If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Feeding Your Inner Geek while Feeding the Family

But I want to do the fun stuff. . .   I overheard this, no I didn’t over hear it, actually it was in a conversation yesterday with a colleague getting in touch with her inner geek.   We’ve been working together on a couple of projects.  Honestly, the geeky stuff is the fun stuff.  I know when I see a person who hasn’t really discovered their inner geek yet.

How to Spot The Inner Geek

This isn’t as hard as it might seem.  There are a couple of easy tests.

While in a conversation say:

“I was able to make the entire site change by tweaking the style.css file.  By adding a couple of div tags, formatting the #sidebar h2 tags with a couple adjustments to the list-style-type tags and it changed dramatically”

Once said, look in their eyes, if they are glazed over like a deer in the headlights, “No Inner Geek”.  If they perk up and have a gleam in their eye, but look a bit puzzled, there is a spark of inner geek waiting to be feed.  If they ask an intelligent question, Okay, if they ask any question, they are on their way to discovering their inner geek.

Once The Inner Geek is Discovered Now What

Here is where the rubber meets the road, or the addiction takes hold.  If you let the inner geek out, and especially if it takes control, well . . .

I’ve know a few bloggers who have lost control of their inner geek. (‘ll confess, it happens to me from time to time) they too are easy to spot.  How?

Their blog theme’s are always changing, but they haven’t written a post in weeks.  They spend all their blogging time feeding the inner geek.  “I can move those sidebar headlines to the right a few pixels and they will line up better”.  “The sidebar needs to be a little closer to the content area” . “I want the blog name to be higher and bolder in the header”.  “What if all the links were red once visited, but blue if they haven’t been clicked on?”

See what I mean?  So much time is spent geeking on the blog that no content gets written.  So one day the guilt ferry comes (yeah, it is a ferry, not a fairy)  because that boat rolls into your business harbor and you suddenly realize it has been weeks since you wrote a new blog post.

You want to, but the words don’t come, You really need to get your brokerage logo in the sidebar and update your contact information.  The call to action buttons are only an idea, and you really know you should have those on the blog.  Should I write a post? about what?  or open photoshop elements and make some cool call to action buttons?

Tweaking your blog won’t increase your google traffic.  All the SEO in the world won’t matter if you only have 30 posts on your blog.

“Really?”  Yes, really, I know, inner geek bubble burst.  SEO is important, but it is like teaching your two year old how to shave.  No need.  You have to have something to SEO.

No matter how pretty you make your blog look, no matter how quickly the page load time, it won’t feed your family.  It won’t bring business in the door.

Oh, Geez, you mean I have to write, YIKES!  I was afraid this would happen some day.  But you don’t have to write the great American novel.

Embrace your Inner Geek, but don’t let it ruin your life and business.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Search and Replace a Time Saver

This little plugin is always in my toolbox of “I don’t want to live without this” plugin.  I don’t use it often but when I do it is a dragon slayer.  Let me give you a couple of examples where this little tool shines and shows it’s stuff. Search and Replace.

Domain Name Changes and Site Migration

You are moving your blog from one domain to another.  Not too hard, right?  You do the backups the re-installs of the files, restore the database, change the domain name in the general settings and up pops the blog.  Cool.  Everything look like it is good and you take down the old site.  Suddenly all the images disappear from your posts.  Why?  Because the image url’s were still pointed to the old domain name.  They worked fine linking back to their original location till you took down the site.  What do you do?

Did you move the image files to the new site?  (Probably, let’s hope so)  You thought they were the ones being pulled into the new location.  But when you open a post in the editor, there is the link back to the old domain wp-content/upload etc.  Now the light comes on.  “Holy Kow, I have to change all the image links in all the posts to point to the new domain.

Senario 2

You built a new site “Off site” for a client.  Once they are happy with the way it looks you move all the files to their hosting, point the blog to their domain name and . . .  Same as above.  All the image links in the post/pages are back to your Development site.  What do you do now?

The answer is the same.  Use the plugin search and replace.  It will go through the database searching for the string to the old domain and replacing it with the new domain.  The plugin has the option to only search and replace in certain areas of the database.  Only need something in a post or page replaced?  check “content”.

