-end developer (CSS guy) should take care of it. Some tools to create CSS sprites: Compass, SpritePad, Spriteme.
Avoid CSS @import. Instead of @import, use a <link> tag for each stylesheet. This allows the browser to download stylesheets in parallel, which results in faster page load times.
Minimize DNS lookups. Avoid using multiple domain names when loading a site.
Minimize redirects. If needed, always use http redirects instead of javascript.

#8 Use caching (plugins)

Many caching tools will already take care of the issues mentioned in step 7. If you use WordPress, you should really take a look at W3 Total Cache plugin.

#9 Compress your website with gzip

Compression reduces response times by reducing the size of the HTTP response. Gzipping generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Some caching extensions / plugins do it automatically, sometimes you need to set it up manually at the web server level. Here’s one of many millions of manuals on how to do it.

#10 Add an Expires header

Browsers use cache to reduce the number and size of HTTP requests and hence making web pages load faster. A web server uses the Expires header in the HTTP response to tell the browser how long a component can be cached. For static components: implement “Never expire” policy by setting far future Expires header, and for dynamic components use an appropriate Cache-Control header to help the browser with conditional requests.

While most caching systems take care of it, you need to look into it.

#11 Switch off all the plugins you don’t need or use

I see a lot of WordPress and other sites that have a ton of plugins / extensions installed that are actually not used. Many of them require loading different css and javascript files – all that slows down your site. Perform a plugin audit and switch off all the plugins you don’t use.

Learn Blogging - 01:44

How to Increasing Website Speed Tools and Tips

How fast is fast enough? While 1-second load time would be nice, if you manage to get a load time under 3 seconds, you’re doing fine. If...

This post is for anyone who knows they’ve got what it takes to be a content superstar — but just can’t find that tipping point.

You are relentless. Thorough. Creative. Curious. You can write most people under the table. You read like mad andaren’t afraid to catch hell.

You are a self-starter, and you work hard. In fact, that hard work has paid off.

You’ve built up a nice little audience for your blog. You get a steady stream of visitors to your site every day, some meaningful comments with each post you publish, and occasionally someone emails to tell you how much they love your writing.

But you’ve noticed that, despite your maniacal consistency, things have started to stall.

Your numbers are starting to drop, especially your repeat visitors. Subscriptions to your email list are barely trickling in. Nobody is buying your products and/or services. Your ideas aren’t spreading.

The ugly truth is your site isn’t growing anymore — even with a half dozen guest posts on big-audience blogs.

Staring at the ceiling you start to toy with the idea that maybe being a wildly-spectacular content producer just isn’t in your cards. That your fate is to becubicle bound forever.

You are about to roll over and accept the fact. But you can’t let it go. And there, crawling through your web reports once last time, you stumble upon a hypothesis: maybe your website performance sucks.

Why you need to care about site speed

Seems like a strange thing to worry about, right? But the speed of your site affects every metric you care about.

Bounce rate. Search ranking. Conversion. Page views. Reader satisfaction. Even revenue (otherwise known as money in your bank account).

And just about every major retailer online has come to the same conclusion: making your site faster can increase conversions.

Last summer Sherice Jacobs reported on a speed test run by Google. Then-Google VP Marissa Mayer asked users if they’d like 10 or 30 results per page. Hands down, web users wanted 30 results per page.

But when Google rolled out the changes and tested for speed (they are obsessed with speed) their jaws dropped. Traffic had dropped by 20% on those pages with 30 results.

The download speed difference? Half a second.

Amazon experienced a similar drop in traffic and revenue due to a fraction-of-a-second load delay. Impatient bunch, we web users.

Did you know this would happen with a faster website?

Last year Chad Summerhill, Manager of Digital Marketing at U-Pack, explained how their web team buckled down on site speed in 2011 as a major site-wide performance improvement initiative.

Chad said they “revamped code, optimized images, etc. to give our web pages a diet — and we’ve seen real improvements in site speed.”

What they didn’t plan on, however, was this: lowering page load time led to a dramatic rise in conversion rates across the site.

They’d already formed the excellent habit of tracking their website’s overall conversion rate. So they know a dramatic push of the needle when they see one. And a 15% increase in overall conversion made them do a happy dance.

Was speed behind this conversion boost? Their digging demonstrated it was a huge contributor. Their organic pages got the bulk of the benefit.

Think about it.

Anyone who fanatically tests the effectiveness of PPC landing pages will come to the same conclusion: thinner and faster pages convert.

But what does all this mean to you?

For starters, site speed affects your search ranking.

As John Eckman points out, page speed is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. In other words, fast load times equal higher rankings. And higher rankings lead to more traffic.

