Ways You Must Follow To Expedite Your WordPress Site Speed

Despite putting in a considerable amount of efforts and time in building a WordPress website, you might still fail to attract visitors towards the site if it loads slowly. After all, even your aesthetically pleasing design won't help you if it can't even load.

In this post, I’ll share some of the best ways that will help speed up your WordPress site:

1. Pick Up a Good Web Hosting Provider

You will find plenty of web hosts available online, however, the majority of hosts meet limited WordPress requirements. Remember that choosing a wrong web host for hosting your site can slow it down. However, selecting a hosting plan from the crowd can be challenging. Thankfully, WordPress makes it a little easier for you to pick a good host and recommends using Bluehost as your hosting provider.

Apart from Bluehost, there are several other great hosting providers worth considering, such as:

• SitePoint
• Hostgator
• InMotion

2. Choosing The Right Type of Hosting Plan

As a startup, choosing a shared WordPress hosting plan may appear as a good bargain to you. But, keep in mind that though you can get shared web hosting for low rates, but it might hurt your site loading time. However, you can make your website blazing fast by choosing managed hosting plans offered by WP Engine.


3. Choose a Lightweight Theme That Guarantees Performance


Most of the people (if not all) prefer installing a pre-built WordPress theme for setting up their website. You can easily find hundreds to thousands of free and premium themes over the web, however, not all of them ensures good performance. Especially, the free to download themes usually scores low in terms of speed, as they contain bloated code. But this doesn't mean that each and every free WP theme is bad. But the point is, you must carefully select a ready-made theme that is lightweight and contains only essential features.


4. Leverage Browser Caching

One great strategy that will help in improving your WordPress site speed is browser caching. Well, as you know fetching resources from the server over and over again can be expensive and increases overhead. However, browser caching helps in storing files on the local system when a user visits your web page, and make the user reuse cached pages. This helps in improving page speed. W3 Total Cache is one of the best plugins that can help in performing browser caching effectively.

Moreover, you can tools such as Pingdom or Webpage Test to know how well your chosen themes perform.

5. Implement a CDN (a.k.a Content Deliver Network)

When choosing a standard web host, all your website files will be kept on a single server in a single location. Your website will load quickly and users will be able to access the files if their location is near to the datacenter – where your files are stored. But, your site will run slowly when visitors distant from datacenter will try to access the files. However, you can avoid such a situation from happening by implementing a CDN.

A content delivery network, basically, helps distribute your website files to different data centers across the world. And thus, increases the chances of making the server closer to each website visitor. This will ensure that your all your visitors are able to download files from your site as fast as possible.  My personal favorite is Max CDN, however, you can also use content delivery networks like CacheFly, CloudFare and many others.

A Few Other Nitty-Gritty Yet Important Considerations To Boost Website Speed

• Make sure to keep your WordPress website updated, as it will help in fixing bugs found in previous versions and will also provide new performance enhancements. This will eventually help in improving the performance of your website. 
• Avoid installing too many plugins, as it cause your website to crash. Also, remove any unwanted plugins from the site and keep the plugins up-to-date.
• Reduce the size of image files, as they can make your website slow down. Luckily, there is an excellent plugin that can help in optimizing your images, called as WP Smush

. Additionally, minify your JavaScript and CSS files.

Wrapping Up!


You'll find plenty of recommended ways and techniques to optimize the speed of your WordPress site, ranging from themes, plugins, to making changes to the code and so on. In order to save your time from having to find such ways, I've covered some of the most important and best ways that help in improving your website speed.

Author Biography:
Samuel Dawson is working in Designs2html Ltd where he has lots of responsibilities on his shoulder. He is responsible to convert psd to wordpress website. Above he has shared some valuable points on how you can speed up your website.

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Things You should Remember when Redesigning Your Website

Things change. Businesses change, directions change, audiences, trends and attitudes change. As the face of your business or service, your website is the window through which your clients experience you, and as such, if it doesn’t adequately reflect what you or your clients are after, then you’re out of the loop. This is true if you’re looking to design your fledgling website, or if you’re looking to update and re-haul your existing site. The list of tips below should help website owners – new and old – know what to look for when giving their online presence a facelift.

