Bluelime Media Vancouver Web Development » Computer Advice

Stop climate change by optimizing your website

Christine — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:47:23 +0000

Climate change has no regional boundaries and threatens more than the environment. If we continue on this path, famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees are the likely outcome. Given the urgency of the issue and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen later this year, it’s only natural that this years’ topic for Blog Action Day, is climate change.

All throughout the day, you’ll no doubt be reading on the many actions you can take to help stop climate change. But did you know that if you are using WordPress, you could be making minor adjustments that also help? Making your website “green” is as easy as reducing the number of of calls to your database. Let me show you how.

WordPress is a database driven website. All of your content, posts and page information resides in a database and every time someone visits your site, a call (SQL query) is made. Reducing the number of calls will not only green your website, it will also speed it up.

Obvious ways to reduce the number of calls are by:

optimizing your images and make them as small as possible
displaying a few posts on your page instead of hundreds
cleaning up your css and reducing the file size
minimizing the use of plugins

Something that may not be as obvious is to remove calls to the database located in your template files.

For example the header.php template is usually made up of the following code:





<?php if (is_home()) : ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> - <?php bloginfo('description'); ?>
<?php else : ?><?php wp_title('', 'false'); ?> - <?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
<?php endif; ?>

You can eliminate 5 calls to the database simply by replacing the meta http-equiv tag with:

the feed with:

the pingback link with:

and the style sheet link with:

It’s not much, but any reduction in energy use is better than nothing.

Look Out for Domain Renewal Scam

Liz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:27:38 +0000

I received a very official looking Domain Name Expiration Notice a little while ago. It looked like the real thing and I might have fallen for it if I hadn’t been (a) wary that the notice was so far in advance of the actual expiry date; and (b) already aware of phantom invoice scams.

Back when I worked in big companies, it was a fairly regular occurrence to get an official-looking invoice for overdue payment that upon closer inspection was fraudulent. Sometimes it was for copier toner, other times for a directory listing or other common supplies. Now the scam has gone high tech.

I believe in knowing what I’m paying for (I prefer not to be described as “cheap” thank you) so I always looked into what I was signing off on. That’s how I uncovered the scam and learned just how persistent and unscrupulous these companies can be.

The invoices are often to the attention of a former employee
They always look very official
There was always a sense of urgency
The invoices keep coming even if you call the source and confront them

If I was like the many small business owners who do not keep close tabs on their domain name registrations and are too busy to read the fine print, I’d have paid over 4 times what I should have to renew those domain names AND I would have transferred them to a disreputable registrar.

Like spam, the phantom invoice scam must work or it wouldn’t keep appearing. I caution you to keep an eye on your domain names and pay attention to the details.

Photo sharing on the web

Christine — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:07:13 +0000

With the start of a new year comes the time to make resolution. Most of us will plan on losing weight, exercise more and get organized. Professional organizer, Linda Chu, asked me to write a piece about using the web and get organized and we sent out the newsletter yesterday. In this article I mentioned my top three free online tool to de-clutter my desk and brain; Ma.gnolia, Ta-da lists and Flickr. Coincidentally, common craft released another great video explaining how photo sharing works on the web.

If you had set “getting organized” as one of your goals for 2008, you should check out their video.

How is your website built?

Christine — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:46:54 +0000

I recently had a discussion with Mhairi about a possible project. Mhairi had a client who wished to add a blog to her site and she asked if I could provide her with a quote. Unfortunately, the website was built with ColdFusion and thus I told her that I wouldn’t be able to work on it because I’m simply not familiar with ColdFusion. Mhairi was a bit confused at first and unsure why the code should matter.

Unfortunately when it comes to the web there are loads or tools out there and lots of different programming languages. Developers tend to focus on one or two tools and specialize in a language. At Bluelime Media, we specialize in table-less HTML, php and WordPress. Believe it or not, we still use Homesite to hand code our sites. If you’re looking for Dreamweaver templates which can be updated with Contribute, we’re simply not the right fit for you.

So when looking at a website, how can you tell how it was built?
When looking at a website, take a look at the address bar when moving from page to page. The file extension will give you an indication of the programming language used. Here’s a quick run-down at the different types of pages out there.

.html or .htm – simple straightforward Hypertext Markup Language
.php – PHP programming
.cfm – Adobe Coldfusion
.asp – Active Server Pages
.aspx – ASP.NET
.cgi – Perl
.jsp – Java Server Page Technology

You can also find out a lot about websites by looking at the source code. Here are a few things to look out for:

wp-content... />

Websites built using WordPress will have code peppered with wp- markers.


codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/..."
width="149" height="378" id="NavTabs-1" align="middle">


These lines of code are a sure sign that the content is a flash file.

function MM_reloadPage(init) {  //reloads the window if Nav4 resized
if (init==true) with (navigator) {if ((appName=="Netscape")&&(parseInt(appVersion)==4)) {
document.MM_pgW=innerWidth; document.MM_pgH=innerHeight; onresize=MM_reloadPage; }}
else if (innerWidth!=document.MM_pgW || innerHeight!=document.MM_pgH) location.reload();
}
MM_reloadPage(true);

Any mention of MM of InstanceBegin indicates that Dreamweaver was used to create this website.




Front page and GoLive both leave their trace in the meta tags.



Step-by-step guide to using Google Reader
Christine — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:16:40 +0000
Back in early May, Mhairi wrote a piece about Google Reader and how its use allows you to keep track of your favourite blogs. I thought I would provide a step-by-step guide for those who may not know how to get started. 
Step 1 – Register

Sign up for a Google Account 
Step 2 – Login

Once your account set up, login. You should come to a page which looks like this:

Step 3 – Set up your reader
Click on Reader to access Google Reader. Using the link “Add Subscription” in the top left hand column add your favourite blogs.

Step 4 – Enjoy
Now that you’ve added your blogs, you only need to login to your account to access them all in one convenient location.
Alternative Readers

For those of you who may not want to use Google, there are several other options.