For example:  You need to replace www.myolddomain.com  with www.mynewdomain.com.  Go to the search and replace settings page.  Select “Content” then enter www.myolddomain.com in the search field and www.mynewdomain.com in the replace field.  Click “GO” and in about 1/10th of a second it is done.

Note: Make a backup of your database before using search and replace.

Removing Word Inserted Formatting

This past week I had a friend who set up a new site for a client.  The client had been writing all the content for the site in Word.  When the project was ready for content the client did a copy and paste move of all the content to the new pages for the site.

The content was all there, but the site was supposed to be justified so all the margins lined up right and left.  That’s how the Style.css was setup for the site.  The pages however were ragged right.  What happened?  Looking at the HTML editor revealed that every single paragraph for all the pages and post started with <p style text-align=”left”>  That line of html overrode the style.css.  My friend thought it was going to take going through the posts one at a time and removing the formatting code from each paragraph.

Enter search and replace.  Search: <p style text-align=”left”>  Replace: <p> .  Five seconds later the entire site was “justified”  and hours of tedious hand editing was avoided.

Put this Tool Away

Don’t leave this tool laying around.  Meaning, either don’t let anyone using the site know it exists, or better yet, when you are done using it, “DELETE IT” from the site.

Why?  because this can be a very dangerous tool.  If you are not careful you can end up changing text strings that you don’t want changed.

In the example above on domain name change.  If you have a post that references your old domain name and you spell it out www.yourolddomain.com; when the search and replace runs it will replace that string with the new one.  Therefore, you think carefully about the string you want to search and replace. In this example you could go further by searching for www.yourolddomain.com/wp-content/uploads/  and replace it with www.yournewdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/  This would prevent you changing any reference to just the old domain itself.

If someone sees this plugin and decides to use it for a quick way to change references or fix typo’s in a post, they could end up taking down the entire blog.

That is why it is good to only have it available on sites where no one can “stumbleupon” the plugin settings and try and use it.  I treat it like a powertool.  It works great, gets the job done fast, but shouldn’t be left where the “kids” might find it.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Easily Navigate Pages on Dashboard

I like a plugin name that tells you exactly what it does, even if it is a long name.

Easily Navigate Pages on Dashboard is one of these plugins. If you have a lot of pages on your blog, this could be a great help in quickly navigating to your pages.

I don’t tend to have a lot of pages on my sites.  But I’m working with more and more clients that are using their WP blog installs more like a traditional static site with pages instead of posts.  Time adds up finding a post to edit ( if you don’ t have the edit button installed from the front of the pages/posts).  The handy plugin provides a dashboard tree navigation to all your pages and sub-pages.  Find the post on the tree and click to edit.

It is a one trick pony plugin.  Nothing wrong with that, especially if it is a trick you need in your tool box.

If you have a lot of pages on site, try this little plugin with the long descriptive name and easily navigate to your pages on the Dashboard.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Migrating WordPress Content from MYSQL 4.0 to 5.0

In January of 2008 I wrote the post: Restore your WordPress Database From Mysql 4 to Mysql 5 Recently I had the need to update a blog for a friend trying to come out of the dark ages and update his WP blog from 2.6 to 2.9.2.  He ran the autoupgrade which progressed along removing his old files till at the end it went to update the database.  He still had MYSQL 4.0 .  WP 2.9.2 won’t run on MYSQL 4.0.  The process hung right there.  No way to go back, no way to go forward.

Note to WP, you probably should check the database version first, BEFORE updating all the WP files.

I got the call for “HELP”.  I had a copy of 2.6 and was able to get his blog back up and running.  It was time to upgrade his MYSQL.  He was on Godaddy hosting. I decided to try a simple upgrade approach knowing I could do it the old way from the previous post sited above.

The simple way worked perfectly.

1. Login to your Hosting account and make a new 5.0 MYSQL database
2. While that is being setup go to your existing database and click on the pencil to edit (Select Backup)  THe backup will be in your db-backup folder which you can access from FTP if you need to.
3. Once the backup is complete click the edit pencil on the New 5.0 database (Select Restore)  Use the file you just backed-up from the 4.0 database.

The final step is to change your wp-config.php file to point to your new 5.0 database.  That’s all there is to it.

If you have a different hosting company the routine might have a different way of backing up and restoring, but the process should work.