Now, page speed is just one of about 200 signals Google uses to determine rank. And Geoff Kenyon claims that less than one percent of search queries actually are affected by page speed.

That’s certainly not an excuse to ignore it.

A faster web site means a better visitor experience. A slow website will lead to a poor user experience. Your bounce rate will grow. Page views will drop. Most important, you will lose money.

Strange Loop puts it like this: a one-second delay can cost you 7% percent of sales.

If you make $1,000 a month from your site — that’s seventy bucks a month you are losing — and $840 a year. Can you afford to just throw away $70 a month? $840 a year?

Unless you are Mark Zuckerberg, I doubt it. Now that I have your attention, let’s look at what actually reduces site speed.

What slows down site speed?

The first place to look is your host.

Your speed problem may be from the uneven quality of service that comes with sharing a server. Some days are good. Some days are bad.

It could also come from choosing a generic hosting provider as opposed to one whose stack is finely tuned for your CMS. For example, WordPress users will see significant performance improvements by going with a premium managed WordPress host.

A good managed host should also be able to help you solve the litany of additional factors that could be slowing down your site. I’ll list a few here and then jump into what you need to do to test for these issues.

Widget or plugin overload: In this category you’ll find common household names like a comment plugin or Hello Bar — notorious for killing page speed. In fact, Matthew Ogborne discovered that his Facebook Like button was downloading 83 Kb of data at 1.34 seconds of load time. He yanked it. Joshua Bixby had the same reaction when he discovered that it took 2 seconds to download the original Google+ button. Google has since fixed the problem, but the lesson is clear: know what kind of burden a widget or plugin will put on a site.
Too Many Ads: Of course there is a temptation to display ads once you’ve got high levels of traffic. However, one of the major causes of high-bounce rates are slow-loading ads. Weigh the cost of each additional ad.
Bloated images: Giant graphics can grab attention and pull readers in. But large images can also make downloading the page a burden.
Incompatible Browsers and Apps: Chrome and Shockwave Flash are a great example. They don’t play nice. Who to blame? Google, of course, but it’s your responsibility to test your site (and all the pretty trinkets hanging from it) across browsers.
Design Theme: A theme is your blog’s paint job. It’s what makes heads turn. It’s what makes people bristle with envy. And in some cases, it’s what makes your site painfully slow. Use a framework that works.
Analytics Code: That snippet of code you dropped across your site to measure performance might add a hair’s breadth of drag to your site speed. Maybe 100 milliseconds here. 100 milliseconds there. But it all adds up.
Sign Up Forms: The back end code of a sub form (like Aweber or Google Feedburner) can make additional calls to your SQL server that trip up your speed.
Affiliate Code: Another line of code … another call to the server … keeps your site crawling.

The issues above … bandwidth thieves. All of them. Here’s how to round ’em up.

6 tools to test your site’s speed

Fortunately there are plenty of free tools out there to test how fast your site is. And except for the Plugin Performance Profiler, there is a lot of overlap between the tools.

Since these tools are fast and free, it’s worth testing your site on all of them to see if there are problems another tool might miss.

1. Page Speed Insights

Drop your URL into the text box of this dandy little tool, click “Submit,” and you’ll get an instant report of your site’s performance. You’ll see a list of recommendations that are broken down into high-, medium- or low-priority. If you are the curious sort, you can even explore the experimental recommendations (but not until after you knock out the others). A must use.

2. Google Analytics Plugin by Yoast

Joost de Valk of Yoast.com created a sweet Google Analytics plugin that includes a Site Speed feature, too. Performance reports will show you how quickly or slowly your page loads across different browsers and around the world.

3. Pingdom Website Speed Test

If you want to test individual pages, Pingdom can deliver some robust reports. The nice thing about Pingdom is that your results will reflect real-world conditions, because the tests are performed on real browsers like Chrome.

4. YSlow

Yahoo! designed this tool based on their rules for high performance pages. Run a test and you’ll get a summary report that includes recommendations for site performance. What makes this tool unique is the performance analysis tools they offer, like Smush.it and JSLint.

5. P3 (Performance Plugin Profiler)

Anyone who uses WordPress knows that plugins are a beautiful thing. These applications can help you do just about anything you want. Theme-Check tests your theme to make sure it meets WP standards. TweetMeme adds a button that lets visitors share your content on Twitter. PopUp Domination may help you capture leads.

There are more than 21,000 plugins to choose from. But each one adds a cost. Each one can steal bandwidth and make your site crawl. So you have to make hard decisions about which plugins are worth the extra load to your site. The Plugin Performance Profiler will audit your plugins and identify which ones are hogging bandwidth. Root out the culprits — and then disable it when you are done.

