Sooner or later every WordPress blog or website owner wants to know how to speed up their WordPress website. A well performing website is good for users and for  search engine rankings. So lets look at what you can do about it.

The more you post on your WordPress website the bigger your database grows and the more plugins you install and uninstall Your database then gets bloated with uncleared settings. What can you do about that and what other measures can you take to get that initial install speed back into the site?

Initial Actions to Take

First of all you need to take three actions on your files and database:

• backup,
• backup,
• and BACKUP

Why this emphasis on creating a backup of your website and especially the database? Because you are going to work on that database.  Don’t worry you don’t need to learn MySql statements and queries (although some basic knowledge can help). You can do most of the work with plugins.

So, did you create a good backup and test it or at least check that it is done? You can create a backup via your providers CPanel or request it via a ticket if you don’t know how to do it yourself.

After your backup verification check your baseline by running a page check on http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/. Your goal should be to reach a score of at least 90/100.

Two Easy Plugins to Start

With the latest versions of WordPress you are filling your WordPress database with many revisions of your posts and pages if you go back into them and edit the content. These revisions  are rarely used and you can clean them out and prevent them from being created in the future and thereby reduce the number of revisions stored.

Revision Control is the first plugin you can install and you can change the settings to suit your needs.

Now that you have revisions under control you need to clean out the old revisions and with the next plugin you can do several things in one click.

WP-Optimize gives you the options to clean:

• all post revisions
• all auto draft posts
• marked spam comments
• unapproved comments
• and optimize your database tables

Just select your choices and click PROCESS to clean and optimize. In the configuration screen you will have a large overview of the tables in your database and it shows you if they need optimization or not.

Getting Closer to Your Turbo Options

There is a great plugin called Clean Options that can help you to find and eliminate old entries left by plugins you no longer use. This looks pretty easy but you must have some knowledge of which plugins you used before and which plugins you removed.

If you follow the instructions of this plugins documentation you will see a large list of fields that might be no longer in use, but please be careful and if you are unsure about one or more of them, don’t clean them out.

What you can look for are descriptions that are clearly related to old plugins. In my case these were entries like wp_insert and whydowork_.You might recognize others from plugins you stopped using.

Cleaning your images and reducing their size with Smush It.

Smush It is a plugin that reduces image file sizes and improves performance. It is simple to use and is easy to configure. .

Do I use it myself? Sometimes I do, especially if I am working on websites other than my own. I prepare all my images before hand by optimizing and, if necessary, resizing them via Irfanview.

Using a WordPress Cache Plugin

I have tried several caching plugins on my WordPress websites and the one that out performs the others for me is W3 Total Cache, but it requires the right configuration.

For your understanding, a cache plugin takes the result of a post request and stores it on a disc as static HTML. If the next visitor to your website requests the same page this cached version is shown. W3 Total Cache uses a mechanism for the temporary storage of your web document to increase performance. The cache itself is cleared after some time (you can set that time in the configuration).

Installing W3 Cache is easy. Just install it like any other plugin by searching a plugin from the back end.

The next steps are to configure it. If you get any warnings on these settings start by checking if your .htaccess file is writable during this configuration session.

The first action is to disable the preview option.

Next is to enable the settings for:

• Page Cache
• Database Cache
• Browser Cache
• Under Miscellaneous only check “Verify rewrite rules” and save all settings.

Click on the menu option titled Browser Cache and activate the options as shown below. This is not the standard setting and has a great effect on your site’s speed.

Save everything, exit out of this screen and then go back into it.

You will see some error messages in the top part of the screen.

Click the option auto-install and you will be fine.

Ready? Now go and check again on http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ to see if your scores have improved. Note: Run the test twice because your cache may need to kick in.

If this has no effect, you either already had a good score or you need to look at your theme and plugins, but you will see that on the Pingdom tools page. The final option if nothing else helps is to look for a new hosting provider.

Below is the ultimate score of 100/100, but you should take that with a big grain of salt as this is a new installation with nothing posted yet, but with all the plugins active I mentioned above.

So what about your site, did you get better scores or do you have extra options and information that you can share that will speed up your website?

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

Including a video in WordPress can be done in several different ways, with or without plugins.

My favorite way is do to it is without any plugins by adding the special inclusion code from Youtube itself.

YouTube WordPress Plugins

But for those of you that don’t want anything to do with HTML codings, here a four af the best Youtube Plugins:

• Smart YouTube
• TubePress 
• YouTube Brackets
• WP YouTube

If you want simple, use one of the last two, want more options choose TubePress Pro (25 Dollar for One Year) with which you can create video gallery’s.

Smart Youtube might be the smart choice of you are going to embed more video’s in you blog postings.

Including YouTube HTML Coding

Like I said, I prefer to just included the HTML coding because I have very few video’s in my posts and I don’t want another plugin to slowdown the site.

