This little tidbit I consider a golden nugget for those looking to optimize their website’s page speed. I ran into a situation recently (actually times) where I needed to defer some scripts down to the footer area. If you’ve been developing a while now, you know about render blocking scripts. Put simply, we want our DOM to load first before any scripts are executed.
I’m actually not very well versed with using Flex (I definitely should though of course), I really only use it when absolutely necessary – usually as a fall back plan or when I want to adjust a few elements on mobile. That’s what this post is really about – Flex and how it saved me numerous times on one (no, many) of those head scratcher projects.
Continue reading “Mobile Stacking Order using Flex”
Sockets. Let’s first get that out of the way. We can at least understand what “Secure” and “Layer” means. Not that the concept of sockets should overshadow it’s phrase constituents but it’s important to get a basic understanding of what’s really going on under the hood.
SSL encryption has been around for a very long time, besides having a fast site, security is a necessary feature every site must have. What good is a fast site if it’s hacked, even worse exposing your visitors to malicious content can have a permanent effect. Everything is in jeopardy – you’re business, your branding, your future. So what to do –
If you’re an SEO marketeer or a developer – you will see this a lot.
From Google Page Insights, Pingdom, SEM Rush, GTMetrix and other page speed tools – “Leverage Browser Caching” is bound to come up. If you’re ignoring this, then you’re business, your client, or site is at a major loss. Page speed is a huge variable when a customer first engages with your site – chances are high rate of drop offs will occur if you don’t leverage browser caching.
Continue reading “Leverage Browser Caching with .htaccess”
GZIP is one of those big words used in programming to generally describe compression. Then again, you end up asking what “compression” is in the context of programming and computers. These two terms can be a little intimidating to the noob and not until you’ve really implemented it, or experienced it first hand you won’t really know it’s true nature and the fundamental idea behind it. So let’s do that.
We often see these two terms come up frequently during page speed optimizations. Software tools like GTMetrix and Page Speed Insights. If you’re running into page speed issues or a really slow loading page, these tools will recommend compressing your files. Alright so what does that mean?
Alright, a lot actually. But in simple terms:
Compression is the process of encoding information using fewer bits. — Ilya Grigorik, Google
This is definitely worth a post. Just when I want to disregard this utility as trivial – every now and then I get a consulting gig where I need to run a full backup – yes of everything, files, database, the works. You see, sometimes I get a task that isn’t as black and white as it may seem at first glance – something is a bit unconventional, but you know – there is nothing wrong with that. Sites come in all shapes and sizes, in all sorts of architectures. It’s good to get exposed to a variety even really weird ones. Look I’d rather poke around a dev site over production no matter how tempting it is – I’ve seen way too many sites go down in my life time, it’s not worth the gamble. I tell every junior developer – the first thing you should do is create a back up. First thing you should do. Then you can show off your programming skills later and you know – be that “rockstar” developer you were meant to be.
Continue reading “Importing sql database using the command line”
Flashbacks of vanilla javascript cloud my mind – back when we didn’t have Jquery. All we had was Javascripts’ event listener method to detect whether the entire DOM was loaded before scripts were fired off.
Why was this necessary though? Well, if you’re a developer you very well know – page speed. And back in those days, programmers weren’t so mindful of placing external javascript files – the head section, footer and I’ve seen some sprinkled throughout the body. Not optimal at all – this can have huge negative implications in terms of functionality and speed.
Redirects can get hairy sometimes – sometimes you get a nice clean canvas of directives, sometimes it’s messy and undocumented. Whatever the case, you’re dealing with an .htaccess file. One wrong move and you can crash your site
or worse yet a clients site. So before anything else make sure you have FTP access and you create a back up of their existing .htaccess file. Don’t even be tempted to do it through Yoast – even though they allow you to edit the .htaccess file right through WordPress. I’ve seen it happen and it isn’t worth it.
So you’ve got the .htaccess file – you’re going down line by line. It can look like a jungle at times – you’ll see caching stuff, some 301 redirects, some permission stuff.
I’ve been running into the WordPress Genesis theme as of late. It’s not your standard wordpress theme when it comes to modifying template files. Genesis is actually a framework, that would be a better way to describe it. Genesis frameworks extend their functionality, allowing developers to customize their WordPress site.
The Genesis framework is built by Studio Press – I’m quite impressed with their work actually, it sounds like a solid framework I just need to learn more about it. So I dove right in – I scoured the internet for some learning material and a good list came up. This can only take you so far though – the best way to really learn is actually do it yourself, so that’s what I’m gonna do.
Googles’ rolled out with a new tool – Mobile-Friendly Test. At first I was a little skeptical about it like I am with any new thing – I question things before I start trusting it. It’s not that I’m resistant to change, that would be a bad thing – change is good. Change is growth.
In my consulting work, I noticed there has been a high demand for using this tool – mainly marketing agencies looking to further audit and optimize their client websites. A visual audit just isn’t good enough, meaning the obvious isn’t so obvious anymore just by visually testing a site on a mobile device. There’s a difference between how we see it and how Google sees it and let’s face it – Google owns everything. Sometimes I feel like Google is the AI (that’s going to take over the world) everyones been talking about.
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