Want Blogsellence? Less HTTP Requests = More Performance

An often overlooked blog or web site improvement is reducing HTTP requests. Good for page load, improved usability, SEO and ultimately for traffic.

Normally I wouldn't bother writing a post about a site update but, begorrah, I'm so chuffed with Guvnr's new mechanics that I had to spew some spiel. In fact, I'm so ridiculously excited about this new bee in my blognet, reducing HTTP requests, that I plan to tutorialise the process.

Basically, pageload's faster.

Offsetting some of the gained efficiency, I've added a few new cosmetic gizmos too, and improved search usability. (Those two should be in reverse order.)

the_guv's sistasite: Setup The Ultimate VPS

"Blank box to top-notch web server"

• plain English copy/paste tutorials with video
• written for VPS beginners and Linux newbies
• perfect for multiple sites, blogs & more
• Fast. Secure. Future-proofed. Cheap-as-chips!
• "Wow!!" "godsend!!" "GREAT!!!" "awesome"

Ubuntu & Debian, Nginx (beats Apache), MySQL, PHP-FPM, Xcache, WordPress, WP MU, Drupal etccccc

You know the deal. You build your site and, in the rush to launch the thing, along with other commitments, you cut corners. I had quite a few of those. With this site amply laden with scrummy scripts and ie-safe images, according to webpagetest, make that 43 HTTP requests uncached, and a sinful 38 for repeats. Now, those numbers are a more respectable 21 and 16, and over the next few weeks I plan to trim more.

If you've got a site and the last paragraph is unclear, then fix a feed because I'll be explaining exactly what it means, and how you can do similarly - improving pageload, usability, perhaps enhancing SEO and certainly not discouraging traffic, in a post or three coming soon.

If you do know what the heck I'm on about, you'll appreciate that cutting HTTP requests is good all round; from bandwidth saving, user experience and, who knows, maybe it's an element of the Google algorithm - if not, maybe it should be?

Anyhow, and otherwise, here's a summary of Guvnr's new features:-

• core images condensed in a sprite.png - see image above. ¡Que guapa!
• guv-specific javascripts minified and combined, including for relevant WordPress plugins
• css minified and combined, including for relevant WordPress plugins
• new homepage navigation images, juiced up with jQuery
• improved search functionality
• tweaks to my web server's config file, nginx.conf
• tweaks to this site's virtual host (vhost) file

In the pursuit of blogsellence, as I say, I'll post up some tutorial guides about this lot when the VPS Bible, together with appendices, is put to bed.

I hope you like the new look, and the improved functionality. Either way, let me know. Found a bug? .. please let me know!

PS I know I've been a bit scant over the last couple of weeks, posts-wise. Had a bit on but have made a note to do better Just thought you'd like to know.

the_guv