How Startups Can Ruin Their Customer Relationships

Many startups go through growing pains, but customer relationships shouldn’t suffer from a company’s internal stress and adjustments. Establishing a loyal client base and solid brand reputation should be the highest priority for a startup, since those customers will sustain it as it moves into various levels of growth.

A firm can avoid a number of common pitfalls by taking precautions, watching analytics, and improving its operational systems.

Startups Mistakes That Can Ruin Customer Relationships

1. Miscommunication

Both internal and front-of-house miscommunications can break customer relationships. Leadership should be transparent with their teams, and impart accurate product and service information so employees can represent the brand effectively. Inaccurate retail information can lead to a negative purchasing experience.

In order to combat issues like these, make sure all website and social media communications are clear and candid. Include a Frequently Asked Questions page to provide answers for clients who need additional assistance. Your company may also wish to hire trainers and HR professionals to craft training programs, guidelines, and workflows for employees.

2. Inaccurate Records

There’s nothing more embarrassing than calling an important client and learning that your company has the wrong phone number on file. This can lead to unacceptable business delays in communication, which will have a negative impact your company’s pipeline.

Customer records should include precise information and relevant notes, such as purchasing trends, product preferences, and marketing campaigns.

Even if you believe a customer’s records are accurate, take the time to update them. You may learn that a customer has recently changed his or her address, which is crucial information if you are shipping a product to that person or firm. You can take a few moments during each phone call, email interaction, and in-person meeting to verify records and customer information.

3. Lack of Planning

A startup cannot adjust to its opportunities and success if the company is not measuring efforts and results. Analytics can provide invaluable metrics with regard to web, staff, and product performance. Marketing professionals, project managers, and leadership teams can get ready for upcoming product launches, industry conventions, and other substantive events by using business analytic software.

4. Delayed Responses

Startups can lose revenue if they do not dedicate enough staff to customer service needs. Clients who encounter a busy dial signal on the phone, automated email response, or closed door may decide to take their business elsewhere.

If your company is struggling to respond promptly to inbound queries, consider hiring an IT helpdesk and customer service specialists. If clients email, call, or drops in with a question, do your best to connect them with the best resource to fit their needs.

5. Disorganization

Once a startup gains enough of a following, it will need to purchase CRM software to manage contacts, develop pipeline, and close sales. Companies that neglect to invest in these solutions will soon run into organizational problems as data needs overwhelm them.

Excel spreadsheets can do only so much before they become bogged down with convoluted and unnecessary information. A CRM solution empowers teams to collaborate on client accounts, build invoices, and establish sales.

Another way for companies to avoid disorder is to go paperless. Explore servers, cloud solutions, and offsite backups to keep documents safe and secure. Protect CRM databases and other sensitive information by backing data up regularly. IT departments may add another level of security by performing routine technology maintenance, rotating passwords, and repairing technology.

Startups rely on word-of-mouth, online reviews, and client perception to grow their business. These relationships may be placed in jeopardy if your organization suffers from miscommunication, disorganization, or poor planning.

Avoid these stressful situations by investing in staff resources and technologies that fulfill startup needs.

Frustrated Photo via Shutterstock

The post How Startups Can Ruin Their Customer Relationships appeared first on Small Business Trends.

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Why Some People Never Make Money Online

Imagine to make money online by working for just couple of hours. That's the Internet lifestyle. But without ONE THING, you will never make any money

During the past year I've read a lot of eBooks and studied many training courses. All that in addition all the blogs I follow and read, the email lists I've subscribed to. In addition to the free stuff, I've purchased many information products, starting from simple $7 products and up to the $97 a month coaching/training programs.

I've liked (nearly) all the products and courses I've bought and learned a lot. In total, I've used hundreds to educate myself to online marketing. By now, I should be making tons of money, right? Well I'm making some, but we're talking a few dollar here, another there — probably in the range of four figures a year (not month).

