Category Archives: WordPress
WordPress
2011 Blog Year in Review
| 2011 Statistics | |
|---|---|
| New Posts | 90 |
| Total Posts | 112 |
| Page Views | 10,584 |
| Google Webmaster Tools (9 months) | |
| Search Clicks (web) | 2,037 |
| Search Impressions (web) | 57,688 |
| Open Site Explorer SEOmoz | |
| Domain Authority | 20 |
| Home Page Authority | 27 |
| Linking Root Domains | 14 |
Top Read Posts of 2011
- WordPress nginx proxy cache
- Las Vegas Free Play Coupons
- Blackjack Strategy Card
- Blackjack Hands per Hour
- Blackjack House Advantage – Expected Value
- Optimize WordPress for Page Speed YSlow and Zoompf
- Free Las Vegas Buffet
- Free Rooms in Vegas
- Blackjack Money Management
- Blackjack Basic Strategy – Splitting Pairs
WordPress author information in Google using rel=”me” rel=”author”
Google is now displaying author information in search results.
Here are the steps necessary to set up your WordPress site to implement author information in google search.
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Menus
Select the Screen Options link and make sure that Link Relationship (XFN) is checked.
Go to the menu item that displays the author information page for your site and add author in Link Relationship (XFN). For this to work, the menu must be displayed on all pages of your site.
Edit the page for this menu item and add a link to your Google+ profile using the following format:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/109024895387008001098?rel=author" rel="me">Google+</a>
Replace the url with the link to your Google+ profile. It is important that the link title has a + at the beginning or end of the title.
Go to your Google+ profile about page and add a link for your WordPress site home page to the Contributor to section.
You can test that you have done everything correct by using the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
After a few weeks, you should start seeing something like the following in google search results for your WordPress site.
Install WordPress on Mac
If you are a WordPress developer with a Mac, you need a local environment installed for your WordPress development. This guide will walk you through the process of setting up a WordPress development environment on Mac OS X.
Download MAMP
Install MAMP
Click Customize button on Installation Type step.
Uncheck MAMP PRO on Custom Install screen and continue with install (unless you need the functionality of MAMP Pro).
Open MAMP
- Click Preferences button.
- Click Ports tab.
- Click Set to default Apache and MySQL ports button. (important if you plan to use multisite)
- Click OK button.
Create WordPress MySQL Database
Install WordPress
As a WordPress developer I like to check out the latest WordPress development version from Trac using subversion.
Open Terminal
cd /Applications/MAMP/htdocs svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/ .
http://localhost/wp-admin/setup-config.php
- Database Name: wordpress
- User Name: root
- Password: root
Update to the latest development version of WordPress in Trac using svn. This will synchronize your local WordPress installation with the latest development version of WordPress.
Open Terminal
svn up
Install Text Editor
Lastly you need a good text editor with syntax highlighting. My favorite on Mac OS X is TextWrangler.
If you have any questions on this setup, please leave a comment below.
Optimize Images for Web JPEG
To improve your website performance, you should optimize images for the web. This will result in improved page load times for your website visitors and bandwidth savings for you.
There are 2 primary ways to optimize images for the web:
1. Lossy – reduce the size/quality of jpeg image
I use GIMP to resize the original jpeg image and save with a lower jpeg quality setting. Any image editing application can be used for this purpose.
2. Lossless – remove unneeded meta information, comments, and Exif data from jpeg image
For lossless optimization I use ImageOptim for Mac OS X. There are other front end applications for jpegoptim and jpegtran.
The original jpeg image used in the example below was 3.2 MB (3,198,384 bytes) in size, 2592 × 1936 pixels, and taken with an iPhone 4. I used GIMP to resize the image to 268 x 200 pixels.
The images below were saved with a jpeg quality setting of the original image (95). The image on the right was further optimized using ImageOptim.
53 KB (53,307 bytes)
39 KB (39,285 bytes)
The images below were saved with a jpeg quality setting of 75. The image on the right was further optimized with ImageOptim.
30 KB (30,207 bytes)
18 KB (17,919 bytes)
With this optimization you are able to cut the image size down to 34% of the original size without any noticeable difference in quality.
This is the process I follow to optimize JPEG images for the web:
- Resize image to the size needed and saving jpeg image at maximum quality.
- Optimize the image using ImageOptim, setting maximum quality for jpegoptim to 75 (sometimes you need to run it through this app multiple times for maximum optimization).
Here is a link to a larger optimized image of the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival.
WordPress Performance opcode cache
If you are running WordPress on a VPS or dedicated server, a quick way to optimize performance is to install a php opcode cache. To understand why, you need to first understand how php processes a request.
A php request goes through the following steps:
- Read
- Parse
- Compile
- Execute
- Output
For every WordPress page requested, the php engine must go through all 5 steps. A php opcode cache keeps the complied php code in memory, thereby eliminating the 1st 3 steps above. Fortunately for you, installing and configuring a php opcode cache is simple. There are many php opcode caches, but my favorite is the alternative php cache (apc).
Here are the instructions for installing the alternative php cache (apc) on an ubuntu server:
1. Install php-apc
apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install php-apc
2. Configure php-apc by editing the apc.ini file
vim /etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/apc.ini
Add the following to the apc.ini file (where 20 the amount of RAM allocated to your apc cache. I’ll discuss how to find the size needed later):
apc.shm_size=20
3. Restart apache
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart
4. Verify Status
To check the status of you apc opcode cache you can install a monitoring script from http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pecl/apc/trunk/apc.php?view=markup by uploading the apc.php script to your web server. Use your web browser to browse to this script page and you will see a dashboard of the status of the apc opcode cache.
One of the items you should pay attention to is the Cache full count. This tells you how many times that the apc opcode cache ran out of memory. You should try to raise the amount of RAM you have allocated to apc to avoid this. On a server that I administer I have the cache set to 60, and this is enough to have WordPress (including plugins and themes) and phpMyAdmin in the apc opcode without ever running out of memory in the cache.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.