Once this was done, it was a simple auto-upgrade.  Yes, the jump from 2.6 to 2.9.2 went off without a hitch.  But don’t assume it will for you.  It all depends on your theme and plugins.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Domain Hosting And Site Hosting

Domain Hosting And Site Hosting; they aren’t the same thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of coaching and helping bloggers in both the Mortgage and Real Estate industry get their blogs setup recently.

One of the most confusing aspects of the process is trying to understand that domain hosting and Site hosting are two different things.

GoDaddy Domain Hosting

I buy all my domain names through GoDaddy.  They are cheap and cheap to renew.  I find managing my domains through them to be a no brainer.

I also have two “Hosting Packages” through GoDaddy where I upload the files and point those domains to various sites.

You Don’t have to Host Your Site with Your Domain Host

The confusing part is using the word hosting for both a domain and a site.  They aren’t the same thing.  The domain is the Address, the site is the House.  (Putting this in RE Terms).  Let me say that again:

• The Domain Name = The Address
• Hosting Site = The House

Now here is the cool thing.  You don’t have to have the domain hosted where the Site is located.  You get to “Point” the domain name to where ever you build the house (Site).

Domain Nameserver

The way you point the address to where the site is built is by the Doman Nameserver.  (DNS) for short.  In Godaddy you log into your site and manage your domain names.  Once on the individual domain you select Nameserver.  There you can fill in the Nameserver 1 and Nameserver 2 of where your hosting exists.

If it is on Godaddy it is taken care of through your hosting admin panel.  But for our example, the Site Hosting isn’t at Godaddy.  It is at Bluehost.

Bluehost Site Hosting

Last year when I was dabbling with WordPress MU I read about it being a nightmare to configure with Godaddy hosting.  It is possible but it isn’t cheap (And we in RE are all about cheap, especially in this economy).  So I went looking for a new Hosting company.  I’ve read about a bunch of them.  I won’t list them here.  I’ve also had some friends on Bluehost and I’ve done some blog setups for them. It was pretty straightforward and I like the Cpanel they use. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means)

I put out a few Tweets about seeking hosting and I got a response from Bluehost with a coupon for a discount on their hosting they were running (and still are as I write this post)  $3.95 a month for unlimited domains and MYSQL databases.  I bought the 3 year plan since they guarantee the price for the number of years you buy.

I’ve since set up a number of blogs on Bluehost and have to say I’m totally impressed with their hosting.  Yes, I love Bluehost for hosting my sites.  I also love GoDaddy for Domain hosting and their banned Superbowl commercials (with coupon codes I can renew my domains for $7.46 a year.  I still have 2 Deluxe hosting packages with Godaddy and all my main sites are on those packages.  I’ve never had an issue with Godaddy hosting.  (Well almost never).

Setting up Hosting on Bluehost with a Domain on GoDaddy.

Once at the Cpanel on Bluehost you see the domain nameservers for your hosting package. With that information in hand I begin the process of making it all come together.

Here is where you set the nameservers

1. After getting the nameservers for Bluehost I log into GoDaddy
2. I go to Nameservers for the domain I want to “point” to Bluehost
3. I fill in the TWO nameservers from bluehost selecting “I’m hosting my domain some where else”
4. I wait a few minutes and back at my Cpanel on Bluehost I set that domain to the folder I’ve put my WP file in.
5. Since the Nameservers are already pointed to Bluehost they immediately accept the domain name.
6. A few minutes later I can type in the domain name and it goes to my fresh install of WordPress.
7. What Do You Want to Call Your Blog?

That’s the process.  I know it still sounds rather confusing.  That is why I take care of doing this for everyone that has me setup a new blog for them.

Moving Nameserver

If you are having trouble moving a DNS to a new site location. Email me or use the contact form here at the Lab.  It is one of those Techie Things that can drive you crazy.  Why, because if you don’t do the “Wait a few minutes”  step you will keep trying to do it over and over again and it won’t be working.  Why, because every time you make a change it starts the clock all over again.

Resetting a DNS, takes time.  A domain DNS is something that is stored in a file, not read live every time some one navigates to your domain.  When you point it to a new site, it can take as little as 2 minutes to show up, and as long as 24 hours before that changes makes it way around the world.  If you change it and it doesn’t come up in a few minutes you are tempted to “Change it again”

Admit it.  I’ve done it.  The first time I changed a DNS I had no idea what I was doing for sure.  I made the change at least a dozen times and finally went to bed (after midnight).  When I got up the next morning thinking I had get this figured out, it was done.  I finally had stopped messing up the process by changing it again and again.