So I am making some, but I didn't go through all that "education" to make couple of bucks. I want the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands. But only very few get there, so how can I make sure I get there? It certainly won't happen if I (or you) sit on your ass and do nothing.

I shared my thoughts about this topic in my Posterous already (you can check it here: Success - Doing the things that you don't enjoy, which have to be done), but I wanted to continue on the subject...

How to Never Make Money Online

As got past that intro, there's a chance that you're interested in making money online. You are, right? But you haven't made much either, no matter how hard you've tried. You want to build yourself the Internet lifestyle you hear people talking about. You've already worked your ass off to make it happen.

Or have you really? By running around and looking for the perfect solution, looking for the next big thing, you keep yourself busy. False sense of productivity. Instead of working hard on the stuff that works (but is hard and boring), you go for the shiny new object. Sound familiar? The Never-Ending Cycle of Internet Marketing Product Jumping(TM), the eternal journey, where the only action you take is: "Add to Cart".

You want to make money online, but instead of making it, you look for "the system". You look for the amazing new software that will make you money, push-button easy. Just enter your PayPal address and hit go, and let the money flow in. Not gonna happen.

There are new cool products, services, eBooks and Internet marketing courses launched all the time, each promising to make you rich. You watch the product launch videos with your eyes wide open, stunned at the amazing information they give away for free.

You read their perfectly formatted, A/B tested, but so annoyingly long sales pages. You see the proof. You see how the marketer or someone else have made a lot of money using "the system". The system works.

You're hooked in. You buy their shit stuff. You dive into the training, reading the eBooks, watching the videos. Your brain is full of new information. You can't wait to start using that to make money. The product was worth every penny. Wow. You're so excited that you acted fast enough to get the limited offer. You're in the exclusive group who got to see the info, and now all you have to do is make it happen.

Why you're still waiting? You're not going anywhere, because you're not doing anything. Instead of doing something, you move to the next product. You use hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to WSOs at WarriorForum. Amazing stuff. If you have the budget, you buy the Product Launch Formulas, Kajabis and Video Bosses too. You're learning so much! You really are.

All That Info — And Nothing... Still haven't figured out why you're not making a dime? You're not making money, because you buy yourself a feeling of progress in the next shiny new object you buy. It's gonna be all the same. No matter how good the information you get is, nothing will happen.

Nothing will happen because you are lazy. Or you're afraid to do anything. Maybe you're afraid to waste time and money, so you don't put any effort into what you do. You're half-ass, instead of kick-ass.

Somehow you convince yourself that you're good where you are. Of perhaps you have the self-doubt. Whatever the reason, you're not gonna do anything. Why some people will never make money online?

BECAUSE IT TAKES A LOT OF WORK!

You need to write ebooks, you need to do affiliate marketing, you actually need to blog to make money blogging (go figure!). You need to get traffic. You need to build a better blog. Whatever your chosen method is, you have to work to get to your goals. Buying the course, training or eBook telling you how is not enough (duh!).

Getting overwhelmed by the number of options is another thing. Don't spend time choosing and looking for the best option, do first, evaluate second. You don't have to make it perfect the first time, what ever it is.

Yaro Starak, in his post about why people struggle to get what they want said:

Sadly most people know what to do, they just don’t do it. The reason is a lack of belief and confidence. - Yaro Starak

Take the lack of belief and confidence, add some laziness, and finally mix in the fear. It's much, much easier to buy new stuff and lie to yourself that you're taking action. You might be lying to yourself that you don't have the skills. That it's too late. You can't possible achieve what someone else did.

Truth?

You master the art of making excuses and you achieve nothing.

That's why some, if not most people are not making money, or they're making tens of dollars, and not thousands. The people who make money put what they know into use, they work hard. Those who don't do, don't get.

Don't be fooled about the big figures someone got "easy". Before they got easy, they worked hard, they failed, they put in the hours and then got results. The only 100% certain fact in the Internet marketing is the result of not doing anything. That's right. The result of doing nothing is zero. Doing nothing, gets you nothing.

