So recently I’ve been looking into ways of turning this around, and this blog entry is here to detail what I’ve done.

Improving site speed

Since switching from Movable Type, which outputted static HTML files, to WordPress, which uses dynamically-generated pages from the database, the speed of the site has gone down. Though I kept things lean by not using masses of plugins, pages were still loading quite slowly. Slow-loading sites are generally a bad thing – more than a few seconds and people are more likely to click away – but I’ve also heard that Google has started penalising slow sites in its search result pages.

Server changes

I recently upgraded Debian Linux on the server from Lenny to Squeeze, which in itself brought some noticeable improvements, and also meant I could install APC – the Alternative PHP Cache – which improved things further.

Plugin efficiency

I’ve always used WordPress plugins sparingly, and disabled any that I’m not actively using. I verified that plugins weren’t slowing the site down significantly by using P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler), a plugin by GoDaddy (ew…) that calculates how much overhead each plugin adds to your site’s load times. As it happens, P3 itself was slowing things down the most, so it’s disabled until I install any additional plugins. The next biggest hog was Jetpack – I do use a few features of Jetpack (namely the stats, email subscriptions and sharing buttons) so I need to keep this. In any case, it’s adding mere milliseconds to loading times which doesn’t really bother me much.

Caching

When I first switched to WordPress, I went for WP Quick Cache as you can pretty much install it and forget about it. But it doesn’t appear to offer the best performance when compared to other caching plugins. WP Super Cache is probably the most well-known, but I went for W3 Total Cache due to its better reviews. This will store static HTML files on your server’s disk, and will also run all of your scripts and stylesheets through a ‘minify’ system to reduce their file size and combine them into one file, thus reducing HTTP requests. I’ve only been using W3 Total Cache for a couple of days but it seems to have again made a difference.

Site maps

Under Movable Type, I had a Google Sitemap XML file, which was then submitted to Google through its webmaster portal so that the GoogleBot crawler would know where all of my pages were. Unfortunately I forgot about this file when switching to WordPress and so it stagnated. Though the GoogleBot regularly crawls new pages on the site, having a stale sitemap is probably not a good thing. At first I used BWP-GXS but have since installed WordPress SEO which also provides this functionality, albeit with fewer options. I also hadn’t notified Bing of the existence of the sitemap, so I registered with Bing Webmaster Tools and submitted it. Though Google has 80% of the search market, I’ve had very few clicks through from Bing and crawler issues may have been the problem, so hopefully it will use the sitemap to add to its index.

SEO plugin

I mentioned the WordPress SEO plugin earlier. I’d previously been hesitant to try such a plugin as I was worried about the effect it would have on the site – I didn’t want it to appear like a keyword-stuffed thin content site. But this plugin actually works well without impacting on your site too much. Unlike the more popular All in One SEO Pack it requires more configuring, but should therefore give you more control. I’ve used it to help to reduce content duplication between pages (or at least ensuring that duplicate content isn’t indexed by search engines) and set keywords for individual entries. I’m not going to start changing post titles to provocative things like ’10 ways to improve your WordPress blog’s search ranking’ as that’s not my style, but hopefully a bit of optimisation will help.

So this is what I’ve tried so far. Time will tell if it was worth it.

Re-building traffic was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

World Poetry Day was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

I don’t have much to say right now, so here’s a photograph of some roses that I bought for Christine just before Valentines Day.

Pink was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

Up until now, I’ve been running Debian Lenny on this server. Lenny is now being retired, so I’ve upgraded it to Debian Squeeze. This also means that Apache, PHP, MySQL and other packages are all running on newer versions than before. I think the site should be a little faster now, as a result.

There may, however, be some funkiness, with things not working as expected. This is the first time I’ve upgraded Linux on a box that I haven’t had physical access to, and the first with a complex hosting setup, so something is likely to have broken somewhere. That being said, so far everything seems fine.

Server upgrade was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

So tomorrow is this blog’s 10th anniversary. Hard to believe really.

Posts this week have been a bit light because it’s been very busy and draining for me at work. Last week’s Newcastle trip saw me me taking four days of annual leave and I ended up with a larger than expected in-tray when I came back on Monday. Still, whilst it’s a lot of work it’s not insurmountable, and things should be back to normal soon.

One of my photos has been featured on this Lifehacker article about eliminating sloppy mistakes. The sign was actually my own doing – thankfully I noticed the mistake before putting it up and reprinted it, but not before taking a quick picture. After all, it’s probably a good thing that I find humour in my own mistakes.