Let me repeat the above.  IF YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH NAMESERVER MOVES CONTACT ME.  I’ll help.

DNS Moves like Capsule Re-entry

Remember the early days of the space program.  (Ok, I just dated myself with that one)  Well, in those early days as the capsule would re-enter the atmosphere there would be 3 minutes of radio silence.  It was literally a time to hold your breath.  It was one of the most dangerous times for the capsule.  It could easily burn up during re-entry.  When the astronauts would establish radio communication again a huge cheer would break out.  But during “Radio Silence” all that could be done was wait.

Changing a DNS is like Radio Silence.  When you know how to do it and you know you did it right the only thing to do is wait.  Soon you will be able to type in your domain name and it will appear in your browser.  And Yes I cheer when it happens, just like when the astronauts would say “Houston we are clear . . .”

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Publish On and WP 2.9

I haven't published this yet !

Did you start any draft posts between 2.9 and 2.9.1?  Have you noticed when you go back to those drafts, finish the post and publish they seemed to disappear, kinda?

I’ve had that happen on a couple of my blogs.  I tend to take ideas and quickly start a post.  Sometimes from the quickpress editor on the dashboard I’ll jot down a few key points to the post and give it a title.  Later I’ll come back and flesh out the post, add the images and publish.

But a couple of weeks back a post I started on January 1, 2010 but published last week simply disappeared.  It wasn’t on the home page.  I checked and found that when I hit publish it had the January 1 date set as the publish date instead of the typical Publish immediately.  It only took a couple of seconds to edit the post and make it current.

I’ve found 4 draft posts with the publish date already set to the day I started the post.  Since the 2.9.1 upgrade I haven’t noticed this annoying gnat.

Therefore, check your draft posts.  If you see something like the image at the right you should edit the date before you publish the post.

Just a Lab heads-up.  You don’t have to write it again, you have to find it.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab From PHP to HTML

PHP is great, but there is one thing about it.  It has to be loaded with a call to the database to grab the data to display.  Each of those “calls”, a database query takes little bit of time to execute.  Therefore, if you can save a few of those trips to the database you have increased your load time.

Theme Design is Generic

Theme designers use PHP calls to fill in things like the Site name, description, etc.  The data they pull is usually in the header, footer, and sometimes in the sidebar.

But now that we have the theme chosen for our site that data isn’t going to change.  We can use this to speed up the load time of our site.

Before we go making changes to our theme header.php and footer.php we should make a backup of our theme files.

Now that the backups are made we can decrease the database queries and hopefully gain a bit of speed on our load times.

For a benchmark if you have already installed the code to your theme that tells you your load time and queries executed then write that down.  After you are done check to see how many queries to the database were saved.

If you aren’t familiar with what I’m talking about here is the code.
<!– <?php echo get_num_queries(); ?> queries. <?php timer_stop(1); ?> seconds. –>

Paste this in your footer.php just before the close body tag “</body>”

Replacing PHP with HTML

Here are the step we will take and I’ll use one of my photo blogs as an example.   We should see  a decrease in the number of database queries.  For this example we will only be modifying the header.php file.

1. Open the header.php file
2. Find php code calls to stylesheets, blog title etc.
3. View the blog in a browser tab
4. Right click and “Veiw Page Source”
5. Find the HTML code that the PHP generates
6. Copy the code
7. Paste the HTML into the header.php where the PHP code is currently.
8. Save the header.php
9. View the blog after making the change to verify it is all there.
10. Right click and “View Page Source” and compare to the one you copied from
11. Check to see the page load time and number of queries executed.