Purpose
First, what’s the purpose of your website? Why is it out there in the first place? Find the essentials, and convey them in a clear mission statement. If your website is clogged with meandering information and distracting tangential stuff, there’s no way your clients will be able to easily figure out where you want them to go. If your purpose isn’t easily noticeable, it’s assumable that you don’t know your own purpose. And if it’s overused, it seems weak and unconvincing. But with clearly designed, easily navigable website design that brings out your purpose clearly, simply and concisely, you’ll be onto a winner. In combination with consistent, well chosen color themes and font choices, your site will present purposeful content and clearly understood images.

Audience
Know who your target audience is, and speak to them on the same level. Don’t dilute your site with self-promotional flattery – write from the point of view of your audience. Why should they take the time to devote their attention to you? What’s in it for them? And to make it a lot easier, don’t saturate your writing with overly technical, ridiculously complex jargon and babble. Speak simply.

Know your competition
Take the time to do your research; look around at your competitors’ websites, and take notes on what you like and don’t like. Explore their sites as if you were a potential client, and your pointers will direct you well.

Copywriting and SEO
Copy is super important, and so is choosing the right kind of writing for your site. As mentioned before, you ought to view all the copy on your website as an invaluable resource to state your mission and ideology. However, there’s a fine balance between over- and under-saturated, and you should be careful with how to work it into your website. Search Engine Organization (SEO) is also important – good SEO will keep you high up on related searches and increase your traffic, and it’s important to stay updated.

Read the Fine Print
There are virtually hundreds of web hosting packages on the internet that you can possibly selectF from. However, make sure that you scrutinize the fine print because there might be some limitations that might surprise you especially when it comes to data transfers, bandwidth usage and other purported unlimited features that comes with your web hosting services.

Plan ahead - web hosting packages
Build your website with growth in mind – you want it to grow, right? You should add in enough space for extra pages to be added later. And to make your site constantly fresh and relevant, schedule maintenance and content. This will make launching new promotional or marketing campaigns that much more easy.

Website design really is a deal breaker – take the time to do it right.

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The Importance Of Web Design For Small Businesses

In the modern world, firms and individuals are increasingly using the internet to enhance their businesses. Website design/development is one of the most essential services required on the internet by both individuals and firms. Web design and development requires special skills because potential customers can be disappointed by the layout and design of the website. There are several firms offering website design in Toronto and in other parts of the country. However, not all the firms provide quality and professional website development.

A good working website should not only have an incredible layout and design but also provide the relevant information about the services and products your business offers so that it can attract more traffic and potential customers. Business owners and individuals should hire website designers who will create user-friendly websites that are easy to navigate. While hiring website designers, it is important that you see their portfolio and you should determine whether they have experience in website design.

Website design is a process that involves strategic planning, meeting customer needs and demands, actual site designing and development, testing, publishing and re-evaluation. Designers should involve customers at each phase of the process so that they can provide their input or suggestions. Website design is a vast field made up of services such as search engine optimization, graphic and logo design, website development and maintenance, web applications, internet marketing and custom software development.

Website Development
Website design requires dedication, a sense of purpose, creativity and professionalism. Experience is also very essential in web development. The process of web development entails designing a website, creating web content, liaising with the client and scripting. Web development may also include a non-design element known as coding. The input for website designing should come from a team of experts like an interface designer, an online marketing strategist, an information architect and a creative strategist. The team is responsible for developing a great website that will improve your business.

Website design may fail for several reasons such as lack of trust-building elements, message mismatching and website design shortcomings. If website visitors do not trust your capability, then they will not transact with you. Some examples of trust-building elements include use of original images, professional-looking design and third party validation. Online marketers and interface designers are responsible for determining what works or fails when it comes to trust-building components. Web designers can create a site that does not provide the relevant information to customers. If the information does not meet the expectations of customers, then the website will not achieve the business objectives.

