I’ve spent all day (well ok, from 12pm until 3pm – i only got up at 11.30am) working on this blog. My portfolio page has been updated. My current projects page has been added to. Likewise my new logo page has seen some new additions. It’s not just a case of adding in some text and hitting ‘publish’ either…
I’ve created a standard ‘template’ for all images on my current projects page. It requires use of photoshop and a lot of cropping / resizing / messing about. But the end result looks fantastic and it’s now all starting to look the part. The sheer volume of projects and work i’m doing online is finally coming across.
I also spent a lot of time today mulling over stats and behind-the-scenes plugins and code on this blog in a bid to speed up the site. I’ve always been plagued with speed issues on this blog and having seen first hand how fractions of seconds can make huge differences in browsing habits (having installed firefox 3.5), i wanted to do my best to cut down page loading time on this blog.
I installed several new plugins to try and test and track speed and help me narrow down the problem areas. After a lot of trial and error, i found a plugin called ‘debug queries‘ which tells you how long stuff takes to load on your homepage.
By using that data & messing about with plugins (disabling and enabling them), i was able to reduce load time significantly. I also optimized & repaired database files and generally gave the blog a good service.
You should see visible results for yourself (if you’re a regular visitor). To test speed, try clicking on a few pages and see what you think 😉 I’m delighted with the blog’s speed now… as i said to someone earlier in the week, the reason the blog is hosted in the US is really for three reasons;
- Cheaper.
- I’m too lazy to move the site to new server and change hosts.
- Majority of my traffic comes from the US so the blog should perform better over there than here (speed wise).
Of course they’re all excuses, bluffer’s points and it’s tip-toeing around the problem 
One day i’ll move smemon.com to an irish server but for now, i’m happy with lunarpages (my current host) and i’m now reasonably happy with the blog’s speed.