6. Load Impact

This test simulates thousands of users hitting your site at the same time — which might happen if you get a tweet from Lady Gaga or a link on the front page of Reddit. You’ll be able to see where your site breaks, spot your bottlenecks, and fix problems before real users land on your site.

Web Design - 01:38

Why You Need a Fast Website - wordpress Tips

This post is for anyone who knows they’ve got what it takes to be a content superstar — but just can’t find that tipping point. You ar...

What is server response time?

A web browser requests something from your server.
Your web server responds to that request.

The time between those two events is known as the "Server Response Time". No matter how optimized your web pages are for speed, if your server response time is slow your pages will display slow.

Google says ¹ "You should reduce your server response time under 200ms".

How to improve server response time

There are two basic ways to do this

Learning - use the hosting you have more efficiently (keep reading)
Paying - pay more for hosting and hardware (skip to hosting options).

This page can help you determine what is the best route for your situation. As with most things for a webmaster, this is a time vs money decision.

Server response time factors

Four main things come together to determine your server response time:

Website Traffic - More traffic, more problems.
Website Resource Usage - If each of your webpages used less resources, you could improve server response time and not spend money
Web Server Software - If you change your web server software or configuration you likely could improve server response time and not spend money
Web Hosting - If you improve the quality and scope of your web hosting you can improve your server response time, but you will have to spend money

Website Traffic

As a website gets more traffic, it uses more server resources. A website that once was quick, crisp and fast becomes slow and sluggish as traffic goes up.

How does traffic affect server response time?

Just like a restaurant serving cheeseburgers, a web server can only serve so many people at one time. The longer it takes to serve each person, the less people can be served. The more resources that are used to serve people the less resources there are for backend things like PHP or other things that may be needed to serve your users.

In terms of cheeseburgers, if more people are at the counter taking orders then there are less people cooking cheeseburgers.

Website Resource Usage

Each thing your webpage has to do to be displayed adds up to some pretty heavy server usage. The average Wordpress theme it is likely loading several stylesheets, several scripts, and other resources from your own server like images.

That means that for each page view of your website you are likely using the webserver dozens of times. That adds up.

Here is an oversimplified example. Lets say that a webserver could handle exactly 100 requests per second. In that one second you could serve...

Four visitors a page that used 25 resources
Ten visitors a page that used 10 resources
Twenty five visitors a page that used 4 resources
One hundred visitors a page that used no additional resources

In that admittedly oversimplified example, the webmaster who uses page resources wisely can improve server capacity by enormous amounts. Not only will the server be able to serve more visitors, it will respond quicker because its load is reduced.

To find out how many requests your webpage is making you can use this tool which will display many things about your webpage including how many resources it is using.

Reduce the resources a page uses

The less resources like css, javascript, etc. your pages use, the faster your pages will load and the less stress you will put on your web server.

Combine external CSS files - Many themes and designs have separated all the CSS into several different files, but all CSScan be in one file so the page is calling less resources per page.
Combine external javascript files - Just like CSS, the javascripts your pages use can all be located in the html or inone combined external js file. Too often they are not and this creates wasteful external calls.
Lazy load / defer images - Deferring images lets the webpage to be displayed quickly without calling and downloading each image before showing the page.
Inline small CSS and Javascript - In some cases, you do not even need to have your CSS and Javascript in an external file. If you put them in the HTML file itself, then no additional calls would be required for them.
Wise keep-alive usage - Make sure you know how your server is using keep-alive as it can truly affect how your server fulfills requests.

Following the page speed best practices will increase the amount of people your server can serve effectively. Reducing the amount of files each webpage needs to call also reduces the work the server needs to do.

Web hosting

Make sure you have the right web host for the job. The first step is to ensure you are not stretching the resources you have too thin.

If you are like me, you started out with the cheapest possible host.

If that is true, now that you have more traffic you will need to upgrade yourhosting. Here are my general thoughts and recommendations on hosting.

Wordpress hosting

The truth is if you are using Wordpresss it would be wise to get Wordpress specific web hosting. This type of hosting optimizes for the the inherit problemsthat come with Wordpress and dynamic content in general. A good Wordpress host will start out at about 20 to 30 dollars a month.

WP Engine

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the economical choice to start out with. My general thoughts on shared hosting is that good shared hosting is usually around 5 dollars a month. You can get it for less, but beware things like "99 cent hosting" or something unless it is a specific sale.

A trustable shared web host should have been in business for a several years and should have a phone number that you can call for help. The only low cost shared hosting I can truly recommend is...

