After working on clients’ web sites all day long, I often realize that this web site could benefit from things I learn while working on other projects. In the past few months I have put together some pretty amazing web sites that really bend WordPress so that the users can do just about any update to any text via the WordPress admin. I also have put together some other pretty advanced sites which rely heavily on template logic and really neat CSS. I had a few moments last night to update this site (cleaned up a lot of the templates, changed the home page, re-arranged the page content for the main pages, put in an archives section, and started thinking about how I could improve this web site to make it more useful for others. If you have any ideas - please let me know! For now - enjoy the changes, and optimized code.

The last few days I became obsessed with optimizing jappler.com. It was loading slower and slower with what seemed to be every passing day. Since I had originally designed my web site for an earlier version of WordPress, I figured it was about time for a tune up. I went to the ever-so-helpful codex, to help me figure out what was going on. I went through a number of different steps to troubleshoot the problem and I thought the steps I took might be helpful to others.

Is it my host or my site? At first I thought it was a slow host. I had friends from around the country access my web site, and confirm the problem existed for everyone. From all the feedback, I confirmed something was going on. Now it was time to take it to the next step. Was my host slow or was my web site slow? To check this, I grabbed a recent backup and restored it to my desktop to check it out. Once I had everything in place, I hit my web site and it still seemed slow, so … [more]

Well, it has been awhile since I have done any maintenance on jappler.com and over the last few weeks, I have noticed a bit of a slow down when the pages load. I took some time today to look at the php code, style sheets, templates, etc and have at least tracked down the problem...somewhat. My site flies with other WordPress templates, but there is something about mine that WordPress does not like. I had originally designed my template for an earlier version of WordPress and I guess it is time I update it. Please bare with my site slowness for a little while longer. My stylesheets and HTML all validate, now I just need to figure out what in my WP code is slowing everything down.
[tags]optimization[/tags]