Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is an easy to use AJAX contact form. It has a variety of options, but begineers will have no problem setting up a contact form on whatever page they choose. There are advanced options that include redirecting to a thank you page, and more. This plugin is ideal for inserting a contact form into a page or post. It used to be possible to integrate the Contact Form into the sidebar, using actual PHP code, but ever since they moved to AJAX, I haven’t attempted this.

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If you are using WordPress as a CMS for your website, and you don’t have much, or any, dynamic content, you can skip this plugin. If you have dynamic content in the way of posts, articles, etc, then this plugin makes it pretty easy to integrate ‘similiar posts’ anywhere on your post page. I recommend adding it to the bottom of the post page, that’s where people expect it.

Warning: This plugin requires you to edit your template. It’s not a major edit, but if you switch templates you will need to reintegrate the plugin. You’ll need a bit more understanding of WordPress / HTML to properlly integrate this plugin.

Google Sitemap Generator

Ah, this plugin is great. Updating a sitemap everytime you create a new page or post is a huge hassle and no one wants to do it daily. This plugin stops you having to. Once installed you start by generating your first sitemap. (Warning: You have to already have a sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz file on your server. If you dont, connect via FTP and upload two text files with those names).

The sitemap will contain all your posts and pages (unless you tell it to ignore some). A huge time saver and it will automatically regenerate your Sitemap when you add new posts and pages.

W3 Total Cache

Everyone debates what the better plugin for caching is. WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. They have similiar functionality, but W3 is newer and more advanced. W3 does a lot of things well, such as Minfying Javascript, CSS and HTML. It gives you a good deal of control over browser-side caching, and it’s easy to setup and use if you aren’t an expert.

Depending on your Hosting enviroment, you may need to use FTP to change the permissions on some files, or manually edit them, but the plugin gives easy to follow instructions on how to do that and there are tons of tutorials out there if you get stuck.

All in One SEO

The best all around SEO plugin. Install this on every WordPress site you have, it only takes a few seconds and adds a good deal of functionality and immediate SEO benefit to your website.

You can customize page titles, post titles and more. It’s a must have for every website. Seriously.

Apache GZIP Compression

Using Apache and HTACCESS is the best way to compress your website pages. You can use mod_deflate or mod_gzip to compress your web pages. Deflate is a newer technology and may not be available on all servers.

It’s not only important to Gzip your web page, but also your JavaScript and CSS. That’s why using Apache is the prefered method as opposed to PHP.

Example of HTACCESS GZIP Compression

Add the following code to your .htaccess file in your main website directory. If you do not have an .htaccess file then you can create one. Not all web hosting providers allow their clients to utilize .htaccess, especially on shared hosting servers, but you may be able to contact your hosting provider and ask them to enable this functionality for you. A common location of .htaccess file is /home/accountname/public_html/.htaccess

###################################
# GZIP Setting #
###################################
#This will use the mod_deflate #
#Apache Module to compress your #
#Website pages including HTML, XML#
#CSS, and Javascript #
###################################

AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript

PHP GZIP Compression

PHP can be used to compress your PHP website pages. PHP is not as fast as using Apache and you don’t have the ability to GZIP javascript or CSS files, unless you run them through a PHP script first.

Example of PHP GZip

ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
?>

Example of PHP GZip for Javascript and CSS

//File gzipcss.php
ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
$file = '/css/style.css';

$content = file_get_contents( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $file );
echo $content;
?>

And then instead of linking to your CSS file in your HTML files, link to the gzipcss.php file.

Expected Page Speed Increase

Not only will compressing your webpages, CSS and Javascript make your website load significantly faster, it is considered a High Priority Page Speed Rule by Google. I’ve seen it increase Google Page Speed rankings as much as 35 points.

Testing

If you aren’t sure if your website currently has a GZIP compression installed you can test it very simply with an HTTP Compression Test. You can test to see if your javascript and CSS are being GZIP’ed using RedBot

A website can help you grow you business in ways that you may not even be aware of. A website is a giant business card that search engines hand out for you. That is why search engine optimization is so very important for a small business.

It’s great to be able to point existing or potential clients to your website. It’s even better to put your website on your business card. However, it’s not enough to just have a web designed, informative website. You need people to be able to find it on their own.

That’s why Search Engine Optimization is such a buzz word these days. You want your website to appear on every search engine, and that in and of itself is easy. It’s getting your website to appear on the first page that is going to really start to generate leads.

