That’s the easy part though.

Once you’ve found that, you hop online and start your blog. If you’re here, you’ve either made the right choice and decided to use WordPress to build your site, or you’re thinking about it. If you’re in the latter group, thinking about becoming a beginner blogger, stop thinking and get started. WordPress is by far the best platform for bloggers with any level of seriousness, and the themes here are solid.

Step two is where the rubber hits the road. The best advice I have for a beginner blogger can really be summed up by telling them to “go nuts”. By that I mean you need to go above and beyond what bloggers you’re going to be competing with will do. If you actually care about what you’re going to be writing about, this isn’t discouraging – it puts fire in your belly.

If you’re like me, the idea of starting a blog bubbled up in my head after being disappointed with existing blogs in my niche, and thinking I could do better. If you can write a decent post, are crazy about what you’re going to be writing about, and are smart about it… you’re right. You probably can.

I’m not talking about warm and fuzzy stuff when I say “do better”. I mean real, tangible, proven things you can do to make your site’s readership grow faster. Most of your opposition wont do much networking, wont work social networks and will have mediocre to bad site designs.

Networking is really important, especially at first. Dig up as many blogs as you can on what you’re writing about and get active in their comments. Don’t be one of those annoying spammers that just leaves a response to display a link to their own site. Leave something interesting and thoughtful, and name drop your site from time to time. If you comment on other peoples’ blogs with any level of frequency, the admins there will probably take notice and check your site out. Those are the sort of early adopting readers that you want the most. They’re into the subject enough to maintain a blog of their own about it, and you might be able to get them to add a link on their sidebar to your site, so their readers might check your site out.

Social networking is a lot like regular networking. You’d be surprised at how many of even the best blogs don’t take advantage of Facebook and Twitter, giving you a edge. Facebook takes a while to build a following, but setting up a fan page, adding a link to your blog’s sidebar (‘above the fold’ and hard to miss), inviting friends who are interested in what you’re blogging about and then sharing links to your posts (with short hand written notes that make it more likely that people will comment or share) really is a snap. Twitter is even easier, and you can make it so your posts are shot out onto your Twitter feed automatically (just make sure your headlines are catchy and make clear what the post is about).

If I could send a message back in time to myself over a year and a half ago, it would mostly be filled with simple tweaks like these, that make it more likely that people who stumble across my site come back for more later.

First impressions are important online – do not settle for a mediocre site theme (other platforms might call themes a skin or template).

Buy a good premium theme (like the killer theme’s we’ve got here), and tweak it a bit to make it your own. The RichWP WordPress Theme Framework makes that sort of thing really easy, even for new bloggers who wouldn’t know CSS, HTML and PHP from Joe Schmoe on the street’s left pinky toe. Past that, it’s all about making it more likely that people who come across your site share what they read with their friends, and/or subscribe to your site through something like RSS, Twitter, Facebook or Email.

I won’t get into how to set those things up right now (don’t worry… WordPress makes it easier than you might think), but the idea is that you need eye catching buttons to those feeds so someone who’s come across your site, and likes what they see, might notice the button and subscribe by email or RSS, follow you on Twitter, or become a fan on Facebook. If they don’t, the vast majority of the time, they’ll never come back. If they do, that one page load just turned into dozens, hundreds or thousands over time.

If you only do some of the above, you’re already ahead of a large majority of bloggers out there. The only two things I regret about with blogging is that I waited until a couple years ago to jump in, and didn’t read enough about about it in the first few months to do things like I talk about here. About a year and a half from when I was a beginner blogger and my site gets tens of thousands of hits a month, I’ve caught the attention of big name people in my niche, interviewed figures I’ve seen on major news networks, and I’m getting paid to write about things I am passionate about on three different sites.

You can do the same thing too – you just have to go that extra mile. You’ve gotta “go nuts”.

To put things as simple as possible, WordPress.com is a blog-hosting service that lets users create a free blog on a WordPress.com sub-domain. The package available for download at WordPress.org is essentially the software behind WordPress.com. Using this software, you can set up your own website or blog on your own server.

WordPress.com is generally better for those who want a quick and simple blog with little setup and no investment. Unfortunately, blogs hosted here may eventually outgrow the service, as WordPress.com does not allow users FTP access, monetization options or the ability to modify core files and templates. There’s also the domain name issue (although a custom domain name is possible at WordPress.com for an annual fee). If you’re serious about blogging, you’re better off purchasing a hosting package and hosting the blog on its own domain, rather than one on WordPress.com.

Moving from WordPress.com to a Self-Hosted WordPress Installation

The first step to moving from WordPress.com to a self-hosted installation of WordPress is making sure you have the software installed on your server. Many Web hosts offer “one-click” installs of WordPress and other software. Browse through your hosting dashboard or contact your host directly for more information. If your host doesn’t offer such a script, you can easily install WordPress manually.

Download the latest version of WordPress from WordPress.org. Unzip the package then upload the contents of the WordPress folder to the desired server directory using an FTP client. While this package is uploading, sign in to your hosting control panel and create a new database. Write down the database details, such as the name, username, password and host name.

When the package finishes uploading, point your browser to the following URL: [domain-name]/wp-admin/install.php

Here you’ll be prompted to create a configuration file:

After creating the file, input the database details and set up a user account to finish the process:

Because WordPress.com uses the same file format self-hosted WordPress sites use, transferring your posts and images is a simple process.

