Posts with tag "Wordpress"

Rewarding those WordPress plugin authors

share-the-wealth One of the nice things I like about payday is that I can chip away at my list of desktop software and WordPress plugin authors that I want to send a donation to as a way of saying thank you. This is different that software or plugin and services that I use across all my blogs, or in my daily computing life.

As it is I already subscribe to things like Clicky for my blog stats and have paid for a license for WordWeb Pro but that still leaves quite a number of plugins I want to show my appreciation for. Hell I’ve even donated to developer’s whose software I may end up never using but can still appreciate the work that has gone into them.

It is easy enough to try all kinds of software and plugins and ease our conscience about using them for long periods of time because they have been created by developers who are good enough to let us use them indefinitely for free.

That doesn’t change the fact that these hard working people deserve recognition for their hard work; and what better recognition that a few bucks to maybe buy something that will let them build an even better product or even buy a case of beer to celebrate with.

So now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to check my list for this month and show some thanks.

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The 7 second page killer

stopwatch For the past little while I have been fighting an ongoing battle to try and cut the time it is taking for the blog to load and it has led to an interesting observation of what people think is too long for that blog page to load. I wrote about this previously and ended up getting some great suggestion in the comments which over the past few days I have implemented.

Everything from hard-coding paths instead of using the WordPress tags which require calls to the database through to finally installing WP-SuperCache which is a handy tool for speeding up page display. I’ve double checked the graphics being used to make sure they aren’t contributing to the problem and still I come back to my original thinking that this is a WordPress problem.

Even after everything I have done the best page load speed I can get is 7 seconds and while this may not seem like a lot there are folks who think this is too long. Long enough that they will hit the next button and think twice about coming back. Is it reasonable for them to expect the pages to load quicker or are they just being exceptionally picky?

It doesn’t really matter either way because it’s their 7 seven seconds that they don’t want to be wasting waiting for some page to load. The problem is that there comes a point that from the blog owners point of view there is nothing else that they can do – everything has been tried and if there are improvements to be made it nothing you can do.

7 seconds may not seem like a lot but as a blog owner you might want to keep in mind that something as simple as 7 seconds can make the difference in readers returning another day – or not.

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Okay WordPress you really need to address this

hanging in there I like WordPress. There are times thought that I would really like to pull my hair out over things it does, or rather doesn’t do. Right now I am using the newest version (2.7.1) and I have spent the last two days scouring Google blogsearch looking for the answer to one very simple question

WTF is up with the page load time?

I have tried every trick I can find in the way of cleaning up the header code, I’ve reduced the number of widgets I run, I’ve made sure that the sidebar loads after the page content and yet it still hangs with a blank screen whenever the page is (re)loaded. Once it loads the display time is great – really great but that momentary hang when the browser first reaches out for the other end of the URL is agonizing.

And it’s not just here either as I have seen the same problem on other WordPress blogs. As well the Admin page loading is even worse with you almost having enough time to go to the kitchen and get a fresh cup of coffee. I don’t know what is causing this problem – maybe it isn’t WordPress but something that every blog using the software is doing wrong – but either way it sure would be nice to know.

So how about it WordPress can we please have some kind of word from the mount as to what the hell the problem is?

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Think twice about using magazine style blog themes

down graph A number of months back I decided to experiment on WinExtra by trying out a more magazine style approach to the design and layout. Around the same time I started working for Duncan over at The Inquisitr and I saw how well the magazine style worked for him so I figured – what the hell can’t hurt to try.

It took me a few days to find the theme layout I liked and then a couple more to get it working the way I wanted but it was up and running. The response seemed to be pretty positive at the time so I figured I had made a good decision. Sure it meant that I had to do all my posts from the WordPress admin online editor mainly because of the custom fields the theme required to display the pictures properly. I gotta tell that had to be one of the harder parts for me because it meant I couldn’t use Windows Live Writer – that was painful.

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WTF Is Up With WordPress?

WordPress I had hoped that with the recent upgrade to 2.6.1 one of the major bugaboos with WordPress would finally have been fixed since is hasn’t been working for as long as I have been trying to do a very simple operation. Now I don’t know if it is something I am doing wrong or if in fact the WordPress team have forgotten that people might really need to a couple of the following things:

  • Delete Categories
  • Delete Pages

You know – that most common thing we all need to do at some point but for some reason none of the recent installs of WordPress have allowed this to be done. I can understand the need to fix security holes and the such but common on folks not being able to delete something strikes me a being pretty stupid.

So how about it – either tell me what the hell I am doing wrong or if in fact this is a problem fix the damn thing.

Update: maybe chalk it up to getting bleary eyed looking at the Admin back end and trying to update a whole bunch of stuff but I finally clued in to the one way that Pages can be deleted. I was trying to delete them from the Page listing area by selecting the one(s) I wanted to delete and then clicking the delete button – didn’t work. Had to actually open the page in the editor and select to delete it from there.