Search Engine Optimization is a complex and time consuming process, and it can end up being very expensive if you do not choose the right company. At Storm Code, we pride ourselves on being able to boost your search engine rankings, regardless of what your budget is.

With selective choices for keywords, and targeted location based SEO, you can rank higher on search engines in the specific areas of the country that you do business.

If you are interested in Search Engine Optimization, packages start at $199. Contact us for more details.

A Blog gives your site dynamic content. Content that you, the owner of the website, can control. There are many different kinds of blogging software that can be integrated into your existing website. WordPress is our Blogging software of choice. It has an easy to use interface, numerous plug-ins and is constantly being updated and extended.

Armed with a Blog powered by WordPress you no longer need to pay a web developer when you want to add content to your website. If you need to update information, fix a spelling mistake, add new content, change a picture, or any other situation in which information on your website needs to be added, updated or deleted, the power is in your hands.

Once you have your Blog integrated with your website you can begin to write the content. Informative and up to date information in your blog posts is a great way to get people coming back to your website over and over. They may even send the link to your website to friends, or others they know would be interested in the information posted on your blog. This gives you even more chances to convert these visitors into leads and clients.
Most Blogging software (such as WordPress) is designed to be very search engine friendly, and easily installed and configured plug-ins can be added to make it even more so. Links to your blog posts can be submitted to Digg.com and LotText.com, further increasing traffic to your website as well as your Search Engine Optimization.

There are some pitfalls to having a blog as well. If the blog is not setup properly, or properly integrated with your existing website, it can be hard to find, hurt your Search Engine Optimization, or appear unprofessional to potential clients visiting your site. The initial installation of Blogging software can be very difficult for anyone who is not tech-savvy.

If you do not already have a website and are looking for set one up around a blog, then WordPress can be used not only as a piece of Blogging software, but as a fully configurable content management system that can run your website. Each page, post, category, link and image, fully editable by you.
At Storm Code we install, setup, design and host numerous Blogs. If you have any questions, or would like to get a quote. Please contact us.

Bulky queries to your database can drastically slow down the speed of your website. This isn’t specific to MySQL, this problem is present in any website that is backed by a database. Normally when you go to a website, the web server serves you a page of HTML. That’s simple, small and quick. When you have a dynamic page done in PHP, ASP or JSP an extra step is added (this article assumes that PHP is the language being used). The web server must compile the code on the server and then serve the resulting page. When you have a dynamic page that queries a database, the server must compile the code, stop to query the database server, wait for a response, continue compiling the code, and then serve the page. Another added step.

The time it takes the server to serve up a page that requires one or more queries to the database server is negligible most of the time. Especially if the database server is hosted locally on your web server. However, with large, complicated queries, the time the web server must wait for the database server to run the query and return the result can go from negligible to intolerable.

This is mostly caused by poor structure in the queries made on the database. As a rule a query should never return more results then is needed, and should never return information that is not needed. This might seem like common sense, and indeed it is, but never the less, some developers do not take care when writing their SQL queries. The result is extended load times for the pages that use them.

Page load times can have a negative effect many things. First and foremost the patience of your visitor. Second and less well known is search engine optimization. Long load times can result in lower page ranks. Third and possibly even less well known is the effectiveness of your CPC (Cost per Click) advertisement campaigns. Google Adwords as well as many other online marketing tools take the load time of your landing page into account. Longer page load time can result in lower quality scores for your keywords.

Let us examine an example. You have a table in your database that holds information about various books. That information is as follows: Author Name, Purchase Price, Sale Price, Number of Copies in Stock, ISBN, Date Published, Publishing Company, Number of Pages, Blurb about the book.

On your home page you want to display a random book. The information about the book you want to display is: Author Name, Date Published, Blurb.

Some developers will take a shortcut when writing the query to the database and simply ask for all information about all the books that are stored in the table. Then they’ll pick a random book and the information they want about that book in their PHP code. This causes several things to happen. First, the query takes MUCH longer to execute because it has to return all the information about every book in the database. Second, the PHP code has to deal with the massive amount of information. Third, significant strain is put on both your web server and your database server. Fourth, the page takes much longer to load then it should. That is the fast way, not the right way.

Two things can be done right off the bat to optimize this query. First, instead of returning the entire tables worth of books, have the database server pick a book randomly and return only the information about that specific book. There is no need to use PHP to do something that the database server itself can do. Second, structure your SQL query so that you are asking for only the information you want. Author name, Date Published, Blurb. This significantly reduces the strain on your database server and increases the speed at which the query executes. It also increases the speed at which your PHP code can execute, as it is dealing with much less information. It also doesn’t have to randomize that information, or sift through it. It simply displays the result of the database query.

