I Feel The Need For Speed! Take Two

I've been working on optimizing my CSS. Before I get into that, a brief history is in order:

Back in May, I made some adjustments to my theme. The first was the Google AdSense ad placements. They're still displayed that way except now I use the Shylock AdSense plugin to display the ads. The second was to increase the font size of the main content from 10 pixels to 11. I noticed that the "Tigarator" options of my theme reset themselves several times since then and that's what prompted me to dump the "Tiga" functions from my theme and start editing the CSS by hand.

After that, I made some more adjustments to my theme. The most significant was making the sidebars load after the middle content area. Then, after I said goodbye to my JavaScript widgets, my blog loaded pretty fast. I tested the speed back then with a meta tag analyzer and it loaded in under 1 second. I tested it today and it still loads in under 1 second (without the widgets).

I boycotted JavaScript widgets the first time I felt the need for speed but have since put a few back. I put them where they wouldn't affect the displaying of the contents, in the footer. I do have one in the bottom of the right sidebar, but it's the last thing to load before the footer.

Last night, I somehow found myself at Daily Blog Tips and read the post about 6 ways to speed up your site. Tip #3 about using Clean CSS caught my eye as well as a comment by Chris from Reflective Reality V2.0 on how to make WordPress quicker by adding a single line to my .htaccess file. I did the .htaccess thing. I wonder if my blog is any snappier now.

I started using the Clean CSS website this morning to see what changes were suggested to my CSS. I made a lot of the changes but stopped because I didn't understand the changes it suggested for the shorthand properties, so I "Googled" for more information and came across an old post at 456 Berea Street that did a very good job at explaining efficient CSS with shorthand properties. Armed with that information, I now feel confident enough to complete my CSS optimization project, which I hope to finish today or tomorrow.

August 12th, 2007 By RT Cunningham | Categories: Blog Changes | Tags: CSS, JavaScript, plugins, WordPress |

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Chris on August 12th, 2007 at 4:51 pm (Reply)

Well it's working You can tell by the http header below:
Content-Encoding: gzip

Those 23 javascripts won't help though. With a total of 413473 bytes over 53 https requests locally, now how can I put this… you're fscked if digg sends you some packet love
…Don't get me started on the 100's of off site images in the footer.
Adding "AddType application/x-httpd-php .js" will compress the local scripts too.

Do you have wp-cache2 on your site? I don't see the footer on a reloaded page, It would help.

RT Cunningham on August 12th, 2007 at 5:14 pm (Reply)

Yeah, it's a trade-off between being social and being fast. I have wp-cache installed but don't have it activated. I have a plugin that doesn't play nice with it. If I can fix the plugin, I'll be using it again.

I don't like using 3rd-party scripts but at least I put them where they'd do the least damage.

Abhinav Sood on August 12th, 2007 at 7:54 pm (Reply)

Sure loads faster than before.. Today's sunday. the day I find my connection the slowest, but the homepage loaded pretty fast, in less than 2 seconds for me.

Chris on August 18th, 2007 at 5:56 pm (Reply)

You've been working hard on this I see it's made a real improvement.

RT Cunningham on August 18th, 2007 at 6:01 pm (Reply)

I removed the WP-Postviews plugin so that WP-Cache would work. My "Popular Posts" in the right sidebar is based on comment count and a filter. I'll be sending it as a plugin to you when I get done with your theme.

Oops, wrong Chris I won't be sending you the plugin.