Sign in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on the sidebar “Tools” menu, and then click on “Export.” Check the “All Content” selection and click “Download Export File” to download the XML file containing your WordPress blog data.

Warning: Keep your WordPress.com blog active until you’ve successfully imported the data. If you don’t, you may not be able to import your file attachments, such as photos and videos.

Now that you’ve downloaded the data file, sign in to your self-hosted WordPress admin panel. Click on the “Tools” sidebar link, and then click on “Import.” Select the WordPress format and activate the importer to continue.

Click on “Choose File” to select your data file, and then click on “Upload File and Import.”

Now you’ll choose an author to assign posts to and choose whether or not to import your file attachments. If you want to import your photos, videos and other attachments, check the box next to “Import File Attachments.”

Click “Submit” to finish the process. The data from your WordPress.com blog is now transferred to your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Moving from Blogger to a Self-Hosted WordPress Installation

Blogger is a service similar to WordPress.com, although it does allow you to monetize your blog through Google Adsense. If you’re ready to move on from Blogger, you can use the export feature to easily transfer your content to a self-hosted WordPress installation.

It’s not necessary to download your content from Blogger — WordPress can connect to your Blogger account and download the content automatically.

Sign in to your self-hosted WordPress site. Click on “Tools>Import>Blogger.” Install and activate the Blogger importer. Click on “Authorize,” and then click “Grant Access.” You’ll now be directed to the following screen:

Click on “Continue” to import the content from Blogger. Unfortunately, you’re images will not be imported from Blogger. If you want to retain your images, you’ll need to download each image then manually add it to the imported post in WordPress. You can also try the Blogger Image Import plugin, available in the WordPress plugin repository. It appears to work correctly on the latest version of WordPress, but has not been updated in a few years. Use it with caution.

Moving from TypePad to a Self-Hosted WordPress Installation

TypePad is a service similar to WordPress, except the company charges a monthly fee for Typepad.com hosted blogs. To make the switch from TypePad to WordPress, sign in to your TypePad dashboard and click on “Blogs>Settings>Import/Export,” and then click on “Export.” After TypePad generates the export file, click on “Download.”

Sign in to your WordPress panel and click on “Tools>Import>Movable Type or TypePad.” Activate the TypePad importer, and then upload your import file. Alternatively, you can rename the import file mt-export.txt and add it to the /wp-content folder via FTP.

As with Blogger, you’ll be left to import your files and images manually.

Dealing with Redirection Issues

Importing your content from WordPress.com, Blogger or TypePad isn’t the most difficult part about moving your blog. If your blog receives a fair amount of traffic, and you’ve build up your Google PageRank, the issue that causes the most grief relates to content redirection.

You not only want your old blog URL to redirect to your new URL, but you want your old posts to redirect to the new posts.

Because WordPress.com does not allow FTP access or the editing of server files, generating a traditional 301 permanent redirect is impossible.

WordPress.com does, however, offer a Site Redirect upgrade option through the Store panel in the admin dashboard. This inexpensive package lets you redirect your old blog to your new blog with ease. The WordPress team even takes care of individual post redirection.

Users of TypePad and Blogger will have an even more difficult time. Your best bet is to file a site change of address on the old blog through Google Webmaster Tools and make sure Google has the sitemap URL for your new self-hosted WordPress blog.

There are six tips for creating killer content that people will be glad to read.

• Grab Your Reader’s Attention – Why do you read newspaper headlines? Because they grab your attention, right? Well, the same goes for your website visitors. Before they read the content, you have to make them want to read it. Think about your article. Then create a title that is impossible for visitors to ignore.
• Keep it Short – Short content, except when providing a tutorial, is key. Short paragraphs and short sentences are important. People become overwhelmed when they see a lengthy paragraph. Keep the paragraphs and sentences short, and you’ll keep the reader’s attention.
• Keep it Organized – Organization is another huge key to killer website content. Using bullet points and subheadings let your reader know where you are going. Bullet points and subheadings also direct readers to the meat and potatoes of your content.
• Keep it Useful – If a visitor takes time to read your content, they want to get something out of it. Offer them tips. Offer them advice. Tell them about a new piece of information about your industry. Giving them useful information is going to show the visitor that you care about them, thus increasing your repeat visitor ratio.
• Keep it Simple – Unless it’s essential to your industry, stay away from the words that your visitors aren’t going to know. This is going to make them feel dumb. It may also make them feel like you are trying to hide something. Use simple terms to explain what you mean. If you need to use terms that visitors may not know, take the time to explain what it is that you mean.
• Keep it Current – Visitors don’t want to read summer content in the fall. As the seasons change, bring your content up to date as well. In just about every industry you will find opportunities to update your content. Keeping content current shows your visitors that you are thinking about what they need. It also shows them that you are there and that you aren’t a phantom haunting the Internet.
• Keep it Readable – Look at your text. What is the font size? Who are your clients? Is it readable for your average visitor? One thing that a lot of webmasters don’t think about is their font size and color. For example, if your clients and readers are mostly older people, you may have to make the font larger. You can also provide the option on the website to change the font size. If the font’s too small, visitors won’t read it.