The example above may seem unrealistic, but it’s something we see time and time again when we take on new clients. Some developers charge such a small fee that if they took the time to develop your site properly they wouldn’t make any money. That is the proverbial catch.

There are many things that must be taken into account when your site is being developed for it to be as optimized as possible. Properly structured and thought out database queries are just the tip of the iceberg.

At least that is what someone who writes code like that will tell you. At Storm Code we follow a best practices formula for writing optimized, performance driven code. If you run a small website with just a few scripts that are not often used, then you would notice very little difference (if any) between optimized code and unoptimized code. However, as your website grows in users and complexity the performance gap between unoptimized and optimized code grows larger quickly.

Several performance enhancing techniques can be used while coding. One of these examples is the use of single quotes instead of double quotes. An Example String using single quotes and double quotes in PHP:

echo ‘Hello World!’; // Single Quotes

MySQL was first released in 1995 and has since become one of the dominant web based database management systems (DMBS). PHP, Ruby on Rails, and ASP all support MySQL. Wikipedia runs on the MediaWiki software which is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database. MySQL is used for running many of the popular content management systems such as Joomla!, WordPress, and Drupal. For more information on MySQL history and documentation please visit Wikipedia

A database is integral for creating a dynamic website. Having a database supporting your website allows you to have features and functionality like user registration, blogs, statistics, content management, photo galleries, video galleries, searchable content, product tracking, e-commerce, and much more.

These days most web hosting providers (including Storm Code) offer MySQL as a standard feature of your web hosting package. Some providers offer unlimited MySQL databases, while others limit the number or size of the databases.

Creating a database is as simple as clicking a few buttons. The simplicity ends at that point though and the real work begins. Modeling out the Information Architecture of the Database takes both time and knowledge. A database must be normalized to prevent logical or structural problems, and normalization must be taken into account during the modeling phase of the database design. Normalization can be very tricky for an inexperienced designer and can cause severe problems and limitations in the future if not done correctly. For more information on Database Normalization read up at Wikipedia.

At Storm Code we have a team of experienced designers that understand the pitfalls and production delays caused by bad database design and we know how to avoid them. We have experience designing databases in many areas including but not limited to Real Esate and Automotive sales. If you are interested in speaking with one of our Project Managers about your existing database or a new project please refer to our Contact page.

Two examples of websites that rely heavily on AJAX are Google’s Gmail (www.gmail.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com). Without AJAX, it wouldn’t be possible for Gmail to update your inbox at the rate it does and Facebook wouldn’t be able to list completions to your friend search before you hit search.

Not only does AJAX allow you to create more dynamic pages, but it saves on load time. Instead of sending a request to the web server and then displaying the page the server returns, AJAX allows you to make small requests from the web server and then use Javascript to display that information on the page without having to reload it.

Load time isn’t the only thing you save by not having to reload the entire page every time a users wants to interact, it also saves you bandwidth. If your website was created with AJAX in mind the reduction in bandwidth usage compared to the same site without AJAX support would be significant. There are no figures to offer on actual bandwidth saved as every website is different. However, if a web page that is five kilobytes is reloading itself every time a user has to send one kilobyte of information, and the page that is reloaded is the same with the addition of just a success or failure message based on the users input, you would be saving four kilobytes of bandwidth every single time a user enters said information. If you have a thousand users that all use that page a single time using AJAX would save you roughly four megabytes of bandwidth and save your users precious time.

Now is the time to migrate from PHP4 to PHP5. You do not want to wait until the last minute. As of right now you can migrate on your own terms, and take your time. The amount of difficulty in migrating from PHP4 to PHP5 will depend on your current code base. Some features enabled in PHP4 do not come enabled in PHP5 by default. Register Globals is one such feature.

PHP5 has the core functionality to support many of the new web technologies such as AJAX. Upgrading to PHP5 before August 2008 is a must. If you have a website that is still running PHP4, or you are not sure what version of PHP your website is running you need to find out. If you have access to your web server via FTP or a file manager do the following:

Open notepad (or equivalent text editor)

Enter the following code:

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

Save the file as phpinfo.php

Upload the file to your web server and execute it.

Displayed will be detailed information about your PHP build. You will see your current PHP version included with that information. If you are not using PHP5 and you wish to make the transition, please feel free to contact Storm Code and arrange for one of our project managers to take a look at your code base and give you an estimate on cost and time.