Blogiversary Eve was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

When Christine went on our little break last week, I decided to use Foursquare for a little more than simply recording where I’d been to get points and badges. The ‘Explore’ feature (which as of today is also available on the foursquare.com web site) also lets you find places to go, and so we tried this out a couple of times.

It uses checkin data to work out which venues are popular, but also shows you the tips for that venue. In both cases, it actually suggested some really good places – The Gilded Lily in Carlisle and the Stateside Diner in Newcastle – neither of which would we have gone to had we not known about them. The Stateside Diner in particular looked like a greasy spoon café from the outside but actually did really nice food with a 1950s American diner theme going on. Had it not been for Foursquare we’d have probably played it safe and gone somewhere boring like Nando’s.

Last week, Anil Dash tweeted that living entirely off recommendations from Foursquare Explore “…Would make a decent Tumblr, and probably earn a book deal.“. I’m not quite ready to go that far but I’m pleased with its suggestions thus far.

The other thing we used Foursquare for was directions. Generally I’ve found that the locations of places on Foursquare are more accurate than on Google Maps, so by searching for it, and then following through to venue details and then hitting the directions button, the Maps app on my iPhone launched with a route planned out for me. Then, when I got there, I just had to re-open Foursquare, tab back a couple of screens and check in.

Foursquare Thursday – Exploring new places was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

Well done – if you can read this, you’ve made it into 2012! Hope you have a happy and prosperous new year.

Happy New Year! was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Joyeux Noel was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

I’m not quite sure why. I do know that the Google PageRank score of this site has dropped from the lofty highs of 7 some years ago down to 4 just recently but I don’t think that on its own has caused it. Furthermore it doesn’t appear to be because of any technical problems with the site.

If anyone else has noticed some funkiness in their stats, I’d be interested to hear, just in case it’s as a result of an algorithm change by Google. I don’t really follow many search engine optimisation guides so I’m not aware of any big changes.

It’s all a bit perplexing, really.

The power to stop traffic was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.

Existing sites

Back in April I was registered with OnePoll, Valued Opinions, YouGov, OpinionBar and e-Rewards:

• OnePoll – I’m earning a small amount each week from OnePoll, but not much. Since April I’ve added around £6.45 to my total, which now stands at £11.80, but this is a long way short of the £40 minimum payout threshold. I do get a number of polls each week but due to not having children I’m not eligible for many of them. They also appear to have abandoned the iPhone app as no new polls have been posted there for a while. Persistence may pay off but it will be a long time before I get any money from OnePoll.
• Valued Opinons – Since joining in mid-March I have been able to claim £60 worth of vouchers, so joining has definitely been worthwhile. One recent survey included a product trial of a deodorant, so not only did I get £2 for doing the trial but also a free large can of deodorant. At present, I usually get invited to a new survey every weekday. They also now have an iPhone app which has additional surveys from time to time.
• YouGov – I’ve accrued 1325 points (equivalent to £13.25) since receiving my cheque in November, but again will need to hit £50 to get my next payout. The number of polls I’ve been receiving from YouGov has gone down somewhat recently to around two a month.
• OpinionBar – I finally got my £10 payout a few weeks ago, but surveys currently come through once a month at best so it’ll be a long time before I get any more money from them.
• e-Rewards – I recently cashed in my e-Rewards points for Priority Club points to use at Intercontinental Hotels. Although this gave me around 4000 Priority Club points, this is still too few to get anything much useful like free hotel nights. Currently receiving around 2-3 surveys a month.

New sites

I came across MySurvey recently, and they’re worth mentioning as I get 7-8 surveys per week at present and have managed to accrue a lot of points, which can be redeemed as vouchers, gifts or cash via PayPal. Each point is worth slightly less than 1p – so 550 points would get approximately £5 of rewards. I joined in May and have gained around £25 of rewards since, so it’s up there with Valued Opinions for potential returns. A lot of the surveys are about advertising and its reach, so you may be asked to watch TV commercials and comment on them, for example.

Summary

If you’re looking at signing up to any of these sites, then MySurvey and Valued Opinions are the two to look at first, as you’re likely to get the most out of them. Between the two, you could get as much as £15-20 of rewards each month, which isn’t bad for the small time investment required each day.

Getting paid to do surveys – part three was originally posted on Neil Turner's Blog. Content is made available under a Creative Commons License.