WordPress Performance Guides and Reviews
Three ways to optimize/compress your images to improve WordPress load time: Open up Photoshop, export to Save-for-web, JPEG 50%. Save your image in the highest quality possible, go to ShortPixel’s online compress tool, and simply upload there. Download an image compression plugin that does it automatically from WordPress. I like ShortPixel but there are many… Read more How to Optimize/Compress Your Website Images
Don’t get lost in 285123213 revisions before going live! STOP DOING THAT! Websites are living beings. You don’t need to get it perfect on the first try. Every revision only needs to be better than the next. Then once the revision is up, you collect more data and more ideas of what to change. The… Read more Website Design Workflow Tips – Avoid Endless Revisions
Marketing, advertising, and branding…all explained in actionable ways! I saw an awful explanation the other day about these 3 and figured I could do some public service by clarifying them further. Don’t worry, I went to school and worked in marketing for a while. You can trust me. 🙂
Who are you to trust an absolute stranger on the internet about making money?! I’ll tell you why you can trust me: I’ve actually built some successful products/services over the years. I don’t want your money. I don’t have any gimmicks, only truth. (Which I admit, in and of itself does sound like a gimmick.)… Read more Ignore Tai Lopez and other MAKE-MONEY Scams
I’ll give a quick rundown on these 2 managed panel hosting services and how they compare for developer-grade clients. Speed, features, pricing, ease-of-use. What I like and dislike about both. We’ll go over all that.
Don’t waste your time. I thought they might be interesting considering all the expert advice they give on forums and marketing hype they have on their website. Slow to answer a sales email – seriously? I guess they don’t want my money. Bad reviews – read online and you’ll see plenty of complaints. Slow service… Read more UNIXy Varnish review for NGINX or LiteSpeed Web Servers
Having many javascript files loading will slow down your page load! For that reason, I cover the 2 most common optimization tactics below: Defer them if they aren’t critical for initial page rendering. On pages where they aren’t used, disable them from loading at all.
How long should your blog posts be? This question amuses me to no end. Who are you writing for? For yourself or for readers? Or for Google SEO? Or to make money? This question is for people with a lack of drive. Here’s a different perspective…
Should you have GZIP compression enabled? What does it do? Why is it recommended? And are there any drawbacks? GZIP is magical for me. You should definitely enable it if you want faster page loads. It’s a no-brainer and easy to enable. (I also go over the wrong way to do it!)
Simple tip for anybody still running Apache servers…switch to MPM Event! What is MPM Event and how does it improve your server performance without any drawbacks? I switched to MPM Event, I loved it. And you should do it too! We’ll cover some minor basics of MPM’s and why MPM Event is the best.
Should you consider blogging on other platforms? A friend asked me about Medium (cool blogging/publishing platform) and whether I would ever write on it. I’ve been on their site before and found lots of great content published there. I like the clean minimalistic look. They do have ads but your impression of it is that… Read more Is it worth blogging on 3rd-party platforms? (Medium, Tumblr, etc)
Is it worth your time to establish yourself in a busy niche? Have you ever had a good business idea but realized it was a heavily-saturated industry? How will you get attention? Is it even possible? And even if you did go through all that work, is there any money in the pie for you?… Read more Can you compete in a busy niche?
You should uninstall the Jetpack plugin for WordPress immediately! Why?! Because it sucks and hated by much of the community: Slows down your website—EVEN WITH ALL MODULES OFF. You don’t need many of its features. Feels like adware, keeps pitching their services. I don’t trust it. (More explained in this guide.) Read on to learn… Read more Get Rid of Jetpack Plugin – Why and How
Why do we want a lightweight theme? Besides getting rid of unnecessary visual clutter, they help your website load super fast which is especially important in today’s ADD society and especially important in today’s rising mobile-browsing trend. Fortunately, this trend has forced all themes today to be written with cleaner and lighter code. NOTE: I’ve… Read more The FASTEST Lightweight WordPress Themes Review – UPDATED 2018
How many sign-ups should you expect for your membership program? Memberships are all the rage lately. It used to be a complicated ordeal to create one but now there’s a hundred plugins/services out there catering to this latest money-making trend. The problem is that many people are spending thousands of dollars to create their membership… Read more Expected conversion rate for membership sign-ups?
Converting to HTTPS/SSL is one of the scariest tasks out there. It feels like SUCH a big project with a billion little details. Feels like you need to hire a programmer or server expert or someone to make all the edits on your website, webserver, and Google accounts. Here are some simple steps to manually… Read more How to Move Your WordPress Site from HTTP to HTTPS
Looking to find a quality translator? Maybe you have a business or website that needs to serve people in multiple languages, or maybe you want to add other languages for useability and SEO purposes. Or maybe even video subtitles…whatever the case may be…here’s how I recommend you to do it. ***NOTE: I’ve got several years… Read more How to Find a (Good) Translator
Running Apache behind an NGINX proxy was a good idea like in 2012. …but not anymore. I think we can just pick one and move on. Back in the days, Apache was faster at handling dynamic content (and also had htaccess compatibility) and NGINX (paired with Varnish) was way faster at handling static content. It… Read more Apache vs NGINX Comparison – use either but NOT BOTH!
You should avoid dropdown menus if you want conversions! Stop doing that sh*t. Cut it out. I’ve long read the many debates on dropdown menus for both desktop megamenus as well as mobile hamburger-menus. They go on and on about the pros and cons of each but only from the vantage-point of the designer rather… Read more Avoid Dropdown Menus (Bad Web Design UI)
I cover different WordPress migration plugins, their pros and cons. Features, reliability, cost, ease-of-use. Enjoy!
