This is the first blog update for 2010 which covers most if not all the changes I’ve made/done to JaypeeOnline since my last blog update back in November. Most of the recent changes were done to improve page load times for JaypeeOnline. Why the sudden focus/concern about page speed/page load time? Because these past couple of months, I’ve read several articles that talk about page speed becoming a ranking factor this year and Google’s recent release of the Page Speed Report Tool in Webmaster Tools. With that, I checked JaypeeOnline’s page load times and identified the files, scripts/widgets that sends a lot of requests or extra DNS lookups, adding to the overal page speed/page load time.

Uninstalled Plugins

• SexyBookmarks – adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each post.
• TweetMeme Button – Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
• Where did they go from here – Show “Readers who viewed this page, also viewed” links on your page. Much like Amazon.com’s product pages.

Uninstalled the SexyBookmarks and TweetMeme Button plugins because they make several large connections in order for them to do their job, which amounts to a higher page load time. If not for the issue of page speed, I wouldn’t have removed these plugins as I really like them, they’re very useful and they go well with the design/layout of my blog theme. I was able to hit two birds with one stone on this because I was able to get rid of two plugins and I was able to reduce the overall page load time. The Where did they go from here plugin worked well but I had to remove it because I had to move back the Adsense unit to that spot.

Installed Plugins

• Clicky for WordPress – Integrates Clicky (analytics) on your blog!
• WP Minify – this plugin uses the Minify engine to combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time.

Re-installed the Clicky for WordPress plugin (blog statistics/analytics) because I needed something that would let me check my blog stats on the iPhone. There’s a Google Analytics app on iTunes but I prefer Clicky over Google Analytics. I installed the WP Minify plugin to help me compress JS and CSS files in order to improve JaypeeOnline’s page load time. The first time I installed (a couple months back), I got errors, so I decided to uninstall it. I gave it another try and this time it worked fine without any errors.

Other Changes

• Removed the JaypeeOnline Facebook Fan Page widget from the sidebar.
• Edited the Author Info section and added/removed some stuff.
• Added Chitika Premium ads which show up only to visitors referred by search engines.
• Created a custom social bookmark section, located at the bottom of every post (BOOKMARK or SHARE IT!). This is not a plugin. I’ve manually coded it into theme.

I removed the Facebook Fan Page widget because it was erratic. There were times when it was messed up and somtimes it won’t load at all. It’s javascript and it really slowed down the page load time. I would’ve kept it if it at least brought in some traffic from Facebook, but it didn’t. So it wasn’t really worth having. Edited the Author Info section and added my Twitter and Facebook links. I added the Chitika Premium ads two months ago, but I wasn’t able to include it in my blog update. Because I uninstalled the SexyBookmarks plugin, I had to find an alternative social bookmarking plugin but decided to create a custom social bookmarking section. I downloaded some social bookmarking icons and created the “Bookmark or Share It!” graphic using Adobe Photoshop. Hope you guys like it. Let me know what you think about it, okay?

I’m also thinking about reinstalling the WP Polls plugin and having a weekly or monthly poll here on JaypeeOnline. What do you think?

If any of you guys have comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments section or if you want to remain anonymous, you can send me a message via the contact page. I’d also appreciate it if you could inform me of any errors or issues that you may encounter on the blog. Thank you!

Did my last blog update post about a couple months back and I’ve done some changes to the blog so I decided to do another blog update post. These blog update posts have become a “regular” habit of mine here on JaypeeOnline and I consider it as some kind of “checkpoint” to help me remember the plugins I installed/uninstalled on the period of time. Its also a way for me to inform my readers of the changes I’ve made to the blog especially the changes I’ve made front-end wise, changes in the blog theme, design, layout, etc.

The changes I’ve listed below are the changes I’ve made since my previous blog update.

Uninstalled Plugins

• LinkWithin – Displays recommended stories and associated thumbnails from your blog.
• Most Commented – Retrieves a list of the posts with the most comments.
• Popularity Contest – keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular.
• Global Translator – automatically translates your blog in the following 41 different languages.

I removed LinkWithin because based on my observation, visitors weren’t using it that much and it uses up too much space and makes the overall post page layout more cluttered. Uninstalled the Most Commented and Popularity Contest plugins because my theme has built-in functions that make both plugins redundant. Removed the Global Translator plugin because of security issues and I will discuss more about it in an upcoming post.

Installed Plugins

• Where did they go from here – Show “Readers Also Viewed” links on your page.
• Theme Authenticity Checker – scans theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code.
• TweetMeme Button – Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
• WP Super Cache – Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
• Yoast Breadcrumbs – Outputs a fully customizable breadcrumb path.

Installed the Where did they go from here plugin and placed it beside the Related Posts to display posts that readers visited after viewing/reading that current post. This is very useful because it lists some posts that aren’t displayed in the Related Posts and lists posts that may also be of interest to the new reader. I installed the Theme Authenticity Checker to help me verify the themes that I review in my WordPress Theme reviews. The TweetMeme button is the small graphic displayed on the upper left portion of each post and displays the number of times the post was RT’d (retweeted) and enables the reader to easily RT the post.

I installed WP Super Cache in the efforts of solving the problems I had with my previous web host. It didn’t work because the problem was not with my blog but with my web host its just that they didn’t want to admit it and they were trying to put the blame on my blog.

