Link Sharing: On Optimizing Your Website

Recently I’ve come across a set of blog posts which I thought were great sources of information that should be shared across anyone who runs some sort of website. These posts deal with optimization and site owners with popular content should take heed to this advice.

What is optimization you ask? It is the task of essentially minimizing the load each user puts on the server whenever they visit your site. You can do it through means such as:

• Minimizing the amount of HTTP requests per page
• Compressing your images as best as possible
• Caching dynamic pages

Without further ado, here are the links:

• From Dynamic to Static: the Wordpress Caching plugin
  If you run a wordpress blog, be sure to read Handling the Digg Effect with Wordpress Caching by Johnny. He covers how to use the Wordpress Caching plugin to minimize the amount of requests to your mySQL database.
• Lower the amount of HTTP requests with Image Sprites
  Paul Stamatiou has just written a great post on using image sprites to lessen the amount of HTTP requests to your server.
  Veerle has also written up a similar article, but in terms of CSS hover effects. You end up with a bigger image to deal with, as well as extra CSS, but it’s worth it.
• Paul Stamatiou is a Website Performance Junkie
  I feel sort of guilty creating even a link sharing post that just reiterates what this guy just said and simply linking back, but Paul knows what he’s talking about. Besides the image sprite post I’ve linked above, he also covers optimizing your css, 5 ways to speed up your site, and even using Amazon’s S3 service in serving up your content better.

If you have come across other sites which relate to this topic and are useful to know, please share them in your comments.