When you are creating content for your site, look at it from your visitor’s perspective. Is this giving them useful information? Is it short and readable? Does it use terms that are easy to understand? Is it well organized? Is it up to date? Did you answer yes to all of these questions? Then you have some great content that your visitors will love and will come back to read again and again.

So what is content marketing and why is it so important?

First, let’s look at the meaning of content marketing. Content marketing is marketing to your target audience without trying to sell them your product or services.

But wait. Isn’t selling products and services what marketing is all about?

Perhaps a better way to put it would be that you are selling yourself. You are selling the knowledge that you have. You are getting your customer to trust you and communicate with you. But you aren’t giving your audience a hard sell. You aren’t saying to them, “Buy my products. They are the best on the Internet.”

So, you aren’t selling your products and services with content marketing. If you aren’t trying to sell your products and services to your customers, how does content marketing help your business?

Let’s take a look at an example. There are two car websites on the Internet that are selling used cars.

Website A offers the following:

• Large inventory of cars
• Search by state and city
• Live chat with customer service
• Great website navigation

Website B offers the following:

• Large inventory of cars
• Search by state and city
• Live chat with customer service
• Great website navigation
• Articles about things like:
• Choosing the right car seat
• Driving in hazardous weather
• What car has the best gas mileage
• How to change a flat tire

What site do you think more customers are going to be interested in? Both of the sites offer the same basics. But site b offers articles about things that visitors would like to know. The site knows that not every person who goes on it is going to buy a car. But they are offering information that they know visitors want to know on their site. This is good customer service.

Content marketing is sometimes done on the website, but it’s often done on other sites as well (guest writing, interviews, etc.). It’s a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. A website developer who is looking to expand his customer base might write articles such as:

• Choosing the right color scheme for your website
• How to make your website more user-friendly
• Setting up your website guestbook

There are plenty of great sites on the Internet where you can place content in order to establish your knowledge. Most sites offer a resource box where you can place your bio and more information about your company.

One of the biggest things that content marketing offers to you is your customer’s trust. The customer knows that you are going to try and sell something to him or her. But a business owner who provides free information that they can use before
even trying to sell is more likely to get their business.

Customer’s thought after a hard sell – They don’t care about me. All they want is my money.

Customer’s thought after content marketing – Wow, this person knows what they are talking about. They are giving me information for free. They must really care about my needs. I bet they are a great person to deal with.

The other great thing about content marketing is that it will help bring an influx of visitors to your website. They keywords placed in the content will bring people to the content. But the content itself, words read by visitors, is what will be the true attraction. When a visitor reads a great piece of content, he or she will more than likely share it. This means more people who are impressed by your content marketing. This also means more people who will visit your website and potentially become customers.

So, what is content marketing? Yes, it’s a soft sell to customers. But it’s also something that no business should be without.

Smash Burger

Smash Burger’s site is a very sleek combination of reds, grays and browns. These subtle colors are easy on the eyes and the font used throughout the site is very clear and easy-to-read. The site features an oversized image rotator on the homepage, giving the website a really classy feel while adding just the right bit of flare.

Potbelly Sandwiches

Vintage is the new cool, and Potbelly’s decided to fully embrace this idea from top-to-bottom. I’m a huge fan of this look as it accurately displays the company’s culture and style. The menu bars are clean and only appear when hovered over. Whatever restaurant facts you may be looking for are clearly listed at the top of the site in cool-looking boxes.

Giraffe

The Giraffe site is absolutely stunning. Giraffe features lovely bright blues, tans and whites. The beautiful image slider on the homepage really brings the site together and is put to good use. Coupons and pricing are visible when you first open the website, sparing you the task of having to find the location of the “coupon” button. Perhaps the most awesome feature is the social media integration: Giraffe uses breathtaking social media buttons and Flickr integration.

Pizzeria Uno

While Uno’s website may seem very structured and basic, I’m a fan. The different shades of tan really bring the site together. The rollover animations blend in nicely with the design. The only downside to this site is the Flash-based image rotator; while it may look nice, it cannot load on most mobile devices.

Mon Ami Gabi

Mon Ami Gabi may have the best restaurant webpage on the web! Once you have chosen your location, you’re greeted with an image rotator and a map. Both are designed with excellence and match the rest of the site. The website features colors such as light blue, red and yellow–this color scheme is perfect as it accurately portrays the restaurant’s French roots.

Restaurant WordPress Theme

If you are looking for the perfect WordPress Theme to built a restaurant website, check out out RichCORP theme. Its Point & Click Design Editor lets you customize your design exactly how you want it, no programming skills required.
» More Information

We hope we helped inspire you on your quest to designing the perfect webpage. Make sure to check back daily for more inspirational web design articles.

When I sold said site to a somewhat technically-challenged buyer, I had no choice but to dive right in. The simplicity of the move and lack of downtime amazed me, and I’ve since gone on to move the majority of my Web properties to a much faster, more reliable host.

Clean Up and Get The Files

To get things started, you’ll need to download your site’s files. I recommended first going through your admin panel and deactivating/deleting unnecessary plugins and themes, as this gets rid of garbage files you don’t want to bring with you. Such files add to the time it takes to download and upload your site. As you’ll find out, the process is already tedious enough.