Website development has its shortcomings especially if the designers take shortcuts. Some of the shortcomings may make the website to be incompatible with some browsers or mobile phones or web pages may take a lot of time to load and some links may be broken. Such websites may require redesigning which is expensive. Website designers should create fast, amazing and interactive websites. The designers should also create perfect websites on budget and time.

Graphic and Logo Design
First impressions mean a lot to business owners. A website may require illustration, animation, freehand drawing and photography. These forms of graphic designs will determine whether your business flourishes or sinks. Logos and graphics speak directly to potential clients about the brand you are selling. They also inspire trust, familiarity and reliability. Logo design is the foundation of branding because logos capture the essence of the firm and its core values. In today’s competitive business environment, firms must have logos and graphics on their websites and other products.

Internet Marketing
Having a running business website is just half the battle. A website should have ample traffic. To achieve this, a business may consider hiring internet marketing services. Internet marketing can take the form of search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click or link building. SEO improves the ranking of your website on search engine results thereby increasing traffic to your website. Pay per click (PPC) is highly efficient in increasing traffic to a website although it comes at a cost. Internet marketing requires creativity and dedication. The marketing team should be able to mix aspects of web design/development with advertisement, for better results.

Each and every strategy used should not only increase traffic to a particular website but also increase business sales. By hiring a full set of web solutions and services, a firm or individual will have a web presence and better platform for marketing their brands.

This post is written by Larry Smith, the Director of Marketing at Cloud SEO, who is an expert in Online Advertising and SEO and a specialist in the management of Google AdWords Advertising Campaigns.

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Fascinating Finds on Ebay

If you search for it, you can find amazing stuff on Ebay! Here are some of the amazing things we’ve found on Ebay!

Joe Di Maggio’s passport! You’ll probably get arrested if you try and use it to fly abroad but for $4.8K it can be yours!

If you’ve always wanted to own a ballistic missile base but the estate agents have never been able to find the right one – you’re in luck! We found the former US ballistic missile base in Washington on sale for $750K. Not sure if the seller will budge on the asking price but try your luck.

Who doesn’t want to own their own town? We sure would but they’re rarely on sale! Well, we’ve found that a town in Texas called Albert is on sale for $3.5 million, we’d advise you to hurry up as buying a town is quite a popular activity.

Lady Thatcher wasn’t famous for having the most loyal fan group but her famous black handbag is on sale for £103K which gives the Hermes Birkin bag a run for its money! There is also a pre-historic skeleton that could be yours for just £61K! If you’ve always wanted Max the Mammoth’s skeleton – this is your chance to your hands on it but be gentle it is quite old!

Infographic brought to you by UK Packaging

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What If Your Favorite Music Programs Were Built In the Past?

Did you ever wonder what it would have been like if the top music programs of today had been around decades ago? What if iTunes was built in the 1970s, for instance? If it were, you would have been standing in ridiculously long lines just for the experience. But you’d be able to check out songs for three weeks at a time, and you’d probably get a really cool Apple sticker with your rental. What would the downsides be? Well, for one—that same ridiculously long line we mentioned earlier. You know, for the experience. You’d also have late fees if you don’t return your songs on time. Finally, you’d only be able to use your song rentals in one household. Bummer. There are other modern music programs that would have operated a little differently in the past. Think about Pandora, Grooveshark, Napster, Spotify and even Last.fm. If you’re curious to know what these programs would have been like in the past, check out the infographic below.

Torch is a free and unique software that offers you powerful browsing together with built-in media downloading and sharing features, and creator of the Torch Browser Back in Time infographic.

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CME Co-Location Services - Reasons To Choose It For Web Hosting

Colocation is nothing but a hosting option for the small business organization who wishes to get the feature of a large IT department without incurring the costs associated with it. Many large corporations have their own infrastructure to host their web servers and also have a team of IT professionals to design and manage the site, the small companies and individuals don’t. There are different options that are available, that range from simple hosting to running your own Web servers off of an internet connection. Such an option is called colocation. But if you’re wondering why one would choose colocation over all the other hosting options, you need to know more on this.

What actually happens in colocation?