Header PHP code Replacement

Header code:

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’); ?>/css/960.css” />
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”<?php bloginfo(’stylesheet_url’); ?>” media=”screen” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”<?php if ( get_option(‘woo_feedburner_url’) <> “” ) { echo get_option(‘woo_feedburner_url’); } else { echo get_bloginfo_rss(‘rss2_url’); } ?>” />
<link rel=”pingback” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘pingback_url’); ?>” />

Replace with:

<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” media=”all” href=”http://www.paintingtucson.com/. . ./css/960.css” />
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”http://www.paintingtucson.com/wp-content. . ./style.css” media=”screen” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS 2.0″ href=”http://www.paintingtucson.com/feed/” />
<link rel=”pingback” href=”http://www.paintingtucson.com/xmlrpc.php” />

Header H1 Code:

<h1><?php bloginfo(‘title’); ?></h1>
<h2><?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?></h2>

Replace with:

			<h1>Painting Tucson</h1>
			<h2>With Light</h2>

Is it worth it? In most instances I don’t think it is. In our example, by making these changes I saved 3 queries. It went from 116 queries to 113 loading the home page.

So why bother?  For most of my smaller blogs I don’t.  But for the Tucson blog where I have over 800 posts and about 100 pages it saved a lot.  For one reason, I have a lot of custom community pages on that blog.  Those links were all listed in the sidebar.  Those pages never change.  By taking those sidebar links and turning them into straight HTML I saved close to 70 database queries on every page load.

Before starting this project that blog would take about 7 seconds to load and 9 seconds wasn’t uncommon on some of the pages with more than one image.  Now, with gzip and a few of these kinds of tweaks to the site I’m seeing some 1.9 second page load times. That is a significant difference.

You be the judge.  If you don’t need to do this, don’t bother.  (If you change themes, you have to do it all over again).  But if you have a lot of database queries and your page load times are lagging then squeezing every millisecond out of your load time is worth it.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab File Uploads to Your Wordpress Blog for the Road Warrior

Upload on the Road

The WP Easy Uploader is a great tool for your blogging toolbox even if you don’t use it very often.

WP Easy Uploader

This plugin allows you to upload files, any type of files, to any directory on your hosting.  Granted it requires permissions to do so, but on most hosting packages that’s not an issue.

But I FTP into all my sites, why would I need WP Easy Uploader.

I do that too, when I’m home in the office.  But I don’t have FTP access setup on my laptop.  For one thing it is a security issue.  I don’t want FTP login information for all my sites on my laptop.  I don’t think my clients want that either.  But with Easy Uploader installed on all of my blogs I don’t need it.  I don’t even need my laptop.  Any computer that will get me to the admin panel of my blog will let me upload files to the blog from inside the admin panel.

Clients and Friends without FTP access or knowledge

Here is the other time when WP Easy Uploader comes in real handy.  Not everyone I work with or help with their blog even knows how to FTP into their blog.  They have hosting, yes, and they had their host install wordpress for them and email them their login.  That’s as much as they have ever done or known about their blog.

They don’t even know what FTP stands for.  But with WP Easy Uploader all I need is user name and password and I’m in.  They don’t have WP Easy Uploader installed;  easy I install it from “Add New” and then upload whatever files I need for the blog.

Easy access to my blogs while on the road;  easy access to friends and client’s blogs without FTP logins are two great reasons for installing WP Easy Uploader.

I don’t even have to provide you a link.  Simply go to Plugins “Add New” and search for WP Easy Uploader.  You are good to go.

Isn’t this stuff just too cool.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab Enable Gzip Compression

One of the things that Page Speed recommended was to Enable Gzip Compression.  I’m not going to go into all the ways I tried to implement this (and blew up the site in the process.  I’m going to cut to the chase and show you the steps it took to get this in place and working.

This is part of what I meant when I said get your geeks speak dictionary out.  In order to Gzip your site you need to have the zlib activated on your site. You do this in the php.ini file.  Or in some hosts (GoDaddy) it will have to be php5.ini, if you are running PHP5

Create PHP info

This step is necessary so you can see what the php setup is on your site and verify that the changes you make are in place.

Open Notepad and paste this:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Name the file phpinfo.php  and FTP it up to the root of your blog.

Go to your site in a browser and at the end of the url add /phpinfo.php  This will show you a lot of information, you will see zlib somewhere in there.

This is after activation

Modifiy the PHP.ini file

Add this to the php.ini  or php5.ini file that is in the root of your hosting directory

zlib.output_buffering = On
zlib.output_handler = ob_gzhandler
zlib.output_compression = Off

If the blog is in the root directory that is where the php.ini file should be located.  If it is in another directory under the root hosting directory you will need to add this code to the root directory php.ini file.