Connect to your server using an FTP program. I personally use FileZilla (WIN) and Cyberduck (Win & MAC), both are available for free, but any FTP client will do.

Tip: You’ll need your hostname, FTP username and FTP password to connect. If you haven’t done this before, contact your Web host.

Navigate to the folder containing the WordPress installation you want to move. You’ll usually find your site files in the <public_html> directory. Click on the sub-folder  in which your site resides, and then right-click the folder and select “Download.” If your site resides in the root directory (i.e. the primary hosted site), simply highlight all of the files in the root directory and download them to a folder on your computer. I prefer to set the target location as the desktop for easy access.

Be patient. Depending on the number of themes, plugins, photos and other files you have, this process could take some time.

Get the Database

Now that the site files are downloading, it’s time to turn your attention to the true heart of your WordPress site: the database. The database is perhaps the most important part of your site, because it contains all of your posts and custom data.

Access MySQL through your Web hosting control panel. Here you should see a list of your databases and a link to manage them through phpMyAdmin.
You should now be at the database-management screen, which looks like this:

Click on “Export,” and then check the selection boxes next to “SQL” and “Save as File.” Scroll down and click “Go” to export the SQL file. It should now automatically download to your computer.

Set Up a New Database and Import Data

In all likelihood, your site files are still downloading, so we’re going to move on to set up the database with your new Web host. Sign in to your new hosting control panel and open MySQL. You should see a link here to set up or create a new database.

Create a custom MySQL database username, and then set a password. Make sure both of these are uncommon and difficult to guess to protect your database against intruders. Once you’ve created the database, your host should assign a custom hostname. Make note of these values and do not lose them.

Tip: In addition to standard characters, use numbers and/or capitalization.

When the blank database is created, sign in to phpMyAdmin to manage it. Click on the “Import” link, and then click on “Choose File.” Select the database SQL file you exported from the previous database. Click on “Go” to import your data into the new database.

Change the wp-config.php

By the time you’ve finished this, your site files should be finished downloading.
Open the folder you’ve downloaded containing your site’s files. In the root directory, you’ll see a file named <wp-config.php>.

Open this file using a text/PHP editor such as NotePad++, TextPad or NotePad2. Do not use a word-processing program.
Scroll down to line 42. Here you’ll see the field containing your MySQL database hostname, username and password. Each of the values will be stored between single quotation marks.

Replace the present values with the custom values you previously assigned when you created your new database. Leave the single quotation marks in place and save the changes to the wp-config.php file. The WordPress installation will now be linked to your database when you upload the site files.

Upload the Files to the New Host

Now you’ll begin the process of uploading the files to your new hosting account, which is simply a reversal of downloading the files from your previous host. Access your server via FTP and select the downloaded folder containing the files. Set the target directory to the directory or folder you want your new site to reside in.

Tip: If your site will be hosted as the primary site, upload the contents of the folder, rather than the folder itself, to the <public_html> folder.

The transfer may be time consuming, just as the process of downloading the site’s files from the previous host was.
Tip: Verify the permission code for the wp-config.php file on your new server is set to 600 (some caching solutions might require different settings) to prevent unauthorized access. You can view and edit the file permission code by right-clicking on the file when accessing your site via FTP.

When the files are finished uploading, you should have a complete working copy of your site on the new server.

Point your Domain to the New Host

It’s important to remember, that your domain is still pointing to the original copy of the site on the old server.

You’ll now need to complete the process by changing the DNS  (Domain Name Server) settings of your domain to point to the new host. Some hosts will also require further setup for your domain. This may result in a bit of downtime for your site while the changes propagate. For this reason, I recommend initiating the switch during a time your traffic is generally minimal.

Check Everything

Navigate through the copy of the site and verify the transfer went smoothly. Check links and post attachments to make sure everything is working correctly, and then browse through your admin panel to make sure it’s working.

Tip: The admin log-in name and password are the same as they were previously.

Once the transfer is complete, it’s safe to delete the files and database on your old server, as the domain permanently points to the files on the new server.

A run down of the recent changes being made to Google and how you can use them to your advantage.

The Internet is buzzing about all of the new changes coming to Google search. Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other social media sites are in a collective uproar, racing to find a way to fight back. But it’s just you and your WordPress blog. Maybe you have a Facebook or Twitter account. Maybe you even have a Google+ account. Now it’s time to take that extra step. 65% of all searches are on Google (U.S.). Like it or not, these changes are going to affect you. The good news is you can use them your advantage. And the sooner you start the better.

What’s This All About?

Basically, Google made three significant changes to its search functionality. The first is called personalized results, results tailored to your interests and the interests of your friends. The second is profile search, an easy way to see your friends’ Google+ profiles using the Google platform. The last is related people and pages. A sidebar has been added to Google search results that offer up Google+ profiles that match your search, as well as comments and posts from your friends. At the center of all these changes is increased integration with the Google+ platform to make searching a more interactive and collective experience.

What Can I Do?

Unfortunately, if you sit idly by and passively observe this modification, your blog may suffer the consequence. Lucky for you, WordPress is pretty SEO friendly out of the box and with a few simple steps you can get on the right track. The first thing you should do is create a Google+ page if you do not already have one (Click here to sign-up). Your interests and activities will be very important, so add interests that relate to your blog content and audience. Don’t try and include everything, but make sure that each section is filled out with at least a few. Reach out to any friends you have with a profile and add them to your circles.

