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Category Archives: Website Administration
How Fast Does Your Site Load?
This site is a great tool to use after you get your site set up and running. It tells you basically how long your site takes to load up for an average user. Since most internet studies have shown that visitors will often leave a site if it doesn’t load in less than 7 seconds (and in some cases as short as 4 seconds) you can get a good idea of how your site performs. Keep in mind that this is also testing your web server, so as you get more popular you can keep an eye on how well your site is performing in case you need to make a move to a better performing server.
WordPress 2.2 released
The newest version of WordPress has been released (2.2) and can be downloaded from the WordPress.org website (you can use the link off our left bar over there if you’d like).
As with any major number release I suggest NOT running right out and upgrading your site immediately. If possible try to upgrade a local or non-live version of your site first. Major number releases tend to change certain behaviors of WordPress which can cause older plugins or themes to break. Based on my testing my plugins will work fine, but even so I will be doing the same technique as they suggest:
1) backup your site files and database.
2) de-activate all plugins.
3) replace the regular files with the new files
4) go to www.yoururl/wp-admin/upgrade.php and run the database update function
5) log in and reactivate all of your plugins
6) test EVERYTHING!
The Importance of Looking at your URL before you register it.
Uh yeah, I’d check this list of possibly the worst URL’s ever registered to get an idea of what can go very wrong when you decide on a domain name for your website. Basically, look at the URL for awhile and say it out loud before you make a drastic mistake like these people did. Hysterically funny also.
WordPress Permalinks Setup
This link goes to an area of the WordPress Codex that talks about Permalinks, and how to set the different types within WordPress. Permalinks are the links that go directly to a specific article page, and they can be set to many different styles. (if you look at this site you’ll see that my links end in the year, then name of the article) Many major SEO experts like to believe that making your links more human friendly (/my_article_name as opposed to /?p=17) can make a difference in how well your site ranks in search engines. Personally I don’t really see this that much, and most search engines now work perfectly with the default set up in WordPress, but if you’re interested this page explains the way to set things up.
If you were interested in using my structure it’s done by placing the following in the “custom” box in the Options Permalink area: /%year%/%postname%/
Make sure you follow the Codex instructions on how to do your .htaccess file, if not then nothing will work right.