Here is a partial screenshot from Google Analytics that shows how much improvement in site speed the recent move to the new server brought. Â We are back at the previous “normal” levels – 10 seconds per page load on average versus 45 seconds, and that’s before any kind of server tuning or optimization. Â In the next few days, when the dust settles a bit, I’ll optimize the server configuration a bit and everything will be even faster.
Alex King has a blog post describing the major differences between using custom fields and taxonomies in WordPress. Â If you are familiar with the WordPress database, and if you think about it for a couple of minutes, you’ll probably realize why taxonomies are a better choice than custom fields for those situations where you can use both.
The reason to favor a custom taxonomy in these situations has to do with the WordPress database structure. Queries by taxonomy are well optimized as this is a primary front-end presentation feature in WordPress core. Conversely, querying by custom field key and value is slow. The value column in the custom field table is not indexed – you are basically doing a search through data that is not intended for that purpose.
The problem is that too many people, even those who are very well familiar with WordPress database structure, never really think about it. Â And since custom fields are an older way of solving problems, many go for them without proper consideration.
A month and a half ago I blogged about CloudFlare – a Content Delivery Network with security concerns and simple users in mind. Â Â CloudFlare is flexible for webmasters and they make it easy for us to take advantage of all the benefits they offer. I have moved several of my sites to CloudFlare and I am pretty happy with the service they provide. Â One of the things that I didn’t do at the time (or every since) though is a review or research for some alternatives. Â I mean, of course, we all know about Akamai and that big guns use it. Â We also know that Akamai is one of the most expensive services on the Web. Â But who else is out there?
Today I received an email from Incapsula. In essence, they offer a service which is similar to CloudFlare. Â They do caching, global delivery, and security. Â They do also offer a free plan for small, personal websites. Â They also have a few packages of varying prices and features.
As I mentioned earlier, I do run all of my important sites now through CloudFlare. Â And I don’t feel like moving to Incapsula just yet. Â However, I do want to try them out. Â I have a couple of new projects coming up, and I think I will use Incapsula for them just to see all the features they are offering and to compare with other alternatives out there. Â I’d be interested to hear the reviews, if you’ve tried the service. Â Especially, how they compare to the others and if they offer anything cool that nobody else does.
As a side note, website performance is becoming more and more important – with increased competition, impatient users and more weight to search results metrics in Google. Â Also, web application security is becoming increasing complex – it takes so much time and effort even for trained technical people such as myself, that I can’t imagine how huge of a task it is for “normal” people to maintain common sense security levels for their websites. Â It’s nice to see that there are more and more services and applications that take care of all the infrastructure problems, leaving more time to do the cool stuff – blogging, sharing, communicating, etc.
P.S.: Reading about Six Great Human and Computer Collaborations will expose you to new technology developments.
I’ve heard a few mentions of CloudFlare before, but I never gave it much attention. Today, after reading this blog post, I decided to give it a try.
What’s more, that 30-40% increase that people used to see is now in the range of at least 50-60% as the team continues to find ways to make CloudFlare faster, while still offering security at the forefront.
What is CloudFlare, you ask? Â As per their own website:
CloudFlare protects and accelerates any website online. Once your website is a part of the CloudFlare community, its web traffic is routed through our intelligent global network. We automatically optimize the delivery of your web pages so your visitors get the fastest page load times and best performance. We also block threats and limit abusive bots and crawlers from wasting your bandwidth and server resources. The result: CloudFlare-powered websites see a significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks.
In simple terms: CloudFlare is very cheap (even free) content delivery network (CDN). Â It provides speed and security improvements, and it is extremely easy to configure. Â I know so, because I’ve already registered for the free account and configured this site to benefit from the service. Â Whether it actually lives up to all the hype – I don’t know yet, but I’ll see in the next few days. Â I suspect it does, since there are numerous positive reviews around the web. Â I will of course let you know. Â Especially if you remind me.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaMWqyg_xMo]
Stale cache is responsible for at least 40% of all heart attacks. Â At least for people working in the IT industry.