I’ve been planning on implementing breadcrumb navigation on my blog for a long time now but didn’t get to do it. I finally found time to install Yoast’s Breadcrumbs plugin. This plugin displays the path and location of the post/page that the reader is currently viewing. Helps users to easily navigate through the blog/website. The breadcrumb path is the text displayed at the top most part of each post and page (Home > Post).

Other Changes

I didn’t do much changes to the blog theme and layout except for some minor tweaks on the sidebar.

• Added the JaypeeOnline Facebook Fan Page at the sidebar.
• Removed the Entrecard widget. Still thinking about whether I should put it back or not.
• Moved the Trackbacks/Pingbacks section below the Comment form.

I think thats it, I mean that’s all the changes I’ve done since my last blog update. Sometimes my memory fails me so I might have missed one or two changes and if I did, I’ll update the post later.

If any of you guys have comments, ideas or suggestions to make JaypeeOnline better, please don’t hesitate to share it with me via the comments section or if you want to remain anonymous, you can send me a message via the contact page. Thanks and you all have a great weekend!

The first time I saw this toolbar in action was at The Next Web blog and then saw it on some blogs/websites during my regular web surfing and blog hopping routines. Some of you might have also seen it on other blogs but don’t know what its called. The toolbar doesn’t have a name or credit source so I had to do some digging and researching before I finally found out what it was and where I could get it. The toolbar is called the Wibiya Toolbar.

What is Wibiya?

Wibiya enables blogs to integrate the most exciting services, applications and widgets of their choice into their blog through customized web-based toolbars.
Our platform offers a one-stop solution for integrating, managing and tracking third-party applications.

Currently we offer a fixed set of tools such as creating a blog community via facebook connect,
enabling twitter alerts on your blog and enabling post navigation but there is a lot to wait for as we will be adding more and more application through time.

Wibiya Toolbar Features:

• Site search
• Translate
• Recent Posts
• Random Post
• Subscribe to RSS feed
• Share this post
• Facebook Community
• Facebook Fan Page
• Twitter Dashboard
• Notifications
• Photo Gallery
• Games

Wibiya is still in beta so you’ll need an invite to get in and if you don’t have one, you can request for an invite. I requested for an invite two weeks ago and got an invite two days after I sent my request.

Here’s how you configure and install the Wibiya Toolbar. When you get your invite, the first thing you need to do is login with the email address you used for requesting the invite and then provide the token or beta code sent to you by Wibiya. Next thing you need to do is to setup and configure your toolbar and you can do that via the Edit Toolbar section. (screenshot below)

Select the Applications that you want to be installed on your toolbar. When you’re done selecting the applications, click on Save & Make it Live and you’ll be brought to the next part which is the Edit Toolbar > Change Toolbar Theme section where you’ll be asked to select your toolbar’s theme (color scheme). (screenshot below)

After you’ve selected a theme, click again on the Save & Make it Live button. You’ll be brought to the Install Toolbar section. (screenshot below)

There are 4 options – Install on WordPress (widget), Install on Blogger (widget), Install on TypePad (code) and Install on websites or other blog platforms (code). Since I don’t use widgets, I chose the latter and inserted a line of code before the tag in my theme file.

Btw, there is a toolbar preview in the Change Toolbar Theme and Install Toolbar sections so you can see how your toolbar looks like before you install it.

Now that your Wibiya Toolbar is installed on your blog/website, you can tract some statistics like Live Notifications read, Posts Navigator clicks, Number of tweets read, Community Views, Website searches, Number of posts shared, Subscribed users to RSS feed, etc. from the Dashboard. (screenshot below)

When Wibiya Toolbar is already installed and you decide to edit some parts of the toolbar, all you need to do is login and go to the Edit Toolbar section and proceed with changing your toolbar settings. If you make changes to your toolbar settings, you don’t have to reinstall the code, everytime you make and save changes, the changes are automatically applied to the toolbar on your blog/website. The Edit Toolbar > Account Details section is where you specify your Site Name, Site URL, Email Address and Site Language.

This is still in beta so there can still be some bugs and we can see some changes or additions later on. So far the only bug/flaw that I’ve seen is a z-index issue with my Amazon.com widget. (You’ll see what I mean by scrolling down the page until the toolbar crosses paths with the widget) Other than that, I haven’t had any issues or problems with the toolbar.

The Wibiya Toolbar is not obtrusive, very easy to install, both backend and frontend user interface are easy to understand and user-friendly. The Wibiya Toolbar not only adds more functionality to your blog or website but it also promotes user interaction and decreases bounce rate. Aside from that, the Wibiya Toolbar doesn’t slow down page load times and doesn’t use much of your web hosting resources because it is hosted externally by Wibiya and not from your blog/website. What I’d like the developers to add to the Wibiya Toolbar are more customization options, like being able to use my own Google Custom Search Engine for Site Search. It would also be nice to be able to have more control on some parts of the toolbar like how the Recent Posts are displayed.

If you want to see it live in action and try it out before installing it on your blog, check out the toolbar on the bottom of this page. One more thing, while you’re there please show some love by joining my Facebook Community and/or becoming a fan of JaypeeOnline.

Anyone else using the Wibiya Toolbar on their blog or website? What are your thoughts or experience on using the Wibiya Toolbar? If you can add new features to it, what would it be? Please share your thoughts.