Comments on: Blog Move, Traffic and Plugins

By: Cymre

Cymre — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:05:23 +0000

@Tome – Thx. I’m glad you find the info useful :)

@Feliz – Ah ok, I had just replaced my default feed here to the one on Feedburner (shows my subscribers list on the Social Crowd plugin to right)

@Matty – Yep I really like WordPress, even the free one. Can’t say I really used blogger just the profile feature really for when I have issues commenting on some Blogger sites.

@Navimie – you know how I feel about that already :)

@Matticus – NW! Thanks for dropping by :)

@Njessi – Thanks so much for the tips, they both sound great :)

@Nightvyxen – Thx! Yep, I just wish I had done it sooner now :P I really appreciate the kind words too. :D

@Feliz – Not too bad. I do try and keep it rather short but ideally it could be shorter but I like seeing when the other categories update. Have you tried WP Super Cache? It may help some with your loading issue but 200 or even 100 is still a huge no. :P

Considering I have 24 feeds running under the plugin I still consider it a bit slow. I did have just the blogroll and comic sections running under the plugin itself but adding another category to the loading time didn’t make too much of a difference.

What if you just have your essential reads, in a category by themselves and then leave the rest as a list/s. Alternatively, there’s a ‘Max number of bookmarks per category’ feature you can use too.

By: Feliz

Feliz — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:54:39 +0000

I am using W3 Total Cache. However, if I understand this correctly, caching is not the issue. This blogroll plugin runs some javascript withing the readers browser, not on the hosting server. It’s perfectly fine to do this, but while it is running, the wheel remains on and gives the appearance of slow load times.

By: Feliz

Feliz — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:24:25 +0000

How’s the Social Blogroll working for you? I took mine out the other say, since it showed the webpage as “loading” for a long time. (the blue wheel thing in Windows). Of course, the fact that I have 200+ blogs in my blogroll has something to do with it, but I doubt that cutting it down to 100 will make much of a difference.

By: Nightvyxen

Nightvyxen — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:50:57 +0000

Congrats on your move! =D

Isn’t it wonderful to be able to use plugins you wish to you with no restrictions. Look afford to reading more of your blog and as always love what you share.

By: Njessi

Njessi — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:14:11 +0000

You really do seem to have the plugins covered and your site looks beautiful (much better than my first self-hosted, tell ya that). I have a couple “cannot live without” plugins if you’re interested.

(1) Simple tags. OMG, tags can get really out of control, and you find out that you have one that says “gear” and another that says “equipment” and you realize they are the same thing… this plugin makes it easy to manage your tags as well as to go back and tag older posts quickly. It also works with categories. Tag and category management in the default interface is a MAJOR chore.

(2) A feed footer. There are so many plugins for this out there, and really any will do. At the end of the feed, I have a simple “copyright blogname, posted in category, link back to original post”. That way if some butthead scraper starts using your feed, your site information is right there. It deters smart thieves, and makes stupid thieves look even more stupid. (Speaking of which, go ahead and get a creative commons license posted somewhere, it’s very easy and it can’t *hurt*.)

Looks like you have this all under control. Happy blogging!

By: Matticus

Matticus — Sat, 12 May 2012 07:13:46 +0000

Thanks for the nods, Cym. Glad you found that stuff useful. Feel free to drop me a line if you ever wanna bounce any ideas or just talk shop and stuff ^^.

By: Navimie

Navimie — Sat, 12 May 2012 06:54:23 +0000

This makes me want to change over. My pingbacks never work…

By: Matty

Matty — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:32:28 +0000

Good information – was thinking about activating my WordPress account, but maybe in a few weeks. Moving is never fun, but a chance at a new start, too.

By: Feliz

Feliz — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:07:38 +0000

I added the “Feedburner Feedsmith” plugin, which redirects feed requests coming in through the standard address to feed burner. After a couple of days those users will show up in the feedburner stats, too.

By: Tome of the Ancient

Tome of the Ancient — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:36:28 +0000

I’ll have to bookmark this post. If I ever stop being lazy and move to a self hosted blog it will come in handy! Every once in a while WordPress adds something I like and then I decide to stay there.