Is your WordPress powered site slow? Try these:
1. Upgrade WordPress software, current theme and plugins to their latest versions.
2. Delete inactive plugins.
3. Deactivate and delete as many unnecessary plugins you can. Even the WordPress founder Matt uses only two plugins 
I try to keep my plugins count below 10. With so many useful plugins, it is tempting to use them all. But they slow down your site. Especially, get rid of plugins which query your database. If you can implement a function by directly modifying the core without using the plugin, then do it.
4. Use smaller sized images in your posts. Use GIMP or PhotoShop and save the images as File->Save for web.
5. Reduce the number of images / scripts you call from external sites.
6. Reduce the number of Java Scripts called. Place them in the footer if you can. Don’t put them all in the header.
7. Make sure your web host is ok. Check a non WordPress site and others’ WordPress sites running in the same server. Go for WordPress recommended web hosts.
8. Use a light theme. Try changing to the default theme. If speed increases, then the current theme is the culprit.
9. Check the plugins. Deactivate all the plugins and activate them one by one. Does something affect the speed? Catch it.
10. Reduce the number of posts shown in each page. Show excerpts instead of full posts in the archive, index pages.
11. Use FireBug. Enable support for Network monitoring under the “Net” tab. This will help you understand what actually is slowing down your site.
Tags: wordpress, wordpress performance
For almost any search query, a Wikipedia article ranks better in Google. Is Google biased towards Wikipedia? No. Google itself has Knol which is a direct competitor for Wikipedia. Then, how do Wikipedia articles rank better? Here is the secret:
1. Google favours informative pages over commercial sites.
A search for web hosting in Google lists informative articles including Wikipedia in the top. See how a search for web hosting in Yahoo just lists only commercial websites. We can think of Google as favouring information. Or it may be indirectly forcing companies to buy their adsense slots by denying top search results. Only Google knows
Except the above point everything else is well deserved merit by Wikipedia.
2. Wikipedia is online since 2001. Google thinks old sites are more reliable.
3. The structure of a Wikipedia article itself is highly SEOed:
* Both the title and URL of Wikipedia pages are to the point, short, self explanatory.
* Highly exhaustive, comprehensive collection of information.
* Articles are focused on a single topic. Assures keyword density.
* Natural writing assures presence of related keywords.
* Frequent updates to the articles, addition of new articles regularly brings the search engine crawlers very often. So the changes are indexed at once.
* Copy formatting, text highlighting, sub headings, section – sub section structure help the bots clearly understand the content.
* Title definition at the very first paragraph.
* Images with description, alt tags, descriptive names and URLs.
* Presence of relevant external links., Google likes this.
4. People by default link to Wikipedia to learn more. The Wikipedia pages are heavily interlinked. This increases the PageRank of Wikipedia pages.
Wikipedia is the best place to learn SEO because it doesn’t employ any SEO expert at all and yet ranks so well
How to choose a domain name?
1. See if you have the .com name . Even if you want to have the site at .org or .net or other TLDs, if you don’t have the .com available, it is not good for branding. Go for another name.
2. If you are really serious about brand value buy the .com .net .org and the TLD for your country in the beginning itself. When you site gets popular, it’s quite possible that some one else may cybersquat in these important TLDs. However, don’t spend too much on buying all TLDs or every possible variation of your domain name, unless you are Google.
3. If you are commercial, then .com name is the best. People by default think of a URL as .com . If you are non-commerical a .net or .org will do good. A country based TLD is best had as a mirror / redirect.
4. No hyphens. No numbers unless it is a part of your brand name. No suffixes like “online”, “live”, “4u”, “onthenet”.
5. Short. Clear. Catchy. To the point. Easy to remember. Spell correctly if you can.
6. Dare to have a unique brand name. Domain name is not the only way to SEO. How if Google was named http://thebestsearchengine.com ? Think about the sites you most use. How many of them have unique brand names?
7. Don’t tweak a popular site’s name. I don’t remember respecting any such site.
Tags: domain, domain name, domain names, domains, how to
GoDaddy Sucks. Why?
1. When you want to buy a single product, GoDaddy will keep pushing lot more products and confuse you. The check out is not a quick process.
2. Google “GoDaddy Problem“. There are so many GoDaddy specific problems.
3. GoDaddy doesn’t have the popular and familiar cpanel interface. The domain management interface, hosting management interface are all outdated, cluttered, not user-friendly at all. Since it has a uniquely useless interface, you will waste lot of time figuring out how to do things and finding the buttons.
4. If you want to move a domain registered with GoDaddy, you have to do 60 days before the domain expires. Else, it will lock the domain with them for another year. Considering how users think of moving only at the last minute, they will be trapped.
5. While most of the top web hosts offer unlimited web hosting space for around 6 US dollars a month, GoDaddy charges 13 USD.
6. No Fantastico / simple scripts to easily install software like WordPress. The alternative solution GoDaddy offers is horrible and slow.
7. GoDaddy doesn’t warn you before reaching the bandwidth limit. Instead I get a notice that I am going to be charged for extra bandwidth that I unknowingly consumed. If they had given a prior warning, I would have taken care. They are charging as high as 2 USD per 1 GB extra bandwidth which is atrocious. Nothing less than looting you. And before I could change a valid payment info, they are threatening me to wipe down all my sites. How dare! That too, I still have 2 years of hosting money paid in advance !
8. No easy and comprehensive way to track stats.
9. GoDaddy will lure with you lot of features which you will discover that they are individually priced.
10. GoDaddy seems to offer a slightly lesser prize for hosting. But, you will have to pay for 4 years, while companies like bluehost ask to pay for 2 years only . Once you are in, it’s a hard decision to move out before this 4 years time.
11. Once I got a email notice that there seems to be a phishing attempt from my site and it will suspend my site in a day If I don’t respond. How am I suppose to respond within such a short period? How if I was in a vacation?
12. Thinking they make it more safe, GoDaddy has made password recovery frustrating. They keep logging out automatically in short sessions. I want it to trust me more and make things easy.
This list will grow more as I continue to suffer.
Right now, the only thing pretty about GoDaddy is the girl they show in their homepage Don’t get fooled !!
GoDaddy sucks.
Tags: godaddy, web hosting
WordPress tips which I personally found useful:
* Bulk delete spam comments
* Category feeds plugin for Feedburner
* To speed up WordPress, add the following to your wp-config.php:
// Enable the WordPress Object Cache:
define(ENABLE_CACHE, true);
* WordPress page specific header images
Tags: wordpress
Recent Comments