Blog Updates 04.11

Wow, time flies so fast! I never realized ’til a few days ago that I haven’t published a blog update for more than a year already. My last blog update was done on November 2009. For those who are new here and aren’t familiar with my blog updates, these posts are done not only to share with the readers the plugins/tools I use and site improvements/changes, but it also serves as a “note” for myself so I have a record of the stuff that I’ve installed/uninstalled and the changes I’ve made to the site.

Below are the plugins and other stuff that I’ve installed/uninstalled, added/removed or changed since my last update.

Uninstalled Plugins

• Comment Info Detector – plugin that detects and displays the commenter’s country, web browser and operating system.
• CommentLuv – plugin that displays the commenter’s latest blog post based on their RSS feed.
• Wibiya Toolbar – official Wibiya Toolbar plugin that integrates different social networking features, apps, widgets and other tools.

These plugins all work fine and are pretty nifty plugins but the reason I uninstalled all three plugins was to cut down the “fat” on this blog. I’m working on lessening the resources used on the server and lessening page load times. Less plugins = less resources used. Although they provided neat features, the blog could run without them.

Installed Plugins

• Dashboard Notepad – plugin that adds a simple notepad widget within the WordPress dashboard. You can read the review I made for this plugin here.
• PubSubHubbub – plugin that enables a blog to let other parties know in real-time when there are new updates.
• W3 Total Cache – performance optimization (caching) plugin that improves server performance, improves page load times and user experience.

Installed the Dashboard Notepad plugin so I could write down notes (drafts, to-do lists, etc.) on my WordPress dashboard. I installed PubSubHubbub to enable real-time updates to Google Reader, FriendFeed, etc. Last time, I was using WP Super Cache and then I came across the W3 Total Cache plugin. Tried it and never looked back as it provided more features, did the job better (page load times were better with W3TC than WP Super Cache) and it was compatible with other plugins I used.

Other Changes

• Reinvigorate – I previously had a premium account on Reinvigorate which cost $5/month (stats and analytics service). I love Reinvigorate and have been using it the past few years but I decided to cancel the premium account and just rely on Google Analytics to cut down on my expenses. I still recommend them and you can get a free account if your monthly traffic is less than 100,000.
• Infolinks – added Infolinks, an in-text advertising program as an additional revenue source. Those are the red, double underlined links found throughout the site. Btw, I’d like to know from the regular readers if the Infolinks ads bother you or not. Thanks!
• CDN – If you might’ve noticed, the posts, pages and the site as a whole loads faster. That’s because aside from using the W3 Total Cache plugin, JaypeeOnline has been using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) the past few months. I’ll publish a more detailed post about this soon.

If any of you guys have comments, feedback 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. Thank you and have a nice day!

[image source: flickr.com/photos/clement127]