Categories are still giving me some grief though.

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From the Pipeline – 6.9.08

  • Category: Odds & Ends
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  • Comments are off for this post
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  • Posted 1835 days ago

 

Well another address to the faithful by His Jobness is over and the analysis of his brilliance is starting to peter out and Techmeme is returning the the normal echoing of daily tech news. Hopefully by tomorrow we will see the return of the regular echoing throughout the tech blogosphere. In the meantime here’s a few things that caught my eye in today’s FriendFeed pipeline – and no there’s no blurbs about Apple.

Now we see blogs’ commercial impact :: Baltimore Sun – a look at the potential effects that blogs could have and are having on business.

Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class :: The Chronicle – some law professors are getting a little fed up and are starting to ban laptops from their classes.

Spying on the Text Generation :: Boston.com – an extensive article looking at how parents are dealing with the texting generation that they have brought into the world.

Fix Excessive Firefox 3 CPU and Hard Disk Usage :: ghacks – for the brave folks out there trying the newest version of Firefox a few suggestions to help tame it.

Building a Blog Network is Expensive :: XFEP – part of the idea of blogging for some is gaining fame and fortune by running a network of many blogs. It may not be as easy as you think.

Did your WordPress site get hacked? :: Holy Shmoly – a really good overview of WordPress blogs being hacked with some tips to help you combat any damaging effects.

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From the Pipeline – 5.31.08

The end of the month but it doesn’t feel any different except maybe – just maybe – getting warmer finally. Going from the low 50′s one day to the mid 70′s a day later though is a tad bit ridiculous. In the meantime though here’s a few of the things I found of interest in today’s FriendFeed pipeline.

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held :: Coding Horror – there is definitely one thing you can say about Jeff Atwood and that is he can be very passionate about the things he cares about. He was one of my favorite bloggers when I was developing and he still is now I stick to blogging. Keep up the good work Jeff.

Miscommunication between GoogleTalk and Winamp :: Colby Olson – use Winamp? .. Use GTalk? .. finding they don’t play nice when you want GTalk to display the song playing as your GTalk status? Well Colby’s here to help ya all out.

How Web 2.0 Is Killing Software Development :: Profy – Cyndy lets loose with a style to make a cranky old fart proud – you go girl :)

More About the about: in Firefox :: Firefox Facts – a handy list of tips on how to use the about page in Firefox to get information about your install of Firefox and some other goodies.

Bank loses tapes with data on 4.5M clients :: Computerworld – and they want us to trust more and more companies with our online or offline data – ya .. right .. that’s a good idea

Amazing Food Art :: Toxel – just for some Saturday evening fun :)

WordPress Themes Collection :: Blog Oh! Blog – another site to save away somewhere safe for that day when you go looking for a new blog theme.

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Just a wacky idea

Just a wacky idea to share with you I was reading a post today over at the Broadstuff blog written by Alan Patrick where he was discussing an earlier post by Fred Wilson about comment fragmentation – which is becoming one of the more hot topics out there in the blogosphere. Again the main culprit for this fragmentation is FriendFeed because of our ability to comment about someone’s post there instead of on the actual blog. The feeling is that this is breaking down the lines of conversation and taking the originating site out of the loop.

The other culprit that some folks like to point fingers at as well is Disqus which is third party commenting platform that a growing number of bloggers are using. The reason being here is that the comments are basically on the Disqus servers and out of the bloggers control and when combined with FriendFeed (Disqus is one of the services that FriendFeed lets you pull in) whole conversations can take place without having to go anywhere near the originating blog.

Well the obvious solution right off the bat here is for Disqus to add write back abilities to their API so that any comments added in FriendFeed to the Disqus thread there would also show up on the blog. Now I know that they are working on adding this ability but I don’t think it can come soon enough personally.

However there is one idea that as wacky as it might sound could be a partial solution to this comment fragmentation but only really if you were running WordPress. Yup .. that’s my suggestion WordPress should acquire Disqus and make it an integral part of the WordPress installation; both on WordPress.com and self-hosted installations.

Now before you fall to the floor laughing at this crazy old fart think it through for a moment. The reason I suggest Disqus over its competitors is that it is drop dead simple to use which is in keeping with the whole idea of WordPress. Disqus already has an available API and only needs to add the write back capabilities into it and all kinds of social type sites would be able to hook into it – which opens up all kinds of possibilities I am sure.

Doing this would also solve the problem of our comments not being on our own blogs along with cutting down on a lot of the comment fragmentation that is going on. This could work as well with IntenseDebate but their comment interface is a lot more complicated that the one from Disqus and may prove difficult to integrate into a WordPress code base as it goes against the simplicity of WordPress. It wouldn’t work with sezWho as far as I can tell because their product just sits on top of the existing WordPress comment system and besides like they said today they are more interested in the reputation angle of comment makers.

So yes this is a completely wacky idea I don’t deny it but a lot stranger ideas have taken hold and actually happened – why not this one?

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