You’ll also want to let Google know what blog(s) you are contributing to, so they can match up your profile with search results. To do this, click on edit profile. You will see a contributor box in this section. Type in the name and URL of the sites that you write for. Make sure that your contact info is completely up to date.

If you have a blog with multiple authors, you will want to create a Google+ page for the blog as well. That way all of your authors can join your blog’s circle and Google will have a clearer sense of how everything is connected.

The Right Tools

Your final step will be to complete the circle and integrate your blog with Google+. Chances are you’ve already been engaging with social media, adding like buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Digg or providing links for your audience to follow you on these sites. You should definitely tack on a Google 1up button. Plugins like WP Socializer or Simple Likebuttons make this a fairly painless process and connect your blog to the most popular social media sites.

There are also some other plugins that may help you out. You can pick and choose which is right for you, but they will help build your Google+ exposure.

• Google+ for Page: Add a simple badge to your WordPress posts that allow users to easily add you to their circles and view your Google+ profile.
• WPGPlus: A new plugin that is gaining some traction will post your WordPress posts to your Google+ page so your followers are always updated.
• Google Plus: A kind of all-in-one plugin which will add Google+ buttons, easy access to your profile and a list of who is following you, and a Stream which will show your recent Google+ posts on your blog. You will need an API to make this work, which you can sign up for here. It’s a little more complicated than the others but is very robust and expandable.

A Little Help From Your Friends

The bottom line is, the bigger your audience, the more likely you are to be paired up with relevant searches. Still, you never want to put all of your eggs in the same basket. It’s best to diversify and reach out to readers who share your interests on several different platforms. It’s always better to engage with devoted fans then accumulate a mass of passive ones. Think of this as an opportunity, Google+ is just another way to get a little help from a massive online community.

Don’t forget to join RichWP on Google+!

Does your website seem to take forever to load? Are your visitors not making it past your homepage out of frustration? Are you producing useful content and optimizing your site for search engines, and wondering why your site still ranks so low? The speed of your website can be nearly as important as your content, design, and features, and can be the difference between users staying on your site, or going to your competitors.

Having a fast-loading website can greatly improve your user’s experience, keep your visitors on your site much longer, and improve your search rankings (Google uses page speed as a page ranking criteria).

One of the easiest and most efficient ways to improve the speed of your WordPress site is by caching. In about only 15 minutes, you can greatly reduce the time it takes for your WordPress site to load by using the free W3 Total Cache plugin. My own website went from having a page load time of 69 (based on Google Page Speed) prior to installing Total Cache, to 97 after installing the plugin and using the settings detailed below.

A great thing about W3 Total Cache is that includes functionality that previously required the use of multiple plugins to achieve. In addition to caching every aspect of your website, Total Cache includes easy integration with CDNs, features built-in minification, advanced caching options and more.

This article takes you step-by-step though setting up and optimizing W3 Total Cache for your site, as well as a section detailing how to set up and integrate Total Cache with Amazon’s CloudFront CDN. While these settings had a great result for my site, the needs of your specific site might vary. That said, using W3 Total Cache even with the default settings should give your site a significant performance boost. You can tinker endlessly with different caching options and expiration settings, but the goal of this article is to help you understand each option, and let you set up the plugin so you can forget about it and focus on your design and content.

Let’s get started!

Installing W3 Total Cache

Like most WordPress plugins, W3 Total Cache can be easily installed through the Plugins section of your WordPress admin screen, although it does require a few of additional quick steps:

1. Deactivate (and delete, if possible) any other caching plugin you are using.

2. Temporarily set your wp-content and wp-content/uploads/ folders to chmod 777. Using your favorite FTP client (such as Cyberduck or FileZilla), right click on the ‘wp-content’ folder. If using Cyberduck, select ‘Info’. Click on the Permissions tab, and change the permissions to ‘777’ and press Enter. Using FileZilla, right click and select ‘File Permissions’. -Repeat this for the wp-content/uploads/ folder.

3. Install and activate the Total Cache plugin through the Plugins section your WordPress admin screen.

4. Go back to your FTP client and change wp-content and wp-content/uploads back to chmod 755.

Once W3 Total Cache is installed, you will see a new section on your WP admin screen titled ‘Performance’. The Total Cache options panel is divided up into several sections, including General, Page Cache, Minify, Database Cache and several others.

General Settings

Let’s first go over each section on the General page of Total Cache. Think of the General tab/page as the dashboard where you can turn each type of caching and function on and off. Detailed settings for each individual option will be covered later in this article.

Page Cache

Pages on your website consist mainly of content, images, and styling (CSS). Web servers typically have to dig through several folders and files, pull information from several sources, and then output the information as a complete webpage. This takes time, especially when the server tries to handle several requests at the same time, which can slow down your site and increase page load time. Instead of piecing together the page on the fly, page caching takes the entire output and stores it as a static html file. This lets the server retrieve the information much faster, helping your pages load almost instantly.

Recommended Settings:

Minify

Minify is a great feature that can speed up your website by shrinking the size of your CSS, Javascript, and HTML files. Minify will remove things like unneeded spacing and comments from your code.