About 98% of the shared hosting services out there suck! The bigger and more well-known the company, the more likely it is to suck. It’s slow, it’s insecure, it’s missing features you need, the tech support doesn’t understand your problem (or even your English), or the server keeps going down. Why is shared webhosting always… Read more Why Shared Hosting Sucks
I’ve made lists sharing my favorite plugins but never made a list of bad plugins. These are probably equally important to know as they’re known to cause many issues with sites, causing poor performance or conflicting with other plugins. I include the most popular “bad” ones below.
Can you really trust a small webhost to have better PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY, SUPPORT, and SECURITY…compared to the big webhosting companies? I think many people (more now than ever) are getting fed up with their current webhosting situation. The days are almost over when all the shared hosting giants like GoDaddy, BlueHost, 1and1, DreamHost, HostGator could… Read more Should You Trust a Small Webhosting Company?
Yeaup, it’s still the best. And I keep getting asked everyday by clients, “Why?…why do you like ShortPixel so much?”
So much has been said about this incredibly popular WordPress plugin that just about everyone should have heard about it by now. But why is it so popular and what exactly makes MemberPress the best membership plugin for WordPress right now? Here are my top 10 reasons why MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin…
I’m sick of hearing people talk about time management and books and talks on time management. It really isn’t that hard. Most of you are not Fortune 500 CEO’s or running multiple booming empires. You’re probably a [somewhat] average Joe or Susie, doing the same shit as everyone else…got a job, family, friends…and a side… Read more Time Management Rule – Do the Important Shit First!
A quick rundown of the asset organizer plugins I’ve tried for WordPress. I’ve had a ton of sites that were loading slow because of unnecessary plugins loading on certain pages. Normally, this wouldn’t matter so much as you can always cache the page but in these instances, the pages weren’t cacheable. I wanted to prevent… Read more Plugin Script/Asset Organizer Review
LiteSpeed Cache BEATS Varnish…EASILY! I am by no means an “expert” sys admin or dev ops but after dealing with both for low-load and high-load servers, I will say LiteSpeed cache feels better. Here’s why…
Quick chat I had with a friend… Why shouldn’t I combine CSS styles and JS scripts? To combine/merge or not. It’s an endless debate over which is better. Merging CSS/JS looks great on performance test sites like Pingdom and GTmetrix but is it really the best performance for your site?
I think the problem with inmotion is they use really outdated servers and also overcrowded. Even their VPS is running php 5.x, and when my friend complained, support told him it was his site and not the server. So he was paying $80/month for really bad server and also no support. Since he moved servers,… Read more InMotion VPS Hosting Review (HINT: they’re really bad)
I haven’t used any recipe plugins personally but have heard developers chat back and forth and also managed a few clients using them. The old plugins were either too simple and missing key features, or they had tons of features but much too bloated. Luckily, the new generation of recipe plugins are so much cleaner-designed… Read more Best WordPress Recipe Plugins Review
I’ve had many online entrepreneurs ask me what they think is a good conversion rate for online sales. From my experience, to get even 1% is really difficult (that’s 1 buyer for every 100 visitors). I imagine the highest in any industry is like 3-4%. If I got 1%, I’d be a gajillionaire by now.… Read more What’s a Good Conversion Rate for Online Sales?
Stay away! I had a big client migrated away from them. He had 3 servers: $250 (8vCPU/32GB) $150 (4vCPU/16GB) $150 (4vCPU/16GB) TERRIBLE HARDWARE Really slow servers. All of them were really awful. All of them were slow clock speeds and hidden CPU name in cPanel so you couldn’t see what they were running. I’ve seen… Read more BeyondHosting Review – REALLY BAD MANAGED VPS
What’s the difference between CLOUD vs VPS vs MANAGED hosting? Yes, it’s confusing as hell! Many different services seem to use the words CLOUD, VPS, and MANAGED all interchangeably…and most people don’t know what they mean. I’ll break down their technical differences and explain how they affect your webhosting performance and pricing.
After moving nearly a dozen WordPress speed-up clients away from “managed VPS” hosting services this past month, I’ve decided it’s time to state loud and clear: MANAGED VPS sucks! It’s slow as hell and way over-priced! And don’t think I’ve haven’t tried them all! A2 MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80-160/month) InMotion MANAGED VPS sucks. ($80/month) LiquidWeb MANAGED… Read more Why are MANAGED VPS Servers so Slow?
WP Compress challenges the current WordPress image compression king (ShortPixel) with never-before-seen features and shockingly size-efficient algorithm!
I hate hate hate lazy load. Why? Because it hurts UX (user experience) at the benefit of maybe tricking page speed tests. It’s basically a cheap way of trying to speed up your page speed score by loading fewer items in the beginning. Problem is to the human eye, it makes things load slower! Sure…there’s… Read more Why You Should (almost) NEVER Use Lazy Load
NO! I speak from my experience. I started with the most relaxed no-questions-asked polices. And it was so much hassle. Tons of deadbeats taking advantage and doing chargebacks because I didn’t respond in time. (Yes, sometimes they’ll do a chargeback only 30 mins after sending you an email.) When you make thousands of sales, even… Read more Should You Offer Refunds (Policy) on Digital Products or Services?
Yes, you should definitely use object caching for your webserver…especially for dynamic page generation. It speeds things up incredibly and can do wonders for page speed performance.
CDN’s are becoming all the rage nowadays ever since CloudFlare offered their free plan. But now, there are all kinds of micro-CDN’s popping up everywhere. Each with a different set of pricing and services. I won’t go over the differences…all I care about is speed, reliability (HIT frequency), coverage, and ease-of-use. Here’s a list of… Read more Best CDN Providers for WordPress – Speed Review 2018