Some people will never make money online, because THEY DO NOT DO ANYTHING, they just fake it to themselves by buying information products that teach them making money. The very few who do work hard, make all the money.

At some point, they have put in the hours (or the dollars to pay for someone elses hours). They are not smarter, they are not luckier, they just do more that those who don't make money. It's really as simple as that, even if you don't want to admit it.

Luckily - there's is one, and only one, solution to all this. With this one thing, THE ULTIMATE SYSTEM, everything is possible. But if you expect it to be easy, you're not gonna like it. It's the *real* secret to making money online.

Find the closest (literally) shiny object and look into it.

Will YOU be part of the very few who make it?

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

Why Some People Never Make Money Online

Here's more posts like to this:

1. Make time, not money


2. 37signals: A Secret to Making Money Online


3. The games we play and the stupid **** we do to get seen online

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Disqus LOOPHOLE for SPAM Comments in WordPress

Are you running Disqus on WordPress blog? You've probably seen plenty of SPAM and removed them with Disqus. Well, those comments are not really gone...

Are you running Disqus Comments on your WordPress blog?

Have you received comments that you've marked as spam or deleted?

You have, right? We all have.

Standard business, we get spam comments or comments not compliant with our comment policy, we mark them as spam and remove the comment...

Here's an usual lame-ass SPAM comment in Disqus, marked as spam...

Stay with me...

When comment is left to WordPress blog with Disqus comments, the comment is also added to WordPress database, like a normal comment would.

This is good in case you would remove Disqus one day, you'd still have the comments.

OK - cool

BUT

After the comment is received, Disqus picks up the comment, so the comment going to WordPress database it is not caught by SPAM filters or anything...

Not a problem, we just manually marked the comment as spam...

RIGHT?

well...

No.

Disqus doesn't think it needs to "communicate back" to the WordPress database and remove the comment there as well...

Check your normal comments (click 'Dashboard > Comments > Comments' to see comments in WordPress database), and you will find comments there that you've deleted or marked as spam in Disqus, safely in the WordPress database.

The same SPAM comment, marked as SPAM in Disqus, is in the WordPress comment, approved like any good comment...

LOVELY!

And if Disqus being slow as hell wasn't enough...

:sigh:

BUT

IT GETS WORSE

Spot a comment from "normal" comments that was spam, removed from Disqus, but still in WordPress database etc...

Not a problem, Disqus wouldn't show a comment removed from its own system and only existing in WP database, would it?

YOU BET YOUR SORRY ASS IT WOULD!

Go to the blog post in question...

You can't see the comment there...

OK - good...

Open the page source.

Search for the spam comment.

The same SPAM comment is now HIDDEN in the page source by Disqus Comments. Not visible on the page, but there it is...

WTF?

Looks like Disqus Comments on WordPress, at least with the Disqus Comments -plugin, help SPAM comments to turn our blogs into black hat SEO shit, hiding spammy comments and links in our page source.

Please tell me that this is just some oddity in my blog.

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

Disqus LOOPHOLE for SPAM Comments in WordPress

Here's more posts like to this:

1. How to stop your blog comments from being blocked by Akismet


2. An introduction to Disqus blog commenting system


3. How to leave comments on a blog

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WordPress htaccess: The Definite Guide

WordPress htaccess file needs tweaking for security and performance. To make things easy, here is a ready-made WordPress htaccess that anyone can use

Can I ask you - is your WordPress htaccess is in a good shape?

• Do you have the essential security rules in place?


• Do you know what you should have there?


• Are you afraid to touch the whole darn thing?

No worries - after reading this post you will know the answers. You will know exactly what kind of htaccess file you should have. I will not bore you with technicalities, or go into details that you don't need, but instead - I give you the solution, right now:

Ultra Quick Intro to htaccess

• .htaccess is the default name of a directory-level configuration file for a web server


• it was originally created for per-directory access control, but nowadays htaccess can include many other configurations, mostly related to content control.