When you see a Youtube video you want to include, look for the Share button below the video.

Not all video’s can be embedded, sometimes they are exlcuded because of copyrights.

If you can share it you will see the following code that you can copy and past http://youtu.be/NAc83CF8Ejk into your post and as you can see this is enough for your WordPress website. For me it works just by pasting the code (WordPress 3.2.1).

You can use the same code for inclusion with a plugin like the above mentioned ones, but if you want the inclusing code, use the embed button.

What you don’t want is the standard format unless your theme content size is just right…. for me it never is :-).

But you can easily change to the format you want by just setting the width you need and other options you want to set like the use of High Definition (HD).

Once you set the size, copy the code from the top box and save it in notepad or past it right into your post. Attention! before you paste it into you post, first switch to the HTML input screen!

In the HTML screen you can post the code right were you want the video to show.

Hope this will help you to live up you blog. Make sure you listen to some of the video’s that you see here!

Enjoy this beautiful  music before you get back to working on you WordPress site, Adele is one of the best singers at this moment!

Here are two of my other all time favourite video’s…

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

This is a question I get on a regular base: How can I convert my Static HTML website into a WordPress website?

Let me give you a warning in advance, a WordPress website needs to be kept updated!
A static HTML site can run for years without you ever touching it for things like security updates or new versions. Just to make you aware of the need for updates!

Another thing that needs really close attention is to make sure that your rankings in Google and other search engines stay intact.
That means you need to make sure your URLs of your old site will stay the same with your new WordPress based website.

Luckily this can be done and for those few links you want to change you can redirect them via your .htaccess file.

But first things first, the conversion of your website.

First, what do you need:

• good hosting that support php
• a mysql database: databasename, username for that database and the password for that useraccount
• the possibility to use a .htaccess file

If you are not sure about the above mentioned items, ask your website hosting provider!

Installing WordPress in a Subfolder

The first thing you will do is to install WordPress into a Subfolder like /cms .

After you finished the installation you have to set the Privacy setting so that Search Engines are not allowed to visit and index your site (Settings -> Privacy) so your new URLs are not getting into the search engine indexes until you are ready with your conversion.

Now you can start building your WordPress website next to your current site, that site will stay active while you build a new one.

Keeping Old URLs

Like a mentioned before, it is very important that you keep the URLs for the new site the same as the old one!

That is why you need to set the Permalinks to custom with the value /%postname%.html this will result in Posts links with the extension .html.

During the development of your new site the urls will be like /cms/page-url.html , but after the final steps this will become /page-url.html , that same as the old site.
Make sure that the “slugs” are the same as the old site, and there is a plugin that you will need which is “.html on pages” . I take it you will have some pages that use the extension .html

You can now start to convert your old pages to WordPress by copying the text or the HTML code of the content from the old website into the HTML code screen of WordPress.

Your page URL is created by the Title of your page, but you can change them by editing the Slug permalink.

There is a plugin that could help you convert old pages: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/import-html-pages/ Attention! For this plugin to work you really need  PHP5! Ask your hosting provider if you are not sure.

Website Layout

The conversion from your old site to a WordPress based site with the same layout is completely different exercise than what I am describing here, to do that your will have to get a complete custom Theme / Layout.

But why not take this opportunity and change the look of your site together with the conversion? Choose a nice premium or free theme  that will fit you company / website topic and customize it to your needs.

If you are happy with the look and feel and the content of your site you can follow these step to get it “live”:

1. delete or rename the index.html file in the root of your old site.
2. copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the /cms folder to the root of your site
3. change one rule in the index.php file into require(‘./cms/wp-blog-header.php’); (only with the index.php file in the root, not in the folder  /cms!!)
4. change only the Site address (URL) in the general setting (Setting -> General) into the domain name. (remove the /cms part)

Change Site Address Only!

5. remove or rename the old  .html files.
6. change the privacy settings so the Search Engines can access and index the site again.

If you handle the change over it this manner, than your old site is not reachable during the 5 minutes you need to rename the index.html so the index.php takes over and if you kept your URLs you are not loosing any visitors from the search engines like Google.

And of course you have taken a complete Back-Up of your old static website so you can restore your old side if you should encounter any unexpected error(s).

If you want new URLs for your pages than you can redirect the old URLs to the news ones in two ways:

• use a plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/
• via the .htaccess file in which you have to write a rule per url you want to forward:  redirect 301 /olde-url.html http://www.example.com/new-url.html

However if you change your URLs, even with a 301 redirect you could loose some credit and backlinks that are pointing to your site.

Good luck and if you still have some questions, please use the contact form.

If you have other tips and additions that might help others, please write them in the comments section below.

One last question: Is there a need to have this information in an even more detailed form like a pdf manual with screen shots and tips? if so, please leave a comment.

