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Optimize your Blog with these 3 Powerful Tools

by Blair Williams on March 4, 2010 · 5 comments

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If you haven’t heard yet Matt Cutts (Google’s SEO Spokesman) announced last month that page load speed is a big indicator in SEO now. I’ve taken that indication seriously and have been searching out some ways to optimize the performance of my blog and think you should too.

When assessing your blog, there are really 3 separate factors that play into it’s performance:

  1. Number and Complexity Database Calls pages on your site are making: This performance issue is caused by code running on your blog that is reading and / or writing to the database. The only way it can be fixed is to identify code that is making too many database calls and eliminate it or get the author of the code to optimize it. Take it from me — database queries can be tricky and small changes to them can either make them run quickly or grind your server to a screeching halt. If a software vendor releases something without optimizing queries (which, sadly, I have been guilty of in the past as well) then they could be responsible for slow performance on your site. To optimize your site you absolutely *need* some kind of tool that will show you what calls are taking the longest and where they are located.
  2. Script Execution Time: There are many different factors that can influence this one. Poorly coded software in your website, your server’s hardware or just your web server software settings.
  3. Memory Management: This is possibly the most elusive problem of the three. This one could be caused by how much software is loaded by your website on page loads, poor software implementation or just software that is just crunching a lot of data.

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Formidable Pro: The Best Form Builder for WordPress

by Blair Williams on February 9, 2010 · 12 comments

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An amazing new plugin launched last weekend. Its called Formidable Pro and is hands down the best, most innovative and easy to use form builder for WordPress I’ve ever used. The author of this plugin is one of my good friends — Stephanie Wells over at Strategy 11 and has done a remarkable job.

I guess calling this plugin a simple “form builder” is a bit of an understatement — people with no knowledge of HTML, CSS or programming can create extremely complex forms with ease. In fact, you can script and build all kinds of user interactions on your site with Formidable Pro. Check out some of these features:

  • Fully AJAXified Form Builder – This makes it dead simple to build any kind of form you want within seconds. With pure, drag & drop controls and in-place editing you don’t need to know the first thing about HTML or CSS to be extremely effective immediately. [click to continue…]

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10 Strategies for Igniting Explosive Growth in Your Business This Year

January 2, 2010

Among all of your New Year’s Resolutions, there is one that you should pay special attention to.
No, it isn’t lose 35 lbs or stop eating Twinkies (my other goal for 2010), the goal I’m talking about is you taking your Online Business to new heights in 2010. Whether your goal is to make a million [...]

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Stop Using WHOIS Privacy and 3 Other Strategies For Increasing Your Website’s Credibility

November 10, 2009

This article will show you some simple steps you can take to increase the credibility of your site with a very low amount of effort. Today I came across this fantastic article by Daniel Scocco:
Time to Stop Using Whois Privacy?
His article inspired me to write about this topic and to extend his thinking a bit [...]

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