• The file name is .htaccess ("dot htaccess"). Don't forget the "dot". In some operating systems, the files beginning with "dot" might be hidden, so keep that in mind.


• the name of the htaccess-file can be changed by configuration (which is wise for security, but beyond the scope of this article).


• .htaccess overrides the rules in the main configuration file, usually called httpd.conf.


• for performance, it's better to use httpd.conf -file, but on shared hosting, the webmaster doesn't usually have access to the main configuration -file and needs to rely on .htaccess.


• if you DO have access to httpd.conf, all non-directory specific rules should go into httpd.conf instead of .htaccess.

I promised I won't bore you with details you don't need, so that's it - in fact, you don't even need all the above, but I couldn't call this article definite guide if I didn't add some of that stuff in... If you want to know even more, check the links below on this post for all the htaccess information you'll ever need and then some.

WordPress htaccess

Good, default WordPress htaccess looks like this:



# BEGIN htaccess

# Protect the htaccess file

<Files .htaccess>

Order Allow,Deny

Deny from all

</Files>



# Protect the htaccess file

<Files wp-config.php>

Order Allow,Deny

Deny from all

</Files>



# Disable directory browsing

Options All -Indexes



# Enable the following of symlinks

Options +FollowSymLinks



<IfModule mod_headers.c>

# No ETags, No Pragma

Header unset Pragma

Header unset ETag

# Make sure proxies deliver correct content

Header append Vary User-Agent env=!dont-vary

# Ensure proxies deliver compressed content correctly

Header append Vary Accept-Encoding

</IfModule>



# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

# END WordPress

# END htaccess


WARNING: The redirect rules at the end might be different in case you've installed WordPress in a directory and/or run several blogs from the same domain. If WordPress has already added mod_rewrite -rules into the .htaccess -file (similar to above), DO NOT delete/edit them.

With these rules in place we have the basic security in place

• .htaccess file itself is protected,


• WordPress wp-config.php is protected, and


• directory browsing is disabled.

Apart from the security, we just need the default WordPress redirect rules (the last rules there).

Add More Rules as Needed

The rules above are the starting point and suitable for any blog. As said, the default rules are what any WordPress blog needs. If you do nothing else, but add the rules I showed above, you will be fine. The following posts are for the tech-heads, geeks and crazy tweakers like me:

• The Ultimate Htaccess


• Stupid htaccess Tricks (Perishable Press)


• .htaccess rules for site speed optimization (Zemalf.com)


• The most essential .htaccess rules for blogs (Zemalf.com)

Editing the htaccess from WordPress Dashboard

I don't recommend using a plugin that creates htaccess, because you don't really need to use such a plugin, but you can use a plugin that allows you to edit it easily from the Dashboard, so you don't have to mess with FTP or SSH if you don't have to.

From the WordPress plugins I use and recommend, Robots Meta offers just that (in addition to all the useful things it does for SEO and stuff). With Robots Meta, you can edit the htaccess file from the plugin settings (just remember to back up the content before editing and saving).

Advanced users should always use FTP or SSH to edit the files.

WordPress htaccess and W3 Total Cache

With the default rules in the htaccess,

• we can let W3 Total Cache add the rules it needs for Browser Cache, and


• we don't necessarily need to (manually) add the .htaccess rules for performance.

Also, se can add other .htaccess rules for blogs, but we can skip the mod_deflate / Expires rules.

The rules added by W3 Total Cache are *not* optimal, but they're good enough. And since editing .htaccess is quite technical, and hard for many WordPress bloggers out there, it's good that non-techies don't need to touch it too many times.

For tech people, there's still the option to just disable Browser Cache -option in W3TC, and tweak the caching/proxy settings manually, and this is the best option for website performance. BUT for the "average blogger", the rules above + the rules added by W3TC are everything they need.