Update: You asked for it and now it’s finally here… From Static HTML To WordPress version 1.0

You can share the PDF with friends, post it on you website but you cannot sell it or change anything in it! If you find any language or grammatical errors please let me know so I can correct them.

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

Once you have completed the basic setup of your WordPress website, it’s time to add more functions by installing plugins.

Here is a basic list of plugins that I integrate into every WordPress website I build.

Basic WordPress Plugins List

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
FD Feedburner Plugin
Flexi Pages Widget
Google XML Sitemaps
HeadSpace2
My Page Order
NextGEN Gallery
Related Posts
Robots Meta
Secure Files
SEO Slugs
Subscribe To Comments
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
WordPress Database Backup
WordPress File Monitor
WP-DBManager
WP-SpamFree
Fancybox
WP Security Scan
W3 Total Cache

Yes, you counted correctly, those are 20 different plugins… and if you have ever installed a plugin, you know how difficult a task it was to install these.

Search for the plugin on wordpress.org, click the install button, confirm that the installation was successful and activate the plugin.

Plugin nr 21 to the rescue, meet Plugin Central!

Plugin Central is a plugin created by Vladimir Prelovac, and it is a great time-saver.

This is always the first plugin I install using the standard process:

Plugins -> Add New -> Search -> Install -> Activate Process

Once you have done this, the magic begins. Go to the option “Plugin Central” under the Plugins menu.

The next screen gives you the option that you are going to use. Pay special attention to the field where you can paste the list shown above.
Of course, you can just type the names of other plugins you want to install.

Once you are satisfied with your list, click the “Install Plugins” button.

Depending on your host’s security settings, it might ask you for your FTP data such as FTP site, username and password. Or,  it will start to work directly.

The process of installing the plugins depends on your hosting environment, but with my Just Host based websites it takes under two minutes for all 20 plugins.

After the whole process has ran, you need to active all of the plugins, which takes about four clicks.

Go to the installed plugins page, click the top checkbox (Plugin), choose from the dropdown menu “Activate” and then push “Apply”.

Now all of your plugins are active. Some of them need some configuration (Google xml sitemaps, Wp Super cache and Askimet, etc) but most of them are running right off the bat.

Configuring the plugins will take some time, but you just saved a lot of time on the installation, so go ahead and set all the options that you want. I will be writing more about some of these plugins, but now it’s time for you to take action!

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

Brain Gardner, WordPress theme designer extraordinaire, just announced the release of a new theme specifically targeted to Real Estate Agents.

This theme comes with great features like automatic thumbnail creation and special pages for your real estate listing.

There are separate writing panels for your listings with fields for price and other items pertaining to the property. You write the data, and the theme will handle the layout so that every listing has the same format.

For Google maps code, there is a special field where you only need the location code.

It comes with four different color schemes that give you the ability to use the one that best fits your company. You also get the PSD files, so you can make your own changes or hire AgentPress to do further customization for you.

Different ideas for usage

Although this theme was developed by Brian Gardner together with Nicole Nicolay (of My Tech Opinion) for real estate agents, it looks to me like you can adapt this theme. With a few simple changes, you can make it work for different agents like car dealers, motorcycle companies, and even custom car builders.

In fact, every company that chooses to showcase their products with several photos can benefit by using this theme.

If you want to build a professional website for marketing products in the high end consumer market, the SEO-ready Agent Theme from StudioPress may be just what you need.

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

This website is primarily focused on how you can setup CMS Options and special plugins to get a static website view using WordPress.

I also write about magazine style and news style themes, and how you should change your WordPress Themes to get a less dated site.

I’ve recently realized that the site needs an upgrade to reflect more on the process of building, configuring and installing things like themes and plugins.
As I mentioned before, this was not the initial intent of the site, but there seems to be a clear need for that kind of information. In the following days/weeks/months, you will see this site grow in that direction.

It takes time to write clear and understandable articles to show you where you want to go, so please stay with me as I will help you build your website with WordPress.

I have already completed some of these pages. A new page about The Process of Building a WordPress website will become one of the cornerstones of this site, and I will create links on this page to point you to the new pages as they are published.

I want to thank Milan for pointing out the flaw in this site’s setup as it is today. I will continue working to make this site one of the best resources around for building a WordPress website.

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

Brian Gardner is showing off the redesign of his Magazine Theme, which is already a classic.

If you look at the new features in the header, you can see why this is going to be a great theme to use for Building a website with WordPress.

The tabs at the top are great for extra pages, and the category links will make it easy to “theme” your site.

In Brian’s post, he also shows the new configuration panel that will make it a lot easier to work with for the not-so-technical WordPress website builders.

With this theme, just like the Thesis theme, there are extra fields in the posting panel to give writers a simpler method for adding images to a post and have them show up in the correct positions.

