08/12/2011 - RAM upgrade on supremecenter16.co.uk - 30 minutes downtime
While the technicians at the data center are upgrading the RAM on the server, all services will be off-line, including web sites, e-mails and control panel access. The downtime should not exceed more than 30 minutes. The RAM upgrade will improve the performance of the server.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Thank you for your understanding.
No one likes to wait for a web page to load - if a site is taking too long to load, the visitor is more likely to close it and move on. This is especially true for blogs, which are meant to be seen and read. Today, we will share with you several tips on how you can speed up a blog running on WordPress.
1. Eliminate unnecessary plugins
Don't use too many plugins - they will noticeably slow down your website. Imagine them as too many apps running at the same time - they will affect the overall performance of the blog. Keep the number of the plugins low - let's say from 5 to 10, but don't go over 20.
2. Optimize your Database
All the information for your blog posts and comments is stored in a database. So, to speed up the loading speed, you can optimize this database. There are two ways to do that - with the WP-Optimize plugin, or manually. The plugin is the easier way, but always remember point 1 of this article. If you want to do things manually, follow these instructions:
1. Inside your web hosting Control Panel, locate and open PHPMyAdmin- you can find it in the Database Manager section.
2. Once logged in the PHPMyAdmin, select your database.
3. Click "Check All" at the bottom of the page.
4. Choose "Optimize table" in the drop-down list next to it.
5. Done!
3. Cache your Database
Another way to speed up the work of your database is to cache it. This way, you will reduce the number of queries made to the database each time a user visits your blog. You can cache your database with the DB Cache Reloaded plugin.
4. Disable Post Revisions
Post Revisions exist since WordPress 2.6 and they are useful when there are several writers working on the same blog, or if you make constant changes to your blog posts. If left enabled, this feature will create multiple entries for a blog post in your database, effectively slowing it down.
5. Use a Cache Plugin
You can also create static versions of the most visited web pages. This way, you will reduce the queries made to the database. And static HTML pages load much faster. There are a lot of cache plugins, but be careful with their configuration - if they are left untended and not properly configured, they tend to use too much CPU power.
6. Optimize your images
Have your images optimized - you can use Photoshop's "Save for Web" function, which will save the image with a good balance between size and quality. Here is a list of other image optimization tools:
Online Tools:
- PunyPNG
- Smush.it
- Online Image Optimizer
Desktop Tools:
- Shrink O'Matic
- PNGGauntlet
7. Optimize your CSS and JavaScript files
Another way to speed up your website is to optimize the CSS and JavaScript files - this way you will reduce the size of the files and save some disk space and decrease the server load. There are several tools you can use to do that.
To compress the CSS files, you can use several tools:
- WP CSS plugin
- CSS Optimizer
- CSS Compressor
To optimize your JavaScript files, use:
- JavaScript Compressor
We are writing to give you some information on the service interruptions some of you may have experienced lately. For the past 17 hours, our Australian server - supremecenter300.com, has been undergoing an urgent maintenance due to a major outage of an important international backbone.
The main reason for the extensive downtime is an incidental problem with the server RAID configuration, which is now being sorted out.
We would like to assure you that our administrators are working round the clock to resolve the issue and get the server back online as soon as possible. We are in constant communication with the Data Center staff and have been informed this issue will be resolved within 10-12 hours.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this totally unpredictable event, and the disruption of service to our customers accounts on this server. As soon as we have further information about this issue we will update you. Thank you for your understanding regarding this matter.
We would like to inform you that on November 5th 2010, at approx. 9 AM GMT our administrators will change one of the hard drives on the supremecenter30.com server. The change is due to faulty hardware. The procedure will last around 20 minutes, which is also the expected downtime for all user services, running on the server.
All of the data on the hard drive will remain intact and will be placed on the new hard drive upon the HDD switch procedure completion.
When you are building your own website, sooner or later you run into the question - how to handle duplicate content? What do I mean by that? Imagine that you have a highly visited web page, which receives most of the daily visits. You are planning to re-design the website, and give this web page a new URL and a fresh new look, but don’t want to lose all that traffic from that old page. And you can’t keep both of them online, since they will have most likely the same content text-wise - something, which is often penalized by search engines. How do you proceed from there?
The best practice is to do a 301 redirect. The 301 message on the Internet is handled by the search engine as: moved permanently. Here is how you can make a 301 redirect for your web page:
With PHP:
The code needs to be placed in the Header section of the website, so that the search engine can read it first.
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
With .htaccess:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old\.php$ http://www.domain.com/new.php [R=permanent,L]
The code above will direct all the traffic from the old.php to the new.php page.
With the rel=”canonical” directive:
If you run an online store and want to sell a custom made handbag, which is available in several colors, and decide to dedicate a separate page on your site for each color, then you have about 3 or 4 identical pages. You can use the rel=”canonical” element to direct all traffic to the page with the most popular color.
This will lead a search engine to point all the traffic from the similar pages to the page you have specified. This code needs to be placed in the header section of all the web pages you wish to lead somewhere else.
With the URL Redirection Manager in the Web Hosting Control Panel:
If you don’t like to meddle with code, or with new file creation, or anything like that, you can use the handy URL Redirection Manager available with all our shared web hosting plans, where a simple web interface will allow you to choose which pages to be redirected and what redirection code to be used.
We have recently been informed by both eNom and Instra, the domain name registrars we are working with, that they are no longer accepting registration requests for the .CN TLD, as well as for its derivatives - .COM.CN, .NET.CN and .ORG.CN. The reason for this is a new policy for the provision of WHOIS details enforced by the CNNIC. The explanation from CNNIC states that they want to enhance the authenticity, accuracy and integrity of the domain name information provided for new domain name registrations.
For the moment, this affects only new domain owners â all renewals of .CN domain names will go without problems.
There is no information as for how long this suspension will continue. As soon as we have new information on the subject, we will let you know.