Summary

Add the rules I presented above to your .htaccess -file before installing W3 Total Cache (or add them in by replacing everything else but the W3TC rules). Always take backup of your blog AND the htaccess before editing the file.

If your site "dies" after editing the file, you probably did something wrong - restore the backup (or add only the rules in this post in) and try again. It's not hard, but be careful when deleting / modifying the rules already in the file, as some rules can and will be, site-specific.

Afterword

I hope I managed to present the kind of htaccess rules that every WordPress blogger could use. With the feedback from my earlier posts with htaccess rules for WordPress, while they were highly useful and comprehensive, I learned that some parts of them were complicated for the "technologically challenged".

Thus, the rules in this post make up for what I think is, truly essential WordPress htaccess. Beyond this, it's tweaking and tuning, adding your personal favorites, etc.

What do you think? And also: Did these .htaccess rules work for your blog?

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

WordPress htaccess: The Definite Guide

Here's more posts like to this:

1. .htaccess rules for site speed optimization


2. The Ultimate WordPress Permalinks Guide


3. The most essential .htaccess rules for blogs

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W3 Total Cache -Plugin: The Complete Settings Guide

Learn how to easily install W3 Total Cache -plugin on your self-hosted WordPress blog and how to configure its settings for maximum speed

The extended version of the W3 Total Cache guide is available as a free eBook:

Download the free W3 Total Cache Installation and Configuration Guide from MediaFire.

Introduction

Installing and configuring the W3 Total Cache -plugin for WordPress is part of a step-by-step process to optimize WordPress for speed that will make it easier to retain readers and keep the site speed on a level that Google appreciates as well.

The initial steps to speed up WordPress are laid out as the WordPress Speed Challenge here at my blog.

Why W3 Total Cache?

With this free guide, you can easily make your WordPress blogs pages load faster than before and save money on hosting bills as you can stay on shared hosting and still make your blog withstand huge amounts of traffic without compromising the performance.

Installing W3 Total Cache (W3TC for short) is just like installing any other plugin for WordPress (super simple via the Dashboard). The default options will make W3TC handle page caching, which it does similarly, and even a bit better, than the WP Super Cache.

But with proper configuration, W3TC does much more, like combining and minifying (compressing & making smaller) JavaScript and CSS-files, and also cache Database queries and make using Content Delivery Network easy (read: automatic). Because of all this, the W3 Total Cache is the best caching plugin for WordPress.

This guide is meant for WordPress blogs on shared hosting, who can't use more advanced caching solutions like Opcode caching and/or memcache, which are available on dedicated servers and virtual private servers. With this guide, you can handle loads of traffic with a blog on shared hosting, and you can stay on shared hosting until you can afford to pay for better (if you need it then).

For blogs that do need more powerful hosting solutions, Total Cache is even better. With the advanced options like Database Caching and automated use of Content Delivery Network, W3TC is the ultimate caching solution (the "Total" in the plugin name is there for a reason) and this is why huge blogs like Mashable use it.

How to Install and Configure W3 Total Cache for WordPress

The first step is to uninstall any other caching plugin you might be using, like WP Super Cache. We don't need (or even can't have) two caching plugins running, so you need to uninstall WP Super Cache before you move on.

Installing and configuring the W3 Total Cache is a simple step-by-step process... and actually since you don't necessarily need to take one of the steps and one you can skip altogether, it's really 3-7 steps, depending on how you count it :)

How to install W3 Total Cache

Here's the installation in short (as installing any WordPress -plugin):

• (Uninstall WP Super Cache, or any other caching plugin you might have installed)


• Install W3 Total Cache -plugin: Go to 'Plugins', Click 'Add New', Search for 'W3 Total Cache', click 'Install now' for W3TC, confirm the installation and activate the plugin.