Modify your Theme Header

Add this code in the header of your theme “ABOVE THE FIRST LINE”

<?php ob_start(“ob_gzhandler”); ?>

Once this is in place:

1. Open your site in a firefox
2. Open Firebug
3. Run Page Speed Analyze
4. You should no longer see a RED enable gzip compression

This should help reduce your page load time.

But remember what I said in the first post.  If you have a caching plugin installed, you will need to deactivate it, clear the cache, make these changes and then activate the cache plugin again.

Next we will take a look at changing some of your generic php code in your theme to specific HTML.  This will reduce the number of database queries and help your page load speed.

If you aren't reading this in your reader this Post is Stolen From: Real Estate Blog Lab The Firefox Page Speed Add-on

Whoa! Look At All Those Recommendations

Once you add the Page Speed Add-on you will think you have slipped down the rabbit hole with Alice. You will wonder if you are on a Speed trip yourself (not that I can tell you what that is like)

This add-on, is an add-on to an add-on. It works as a tab on the firebug add-on. I’ve written about firebug before and how useful it is for making quick CSS changes and additions to your WP theme.

But with Page Speed, you aren’t in Kansas anymore. This is one add-on that should come with a Geek Speak Dictionary and Lexicon.

Fortunately for most there is good news.  The good news is that most of the things recommended you don’t have any control over or the ability to change.  How is that good news?  Because you don’t have to worry about them.  You can’t fix them anyway.  They are server side changes that mean you have to be on a dedicated server.  99% of us doing RE Blogging aren’t paying for a dedicated server each month.  We use shared hosting.  Yes, we hear a lot of chatter about bad neighborhoods and shared hosting.  It does happen.  And people get struck by lightening too, but we don’t stop going outside.  But shared hosting means we can’t make changes to the Apache modules or configure modules that the host doesn’t provide.  Relieved?  Don’t sweat this stuff, honest.

However, there are plenty of things we can address and change to help with the page load time.  There are also plenty of things we can do that we blow up the site and show the dreaded Apache Fail screen.  So be prepared to make a change on one tab and view the change in another and take it back.  Here are the sections that typically come up as red flags and what they kind of mean to you/us.

Enable Gzip Compression

Actually, this is one you can probably do.  It is the first one recommended and from what I read will get you the most return of all the ones in the list.  Especially since most of these you can’t really do anything about or your site is so small you would visually notice no difference.  I’ve already written the post on how to Enable Gzip Compression.  I’ll post it later this week.  (Yes, I will)

Leverage Browser Caching

This means that expiration dates should be set on some url calls so they don’t have to be loaded every single time.  But you will find that often you have no control over the ones in the list because they are plugins.  Here is what it says from my Tucson RE Blog

The following resources are missing a cache expiration. Resources that do not specify an expiration may not be cached by browsers. Specify an expiration at least one month in the future for resources that should be cached, and an expiration in the past for resources that should not be cached:

• http://22671.hittail.com/mlt.js
• http://static.woopra.com/js/woopra.v2.js
• http://static1.headup.com/hjquery-1.3.2.js
• http://static1.headup.com/jquery-ui-1.7.1.custom.min.js
• http://tucsonazrealestateblog.com.woopra-ns.com/visit/ra=GSKA7BV7RQTMS4ZN0TGJ6TTCHU5K2EZR&sessio…
• http://www.blogtopsites.com/v_306.gif

Minimize DNS Lookups

Nice recommendation, but not much we bloggers using plugins can do anything about.  Here are the examples again from the Tucson RE Blog.

The domains of the following urls only serve one resource each. If possible, avoid the extra DNS lookups by serving these resources from existing domains.

• http://22671.hittail.com/mlt.js
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/~fc/TucsonAzRealEstate?bg=59a6e6&fg=FFFFFF&anim=0
• http://lite.piclens.com/current/piclens_optimized.js
• http://mint1.headup.com/clientscripts/annotate.js?customerid=daveintucson
• http://s7.addthis.com/static/r07/widget07.png
• http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php/en_US
• http://static.woopra.com/js/woopra.v2.js
• http://themortgagereports.com/chart-of-the-day/image.php/retail-sales-h.png?width=290&color=0547a9&i…
• http://tucsonazrealestateblog.com.woopra-ns.com/visit/ra=GSKA7BV7RQTMS4ZN0TGJ6TTCHU5K2EZR&sessioncoo…
• http://www.blogtopsites.com/v_306.gif
• http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon32×32.png