Bluehost - I have used Bluehost for many years (In fact this website started on a Bluehost shared hosting plan way back in 2006)

VPS Hosting

Virtual Private Server - A VPS host is the next step after you outgrow shared hosting. It can require more knowledge for the more economical VPS hosting packages or you have to pay up for the "Managed VPS host". VPS hosting ranges from 20 to 50 dollars a month for a typical service, more for higher features.

KnownHost - I use Knownhost SSD VPS for this site now. You won't be wowed by their decidedly non fancy website, but they offer rock solid VPS hosting.

Dedicated Server

A dedicated server server is your own machine that only you are using. It is the next step after you outgrow VPS hosting. Like VPS hosting, dedicated servers have managed accounts and unmanaged accounts if you know your way around a server. Quality dedicated servers typically cost from 90 dollars to several hundred dollars a month.

Cloud server / Advanced

If you don't need a panel and you know your way around a box. These guys are great for just spinning up test servers or app servers. I have used them full time for some of my projects.

Digital Ocean

Content delivery networks

A CDN (content delivery network) will store your files all over the world. This allows users all over the world to see your pages faster because they are receiving files from closer to their physical location.

Content delivery networks are a good solution when your users are spread around the globe or a large country. For example, if your webpages are hosted on the east coast or west coast of America, you will have users from the other coast that may see improvements if you add a CDN.

Learn more about content delivery networks.

Wordpress / PHP usage

Every Wordpress site on the web uses PHP. Most of those pages have slow server response times because instead of just handing over a file, the server has to take other steps, gather additional resources and complete tasks prior to responding to the web browser requesting the webpage.

The more things your server has to do to serve a customer, the slower it must respond to others. So if you have a php script on your webpage you need to ensure that the thing that the PHP is doing is important enough to slow down your pages.

The way PHP works is basically it must complete the php stuff before your page can display. Even if you try to "push" content to the user, the server has to read and follow those PHP instructions. There are a surprising amount of websites that are ineffectively using PHP that they may not even need to be using.

Caching

Wordpress users should make sure they have a caching solution. This one step is likely the most effective single step a Wordpress user can take to speed up their site and free their web server from unnessasary work. To improve performance try W3 Total Cache orWP Super Cache.

Web Server Software Configuration and Selection

Are you sure you are using the right web server software? There are several choices, and most of them are free. Here are a few of the more popular ones that I have experience with.

Apache
Nginx
Litespeed

No matter what web server software you are using, it can likely be configured better for your own purposes. If you do not know enough about your web server to configure it, you should probably hire someone to help you. It can get pretty detailed.

Let's go over some pros and cons of each server.

Apache

Apache is free and is the most used webserver on the web. Because it is so well used it also enjoys great documentation. A pretty good portion of tutorials on the web kinda assume you have Apache because it was used by just about every website not too long ago. The default install of Apache is not the best performer, but it has so many users and modules and add ons that it can be made to do just about anything.

Our goal for now is to improve server response time, and Apache is highly configurable and alot of people know how to do so. Apache is a safe bet for just about any website, but it has to be configured well by a knowlegeble person to do its best. Php runs at an average pace.

Nginx

The Nginx web server is free and it is the darling of most high traffic websites and for web developers because it performs like a dream even at its default install. Nginx uses less resources and can therefore handle much more traffic than just about any other webserver out there. Nginx typically has the fastest server response time in my experience. PHP runs fast with Nginx.

Litespeed

Litespeed webserver has free versions and paid versions. It is much faster and performs better that Apache, with the added benefit of being completely compatible with Apache. Any configurations you make to Apache are respected by Litespeed and it uses the same .htaccess file as Apache. This means that moving to Litespeed is pretty painless for Apache users. PHP runs six times faster with Litespeed.

How can I use this to improve my server response time?

In a nutshell... You can significantly improve the server response time by changing your web server software or by configuring it better.

If you have money, pay someone to configure what you have or to decide what to use. If you do not have money then you should study them and decide for yourself. In fact I would say one of the main advantages that someone with no money has over large companies is the ability to learn, change and experiment.

Choosing the right webserver can trump many other pagespeed issues in one step and can dramatically improve you server response time. It means you have to learn and research. But you can do it.

What server to study / use?

In general I recommend Nginx (free). It is a great skill to have. It also performs incredibly. I can't think of many situations where a Wordpress install on Apache wouldn't be drastically improved by just installing Nginx. I have had great results with it and it seems to be taking over the top sites on the web.

Learn Blogging - 01:33

What is server response time In Website

What is server response time? A web browser requests something from your server. Your web server responds to that request. The time ...

1st Lessons