When it comes to colocation, you actually place the server machine with a third-party and apart from this, you’ll be able to share the bandwidth. The expenditures that are associated are a bit higher than the usual web hosting and as a matter of fact, it is even less than normal web hosting. After the machine gets established, you can even move it physically to another location of the provider of the colocation and fix it in the rack. In case you want, you may even rent a server machine from the provider of the colocation and you can also rent from CME aurora data center as this is yet another alternative to get enhanced speed. As a result, CME colocation services helps you place the order at a rapid speed than what is expected.

The different advantages of colocation services

There are more than one advantages of colocation and if you’re not aware of them, here are some that you may check out.

1. Expenses are related to bandwidth: The cost of the bandwidth is usually believed to be one of the biggest advantages of colocation. Particularly in such a situation, you may be able to save more money with time and the reason behind this is that the only one server that is there in colocation is the CME aurora data center.
2. The server machineries and software: This may happen that the server machineries usually run very slow as they don’t have sufficient memory and in such cases, you might have to update the server machinery and also the software.
3. The outage protection has been enhanced: The power outage protection is even better when you include it in the features of colocation. If there’s a power-cut and there seems to be a heavy storm, there will also be generators that can check the back-ups. This can easily safeguard you from the situation where you might have to face any kind of interruption.

So, in case you’re looking for web hosting services, colocation is certainly the best and the right option for you. Earn money and get services from CME aurora data center to ensure high speed.

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5 Coolest Celebrity Gossip Websites

If you are one of those who love getting celebrity news and gossips as it happens then you should be reasing this article. With thousands of different gossips sites on the web, it can be challenging to fish out the best place to turn with the most up-to-date information. Here are the top 5 coolest celebrity websites with the latest gossips that will keep you updated and in the know on the latest news.

1. TMZ
TMZ has lately become the go-to place for the latest celebrity gossip. They were the first to report on the death of Michael Jackson, as well as Britney Spears filing to divorce Kevin Federline. With a large staff working around the clock, TMZ is the most frequently updated website when it comes to celebrity news. Not only do they have a website, but also a television segment that airs on E! so not only do you have a website full of the latest information, but you can see the celebrity gossip reporting in action with the numerous members of the TMZ team on-camera telling you the latest news. TMZ has become a favorite among those who want the latest gossip.

2. E! News
With its one television network and website, E! is one of the most popular sources for the latest celebrity news. What's great about E! is that they have exclusive celebrity interviews everyday with celebrity gossip. If you want to see the latest celebrity news and gossip in action, you can catch their news segments every weeknight. The E! News website is constantly updated with news and gossip with follow ups to reports found on other websites.

3. The Hollywood Gossip
The Hollywood Gossip is located in Lighthouse Point, FL and is one of the leading websites for celebrity gossip. Not only do they cover gossip about the most popular celebrities, but they also cover gossip and news about the celebrities who are off the radar and not so popular anymore. With a team of reporters and anchors working around the clock, there is no question as to why The Hollywood Gossip is one of the most popular gossip sites on the web.

4. Perez Hilton
One of the most controversial bloggers in celebrity gossip, Perez Hilton has fine-tuned the genre of celebrity gossip. His influence of formerly outing celebrities has increased attention on celebrities, with the rest of the media seemingly acting on Hilton's cue. Not only does he report on celebrity gossip, but he also includes his own opinions and input with his famous "doodles" on tabloid photographs. While he may be extremely biased in his reporting, there is no doubt that his opinion will inspire readers to investigate more into the gossip he publishes.

5. Celebrity Gossip, Powered By Gossip Center
Celebrity Gossip is part of the Gossip Center brand, and originally began as a hub for a group of girlfriends to report on the latest celebrity gossip, Celebrity Gossip has grown since it began in 2003, and being bought out by Brand Technologies in 2006. Celebrity Gossip reports on the latest entertainment news and celebrity gossip directly on their website.

This article was written by Kate Parkfield. She has been on the editorial staff of one of the most influential celebrity magazines in Africa. She recommends that you visit buzz South Africa, an information website where she often makes her contributions.

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