willie jackson

Category: WordPress

  • Announcing W3 Total Cache Pro

    Update: there’s now a W3 Total Cache Pro landing page for your reference.

    Another update I’ve been itching to share is about W3 Total Cache Pro. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m excited to see the results that our customers are experiencing.

    W3 Total Cache version 0.9.3 ships with the ability to unlock the Pro features, the most notable of which is fragment caching. Since I know that the vast majority of my readership is non-technical, suffice it to say that this feature results in pages being served faster both to you (when you’re logged into the WordPress dashboard) and your visitors.

    There were a slew of updates shipped with this release as well, and you can check those out here and read the full announcement over on the W3 EDGE blog. In the weeks to come, we’ll publish more in-depth posts that show you how to maximize fragment caching in your theme.

    Drop us a note if you have any questions or issues.

  • Essential WordPress Plugins

    When site owners new to WordPress discover what plugins are, they often go wild and install plugins that add an incredible amount of unnecessary functionality to their site.

    The problem is, many plugins are of very poor quality and thus full of security holes. Adding a lot of poorly-coded plugins will also slow your site down dramatically, and you probably know how I feel about that.

    So I’ve put together a small list of plugins that I use on this site and would recommend on the basis of their utility and quality. I hope you find it useful:

    As the date for my first live WordPress event in NYC draws closer, I will publish a few more technology-related posts.

  • WordPress Performance Class: Live event in NYC

    In two weeks, I’ll be teaching a live class on web performance in New York City.

    I’ll be covering as much material as the time contraints permit, and there will be a Q/A portion at the end to address your specific questions.

    The event will take place at New Work City in their main lecture area (I’m making that name up), and covered in brief will be the following:

    • The Business case for having a faster site
    • How to properly configure W3 Total Cache on your site
    • Overview of optimization tools available
    • Before/after speed test with optimization on/off
    • How to integrate a Content Delivery Network
    • Introduction to advanced topics (opcode cache integration, custom server, builds, etc.)

    My schedule doesn’t often permit me to do live facilitation like this, so I look forward to sharing some of the things I’ve been busy with over the past few months.

    And if the event gets the kind of traction I think it will, there will be a followup hand-on session in a more intimate setting. It will be at a higher price point and go into much more detail.

    So if you run a self-hosted WordPress site, live in New York City, and want to learn how to extract the most performance out of your site, I hope you’ll join me.

    Who: Yours truly
    What: WordPress Performance Class
    Where: New Work City in Chinatown, NYC
    When: Monday, November 28, 2011 at 7:00 PM (ET)
    Why: Web performance can be confusing. I can help with that™.

    Drop me a note if you’re coming — I’d love to hear from you.

  • Why WP Engine has already won

    Fast websites really do it for me. Over the past year or so, I’ve found myself gravitating toward the performance side of the WordPress world.

    I’ve actually become something of a hosting snob at this point. I enjoy building servers now that I know what I’m doing and although I’m very much a novice at these things, my interest in expanding my knowledge motivates me to dive deeper every week.

    It should come as no surprise to you that the announcement of WP Engine (aff link) last month made me excited in ways that technology shouldn’t excite a grown man.
    (more…)

  • Customizing WordPress

    The casual WordPress user customizes their theme by selecting a theme, installing their choice of plugins, and perhaps hiring a designer to create a custom header image. This works for many people and there’s something to be said for tasteful minimalism.

    With that being said, there are a number of ways that we can begin tapping into the power of WordPress on the path to mastery. Among these are the creation of child themes, the utilization of theme frameworks, and custom plugin development.
    (more…)

  • The WordPress Loop

    Most people probably haven’t checked out the WordPress Codex pages on The Loop and The Loop in Action. This is a shame, because there’s no more important concept in WordPress. Let’s get it.

    The Loop is used by WordPress to display each of your posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each of the posts to be displayed on the current page and formats them according to how they match specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code placed in the Loop will be repeated on each post. When WordPress documentation states “This tag must be within The Loop”, such as for specific Template Tag or plugins, the tag will be repeated for each post.

    (more…)

  • Why WordPress?

    For web professionals looking to build a business that’s both challenging and rewarding, WordPress represents an ideal development platform. It’s completely free, open-source, well-supported, and requires very little time to get up and running. Most web hosts can run WordPress (it requires PHP 4.3 or greater, MySQL 4.1.2 or greater, and the mod_rewrite Apache module) and many hosts have automated installers to make setup a breeze.

    Additionally, WordPress is everywhere. News organizations, bloggers, web professionals, designers, and marketers all use WordPress every day to run their businesses. Regardless of your industry, there’s a good chance that someone has done what you’re trying to do. Central to WordPress is the concept of theming, which is a collection of files that determined the look and feel of your site. WordPress requires a theme to display output for your visitors, and there are countless free and premium themes to choose from.
    (more…)