Minify includes both ‘Auto’ and ‘Manual’ options. If you select ‘Auto’, the detailed settings on the ‘Minify’ tab of Total Cache will basically be ignored.

Important: If you want to use a CDN for your minify files, you must select ‘Manual’. If you use a CDN and select ‘Auto’, the minified files will be served directly from your (ie, your hosting company’s) servers, and not the CDN. I personally prefer this method, as it can make updating your site easier. CDN’s are discussed in more detail further on in this post.

Recommended Settings:

Database Cache

Being that WordPress sites run on a database, database caching can greatly improve you’re site’s load time. W3 Total Cache can cache all database queries within a specified time frame.

Recommended Settings:

Object Cache

Object Caching is the caching of thing like images, videos and documents on a web page. Object Caching stores a copy of each object so each object can be served directly from the cache. Objects, such as images, are typically not modified often once you post them, so caching objects for long periods of time can help improve you site’s load time. The increase of speed you might see from object caching can vary based on the drives your host is running.

Recommended Settings:

Browser Cache

Browser caching reduces the amount of requests your server makes every time someone visits your site. Each time someone visits your site, their web browser stores a copy of your site. On the next time they visit your site, their browser will check whether any changes have been made since their last visit. If changes have been made, it will load the new version. If no changes have been made, it will load the copied version. This can greatly improve the speed of your site since your server does not have to handle so many requests at the same time.

Recommended Settings (this is one of the main reasons you installed this plugin, so in case it’s not obvious, enable this):

CDN - Content Delivery Network

One of the great things about W3 Total Cache is that it includes support for several popular CDNs including Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN, Rackspace Cloud Files and others. While these are paid services, they are typically quite affordable, with services like Amazon CloudFront averaging only a few dollars a month. A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers that delivers a web page to users based on their geographic location. The closer a website visitor is to the server, the faster the content will be delivered to them. Your hosting company might be based in the U.S., but by using a CDN, a visitor to your site living in Germany can have your site automatically delivered by a server in Germany, for example. So, even if you don’t see a significant improvement in your site’s speed after enabling a CDN, many of your website visitors will notice a big improvement.

CDNs function as either ‘origin push’ or ‘origin pull’. With origin push, the CDN acts like a second host. You upload all your files to the CDN (this can be automated through W3 Total Cache), and the CDN caches and serves the content from their servers. The benefit to using origin push is that you can specify what content is uploaded, when it is uploaded, and when it expires. The downside, is that every time you make changes to things like your CSS and theme files, you have to manually re-upload them to the CDN. With some CDNs, such as Amazon CloudFront, uploading an updated file unfortunately won’t just overwrite the previous file. You have to send an invalidation request, or rename your files. If you are like me, and are constantly tinkering with the design and layout of your site, using origin push can be a bit challenging. In other words, origin push gives you more control, but also more work.

With origin pull, rather than having to upload all your files to the CDN, the CDN looks at your current servers, pulls the information for you, and then serves it to your visitors. You simply leave your content on your
server, and rewrite your URLs to point to the CDN (again, W3 Total Cache makes this a quick and painless process). The CDN will then cache the files, and serve those files until they expire. Using origin pull can make your site slower for users the first time they visit your site, but it will be fast once it caches your files. Besides being very easy to set up, the other great thing about origin pull is that changes you make to your site are updated on the CDN very quickly. I personally prefer origin pull to origin push, as it requires less work and is easier to use.

If you chose to use a CDN, you have to set up an account with a CDN and configure your account on the CDN tab before enabling this. CDN options are discussed it even greater length further on in this post.

Recommended Settings:

Varnish & CloudFlare

Varnish Cache and CloudFlare are two 3rd party web application accelerators that can be used in place of many of the features included with W3 Total Cache (CloudFlare also offers additional services such as security protection and analytics as well). As I do not have experience using either of these services, they will not be discussed at length in this post, but feel free to leave a comment if you’ve used either of them.

Detailed Settings

Page Cache – Detailed Settings

Once you’ve enabled Page Cache on the General page, clicking on the Page Cache link at the top of your screen will bring you to the detailed settings page.

Make sure ‘Cache Home Page’ and ‘Cache Feeds’ are both selected. Being that your homepage is typically the most visited page on your site, it should go without saying that it is important for it to be cached. ‘Cache SSL requests’ is only recommended if you are using SSL, which generally requires a license certificate. If you are not sure whether your site uses SSL, if your browser displays ‘https://’ in your URL, your site uses SSL; If it displays ‘http://’, it does not. The ‘Cache URI’s with query string variables’ option caches things like search results. To the best of my knowledge, this is not supported in Disk-Enhanced mode, so we are going to leave this unchecked.

‘Don’t cache pages for logged in users’ is an interesting option. One downside to WordPress is it can be tough to use for ‘staging’, meaning there is not a great way for you (as an admin) to view changes to your site before making the changes live. Enabling this feature can accomplish this for many sites. This feature essentially disables the page cache for you, while keeping it on for your visitors. So you can view changes to your site, while your visitors will be served a cached version of your site until the cache is cleared. The catch to this is that it applies to all ‘logged in’ users; not just admins. So if your site allows visitors to create accounts and log in, this won’t be ideal.