I suppose that the new automatic thumbnail creation that is now implemented in a lot of  Studiopress themes will also be part of this theme…

To be honest with you, there is one thing I don’t like about this theme…. the colors used for the links and headers. As you can tell from my new Hybrid Top Cars website, I prefer blue!

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

I have used two different themes on this site now.  The first was Cutline and the second was Revolution Blue.

Both are very good themes and come well-equipped for a Search Engine Optimized website.

Still, I wanted to have a more Magazine-like template. After looking for one that was created for the WordPress versions 2.7 and up, I found the new Mimbo 3.

A new addition, this free magazine theme was built with the ability to use Child Themes.

Changing the style can be done without touching the theme itself. Just change the child theme and all functions from this theme will be there.

A big advantage of this is that if you have heavily customized the theme via child theme, a new version can be installed and will work without you touching any of the core files.

I know, this is a new way of customizing your design with child themes, but I will be looking into these options very soon.  :-)

My Frontpage is not like the standard Mimbo, since that is really built for a blog page, which this site is not.

How about you? Do you work with WordPress theme frameworks yet, or are you still waiting to see how it evolves?

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

This website is now on a full new WordPress 2.7 platform and all plugins are updated to the latest release.

I am now really happy with my new laptop an HP Mobile Workstation  which runs on Windows XP. I is really fast on for my kind of work a real workhorse!
But the main reason why I am so happy is this: It runs Adobe Flash 9 ! instead of 10.

On my old laptop I upgraded to Flash 10 ans since then all WordPress 2.7 based Blogs and Sites I wanted to administer ran horrible, and that was not because of some plugin that was at fault.
Also my Blogs on WordPress.com gave me the same administrative problems resulting in not being able to post or even update a post, aarrgh :-(

Where possible I downgraded my 2.7 based sites to 2.6
Which is easy, just follow the same process as upgrading to a new version, but instead of uploading the 2.7 files you upload the 2.6 version and login, upgrade and your done.

I even tried to downgrade to Adobe Flash 10, but no luck there. As soon as I went to a website with Flash the plugin update to 10 again…

On the new laptop I can hold off the Flash Upgrade so I can work with WordPress 2.7 which I must say look great from an administration view.
Coming form 2.6 you still need to get used to the new placements, but it is not that hard to getting used to.

So in short: Don’t upgrade to 2.7 yet if you have Flash 10 installed (Check your Flash version here) if you have version 9, then go ahead but make sure not to upgrade to Flash 10 until this issue is fixed.
For your information, this is NOT a WordPress problem, but a Adobe Flash security problem!

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

I just upgraded this WordPress website to version 2.7. release candidate 1 and it works just fine.

There was just one Plugin, the Category Folding plugin that I needed to deactivate, maybe there will be an update for that in the near future.

One other thing I am looking at is to change the Theme to a new one from StudioPress.com an then especially the Church WP Theme

That theme might be some extra work to get it right, but I think it would show even better how your can Build an Website with WordPress

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

I was just thinking about this project of Building a Website with WordPress and the use of a Magazine Style Theme.

As I was working on the manual for the use of that special kind of themes, I suddenly realized that the whole project was not going to work….

You see, if you have a customer that is not as WordPress and Computer savvy as you are, you need to explain how this thing with  ”custom fields” works.
And you need to tell them how to upload and choose the right image, copy the right name and paste it in the right format in the right box…
Before that you need to tell your client that he/she needs to create three images in exactly those three formats because they are needed in that post.

So do you think he/she will go through this kind of proces every time he/she wants to write a post?
If the answer is NO (really big change!) then you need to re-think the use of that kind of WP Templates for a CMS based semi-static page.

Just use a standard WordPress Blog Template and recode that in a way that your customer will be able to write and manage its website in the easiest way possible.
Only then, and really only then the client will be much more likely to work on their own website and let it grow to its real potential.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Magazine Style CMS Like WordPress themes, but you should not use them for the majority of website owners.

What do you think? Is there a WordPress Magazine style template that is easier for “Normal” people to work with?

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.

I have been working on this site to provide information on how to build a static website with WordPress.
The Theme I used was Cutline 1.x, but I wanted a better layout more like a magazine.

And now I have found one of the best free ones, although I like the other Revolution that Brain Garder brings to us, I found the price for this new theme better!
No, the templates are great, but I don’t feel the need right now to buy a template for this website, it is still a work in progress, although this site is doing pretty well in the search engines as it comes to the keywords I targeted.

This new theme is a free version that you can get at the Download page for the free Revolution Blog Theme and you can read more about the theme at the Blog from Brain Gardner on The Free Revolution Blog Theme

So I am going to take the next step and bring a new vision and layout to the site, I hope you like it, I know I do.
It’s a new challenge to make this site even more informational.

Want to read more about this topic? Go to Building a Website with WordPress.