Leverage Proxy Caching

Due to a bug in some proxy caching servers, the following publicly cacheable, compressible resources should use “Cache-Control: private” or “Vary: Accept-Encoding”:

• http://22671.hittail.com/mlt.js
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/AnnotateURL.ashx?v=1.1&c…
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/GetConfig.ashx?v=1.1&cal…
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/GetTemplate.ashx?v=1.2&c…
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/css/CharmUI.css
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/css/image-gallery.css
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/js/gallery-builder.js
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/js/headup.js
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/js/jquery.ad-gallery.js
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/js/personalization.js
• http://ec2-174-129-227-19.compute-1.amazonaws.com/Services/FrontService/js/timeago.js
• http://lite.piclens.com/current/piclens_optimized.js
• http://static1.headup.com/hjquery-1.3.2.js
• http://static1.headup.com/jquery-ui-1.7.1.custom.min.js
• http://tucsonazrealestateblog.com.woopra-ns.com/visit/ra=GSKA7BV7RQTMS4ZN0TGJ6TTCHU5K2EZR&sessio…
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-2/Themes/Black/lightbox.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-2/lightbox.js?ver=1.8
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/css/ngg_shadow2.css?ver=1.0…
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-sidebar-navigation/suckerfish_ie.js
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/style-box/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/prototype.js?ver=1.6
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/scriptaculous/effects.js?ver=1.8.0
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/scriptaculous/wp-scriptaculous.js?ver=1.8.0

Combine Javascripts

There are 6 JavaScript files served from www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com. They should be combined into as few files as possible.

• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/prototype.js?ver=1.6
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/scriptaculous/wp-scriptaculous.js?ver=1.8.0
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/scriptaculous/effects.js?ver=1.8.0
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-2/lightbox.js?ver=1.8
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/js/swfobject.js?ver=2.1
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/simple-sidebar-navigation/suckerfish_ie.js

Optimize the order of styles and scripts

There are 4 CSS files served from www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com. They should be combined into as few files as possible.

• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/css/ngg_shadow2.css?ver=1.0…
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/style-box/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-2/Themes/Black/lightbox.css

Parallelize downloads across hostnames

This means you store different parts of your site on different servers and different hosts.  When this is done they can be loaded at the same time instead of one after the other.  But as you can see, there is no practical way to store these on a separate server and change the theme coding to the new url locations.  Even if you did, you would visually notice no difference.  Because these are such small files that the only time gained would be in less than the blink of an eye.

This page makes 22 parallelizable requests to www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com. Increase download parallelization by distributing these requests across multiple hostnames:

• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/css/ngg_shadow2.css?ver=1.0…
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/style-box/style.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-2/Themes/Black/lightbox.css
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/header-images/AguaCaliente1aheader%20(Large).jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/icon_calendar.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/McDsWiFi-282×399.jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/CloudySkies-580×385.jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/images/SearchTucsonHomesButton.jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/images/HomeWorthButton.jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/images/DreamHomeFinderButton.jpg
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-includes/images/rss.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/images/equal_housing_icon.gif
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/body.gif
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/gradtop.gif
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/search-btn.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/written.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/commentw.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/arrow-left.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/arrow-right.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/content-bottom.png
• http://www.tucsonazrealestateblog.com/wp-content/themes/Impress/images/footer-bg.png

Most of What Page Analysis Will Tell You WON’T HAVE ANY IMPACT ON YOUR PAGE LOAD TIME.  Why?  Because your site, my site, most sites aren’t heavy in graphics, sound and video files.

Gzip however, is one place we can gain some speed.  Oh, yes, a good caching plugin too, right?  Well, we shall see on that one.

Should I install the Page Analysis Plugin for Firebug

If you have the geek gene needing to be scratched, then go for it.  You might learn a couple of things.  I like it for one simple reason.  After I install a new plugin I can run the page analysis and see what kind of strain it is adding to the site.  Then I can evaluate if the value of the plugin out weighs the load.

For example the Headsup plugin I’ve been testing is the one that added all the Amazonws/Services/ up above.  That one I just deactivated.  I don’t consider it of that much value at this time.

This concludes our 1000 word post on the Firefox Page Speed Add-on as an additional tab to your Firebug plugin.