Lastly, caching 404 pages is only needed for certain sites (typically older sites) that have a lot of broken links. Assuming your site is up to date, this option does not need to be enabled.

The General Page Cache settings should look like this:

For the ‘Advanced’ Page Cache settings, you should be fine with leaving it with the default settings. Set the Garbage Collection Interval to 3600 seconds, and leave ‘Never Cache The Following Pages’ set to wp-.*\.php and index\.php. If you
have a page on your site that is constantly changing, you can add it to the ‘never cache’ list.

In the Cache Preload section, you can select ‘Automatically prime the page cache’, set the update interval to 900 seconds, set Pages per interval to 10, enter enter the URL of your sitemap. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin can automate the sitemap creation and updates for you.

Lastly, for the ‘Purge Policy’ section, you should be fine with the default settings.

Minify – Detailed Settings

This page gives you the ability to set up the URL rewrites, and enable minification of HTML, CSS, and Javascript. *One important thing to note is that if your site runs JQuery, you should disable the JS minification.

Database Cache & Object Cache – Detailed Settings

In most cases, the detailed Database Cache and Object Cache settings can be left as the default settings.

For Database Cache, keep ‘Don’t cache queries for logged in users’ selected. For both the Database and Object caches, the ‘Maximum lifetime of cache objects’ can stay at 180 seconds, and the ‘Garbage collection interval’ can stay at 3600 seconds. If you have any pages that rely heavily on database queries, you can add them to the ‘Never cache the following pages’ field.

Browser Cache – Detailed Settings

For the Browser Cache, I have nearly all of the settings checked except for caching after a settings change and 404 errors:

Below are the settings I use for CSS and JS:

Below are recommended settings for HTML & XML:

And here are the settings for Media & Other Files:

CDN (Content Delivery Network) – Detailed Settings

If you are using a CDN, you’ll have to decide what you’ll want to use the CDN for. You can have your CDN serve all your files, or you can decide to just use it for things like images and theme files. As noted earlier, my personal preference is to mainly use the CDN for serving images, and not CSS and JS.

If you have ‘Auto’ selected on the Minify details page, the option to select ‘Host minified CSS and JS files’ will be greyed out on this page.

Important: Be careful with the option to ‘Import external media library attachments’. If, when writing a post in WordPress, you upload an image to the Media Library, and then add the image by using an img tag, for example, that is
considered an ‘image attachment’. If you copy images from other sites into posts, those are also considered attachments. This option will upload those images hosted by other sites onto your server, and then to Amazon. If you use in-post galleries, image attachments are generally kept separate from the gallery. I learned the hard way that checking this option in total cache will result in all your attached images being automatically added to the gallery.

Setting up a CDN using Amazon CloudFront

Lastly, I will walk you through the steps of setting up Amazon CloudFront as a CDN using W3 Total Cache. When setting up CloudFront for the first time on my site, I ran into several issues. I read through several tutorials covering the CloudFront setup process, and found most of them confusing. Amazon offers very detailed information about Cloudfront and their other services, but while Amazon is great at developing products, let’s just say that writing easy-to-understand documentation is not their strong suit. I will try to describe Amazon CloudFront simply, and to the best of my understanding.

Using Amazon CloudFront requires that you first set up an account with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The remainder of this post assumes that you have already done that.

There are two aspects of Amazon Web Services that we are concerned with here: CloudFront and S3 (Simple Storage Service). CloudFront is the Content Delivery Network, and S3 is online storage. S3 is used in conjunction with your current web host. Both S3 and CloudFront are paid services, but are very affordable, and you only pay for what you use (CloudFront should cost you somewhere in the area of $1-$3 a month for small site).

CDNs function either as origin push or origin pull.

- Origin Push: You upload your files (including theme files, images, CSS files, and Javascript libraries) onto S3. Your files are stored in what are referred to as ‘Buckets’. Buckets are simply containers that will hold your folders and files. CloudFront then copies the files from your buckets to local servers around the world. CloudFront will then grab your files from the S3 servers, and then serve them on your website.

- Origin Pull: Origin pull bypasses the need for S3 (although my understanding is that you still must create a bucket on S3, even though CloudFront doesn’t use it). Instead of grabbing info from their S3 servers, the CDN will pull the info from your (or your hosting provider’s) servers. When someone in England, for example, visits your site for the first time, CloudFront will store your site on a server in England. Subsequent request from England will then be served by that server.

As I stated earlier, origin pull is an easier method to use, since pushing out updates to files once they are stored on S3 presents some challenges that require some additional steps.

Let’s get started with setting up Amazon CloudFront.

1. Enable CDN. Enable the CDN on the W3 Total Cache General page. Select Amazon CloudFront from the pull-down menu (either pull or push).

2. Configure S3. Log on to Amazon Web Services, and click on the ‘S3’ tab. Click ‘Create Bucket’ on the left side of your screen. Enter a Bucket Name (this can just be the name of your website, for example). Click ‘Create’.

3. Enter Credentials. We now have to get a couple pieces of information from your Amazon Web Services account to link it with Total Cache. In AWS, click on your name in the top right corner, and then select ‘security
credentials’. Scroll down to the table pictured below.

Copy & Paste the Access Key ID and Secret Key into the corresponding fields on the Total Cache CDN page.

4. Create a Distribution. Enter a name for your distribution in the origin field (this can be something like yoursite.com) and then click ‘Create Distribution’. Replace Site’s Hostname should then
automatically be filled in with random characters. Click the ‘Test CloudFront distribution’ button to make sure it works. Click the ‘Save all Settings’ button.

5. Check the Distribution. Go back to the CloudFront tab in AWS. You should see the newly created distribution. It will take a little while to download, depending on how much content you have on your site.

6. Set up a CNAME. Without setting up a CNAME, your images will have an Amazon web address. With a few steps, you can change it to your own name (such as images.yoursite.com, or media.yoursite.com).

Open up your hosting Control Panel (this may vary depending on your host). Scroll down to ‘Domains’ and click ‘Simple DNS Zone Editor’. Fill in the CNAME record fields. For the Name, use something like images.yoursite.com. For the CNAME field,
you’ll need to go back to the CloudFront tab in Amazon Web Services. Where is says Domain Name, you will see something like h2j4uj5k8xnm6.cloudfront.net. Copy & Paste than into the CNAME field on your hosting control panel.

7. Add CNAME to AWS. Go back to the CloudFront tab in AWS. Right Click on the CNAMEs field next to your distribution and click ‘Edit. Enter your CNAME in the corresponding field and click ‘Yes, Edit’.

8. Add CNAME to Total Cache. Go back to the Total Cache CDN page. Press the ‘Add CNAME’ button, and enter your CNAME (you can leave the ‘Replace site’s hostname with’ field alone). Press Save All Settings’.

If you are using origin pull, you can check to make sure CloudFront is working properly. Open up your website, right click on an image, and select ‘open in new tab’. The URL of the image should now start with your CNAME.

9. Additional Steps for Origin Push. If you are using origin push, there will be buttons on the top of the Total Cache CDN page. Use them to automatically upload the different types of files you want stored on S3. Once your files are uploaded, Go to the S3 panel in AWS and select your bucket. Right click on each folder in the bucket, and select Make Public. If you do not set your folders as public, CloutFront will not be able to retrieve them from S3.

You’re all done!

While it might seem like a lot of steps, setting up W3 Total Cache and Amazon CloudFront is a pretty quick process that can have a huge effect on the speed and performance of your site. Don’t forget to check your site’s speed with a service such as Google Page Speed (which is free, and available online, as well as an extension for the Chrome browser) after configuring total cache. Hopefully you and your visitors will be quite happy with the results.

I just got an email from Stephen Scaff that his site SoSweetCreative has been featured on CSSawards and is drawing massive attention & tweets on other design minded sites like like creattica.

SoSweet Creative has been built with the RichWP FrameWork and the RichCORP child theme.

RichWP was perfect for this portfolio project, as it allowed me to focus on the CSS and content and quickly bang out the site.
~ Stephen Scaff

Congratulations Steve!

I initially tried a few different ways of integrating comments on my site. I followed some long drawn out tutorials that required lots of editing and I tried a few plugins too. Through trial and error I found that the the best way to integrate Facebook comments on your WordPress website is to use the official Facebook plugin Comments Box (Note, this is not a WordPress plugin).

Step 1: Create A Facebook App

The first thing you need to do is visit the Facebook Application page and click on ‘Create New App’.

All you need to do is give your name an appropriate name e.g. YourSite.com Comments. Facebook will provide you with and App ID/API Key and App secret key.

Step 2: Customise Your Facebook Comment Area

Next thing you should do is go to the Facebook Comments code. Don’t worry about the ‘URL to comment on’ field for the moment. You simply need to choose how many comments you want per page, the width of your comment area and whether you prefer the light or dark scheme.

Step 3: Add Facebook Code To Your Header.php Template

When you click on the ‘Get Code’ button you will be presented with two options: HTML5 and XBFML (iframe isn’t available for comments). I recommend using the HTML5 version.

If you have created more than one application on Facebook, make sure you select the appropriate application for your comments so that the correct ID is generated in the code.

The first piece of code should look something like this:


<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script>(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=YOURAPPLICATIONID";
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>


Open up your header.php template and add the code just below the body tag e.g. directly after <body>. After you have added the code, save the file.

Step 4: Add Facebook Code To Your Comments.php Template

The second piece of code that Facebook provides looks something like this (it depends on how many posts you specified per page and the widget of the comment area):


<div class="fb-comments" data-href="http://example.com" data-num-posts="2" data-width="500"></div>


The default code that Facebook provides links to a static URL therefore we need to modify the code so that the current page is linked (i.e. the permalink). To do this, all you need to do is replace data-href=”http://example.com” with data-href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>”.

Your code should now look something like:


<div class="fb-comments" data-href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" data-num-posts="2" data-width="500"></div>


To add this to your comment area, all you need to do is add the above code to your comments.php template. Where you should add this code depends on how your comments.php template is coded and whether you want Facebook comments to appear above or below WordPress comments.

If you have followed these steps correctly, you should now see Facebook comments either above or below your regular WordPress comments.

Overview

This tutorial showed you how you can add Facebook comments to your comments.php template. Once it has been completed, Facebook comments will appear on your posts and pages.

If you are unsure about any part of this tutorial, please let me know and I will clarify the step for you.

Good luck,
Kevin