How to Configure W3 Total Cache -plugin

W3TC - General Settings

• Page Cache: Enabled ('Enable' checked), Disk (enhanced)


• Minify: Enabled ('Enable' checked), Disk


• Database Cache: Disabled ('Enable' unchecked)


• Object Cache: Disabled ('Enable' unchecked)


• Content Delivery Network: Disabled ('Enable' unchecked) (*


• Browser Cache: Enabled ('Enable' checked)

*) For the best performance and speed, I recommend setting up a content delivery network (CDN) and configure it into W3TC settings. It's optional as it's not free, but it's well worth it in the end. Depending on your hosting setup, it can even save you money as it takes the load and bandwidth off your main server.

I personally use MaxCDN, and wrote a guide on how to set it up here: CDN with MaxCDN.

W3TC - Page Cache Settings

Page Cache Settings - General

• Enable (checked) - Don't cache pages for logged in users


• Enable (checked) - Cache home page


• Enable (checked) - Cache feeds


• Disable (unchecked) - Cache URIs with query string variables


• Disable (unchecked) - Cache 404 (not found) pages

Page Cache Settings - Advanced

No need to touch these.

Page Cache Settings - Cache Preload

With Cache Preload, you can automatically "fill the cache", using a XML sitemap. This means serving pre-cached pages to all visitors, even if a page has not been visited recently. It's OK to leave this disabled, and keep it disabled if you run into performance problems when the preload activates, or lower the number of 'Pages per interval'.

• Enable (checked) - Automatically prime the page cache


• Update internal - 907


• Pages per interval: 7 (increase/decrease as needed)


• Sitemap URL: Your blogs sitemap.xml URL, e.g. http://example.com/sitemap.xml

W3TC - Minify Settings

This is where the magic happens, and also, this is the hardest part of W3 Total Cache configuration. If you're uncomfortable to look into HTML source and find CSS- and JS-files there, skip this section. You won't have minify, but Page Cache will work just fine. However, for performance optimization and site speed, this is essential.

Skip the General, HTML and JavaScript for now, and scroll to...

Minify Settings - Cascading Style Sheets

CSS Minify Settings:

• Enable: Enable (checked)


• Disable: Combine only (unchecked)


• Enable: Comment Removal (checked)


• Enable: Line break removal (checked)

If you run into problems with badly coded CSS, try disabling the Comment- and Line break removal. Well coded CSS will still work, bad ones might get into problems.

CSS file management

Theme: The active theme should be chosen, but you can set configurations to all installed themes here (even for non-active ones, in case you ever activate them).

• Open another browser window or tab, and open your blog.


• Open the page source (right-click, show page source).


• Open Find (e.g. CTRL+F or from menu: Edit > Find)


• Search for ".css" (without quotes)


• Copy the full URL of the first .css-file you find, e.g. http://example.com/wp-content/themes/yourtheme/style.css (do not copy this URL, you must get it from YOUR BLOGS page source)


• Go back to the window/tab with W3 Total Cache settings and the Minify Setting -page, click 'Add a style sheet' under Cascading Style Sheets...


• Paste the .css -file URL in, unless the css-file is specific to certain page/template, choose 'All Templates'. Just in case, click 'Veriry URI' to see that the URL is correct


• Go back to the page source, hit next on the find to locate the next css-file. Copy the URL to the W3 Total Cache, Verify.


• Repeat until you've added all css-files from the page source to W3TC.

Notes: If there is "version number" like "?ver=2.4.1" in the CSS-files URL, remove it.

For example: /styles.css?ver=2.4.1 would go into W3TC as /styles.css - This way, W3TC will pick up the CSS, even if the plugin/theme updates and the CSS-version changes.

Note that you can change the order of the CSS-files by dragging them (hover your mouse over the file, and you'll see an "up-and-down" arrows), which might help if some CSS-files need to be before/after another. It's best to follow the same order of the files they were in the source code (taken that everything was working).

After you 'Save changes', W3TC might remove part of the URL, this is normal.

Minify Settings - Advanced

• Update external files every: 216000 seconds


• Garbage collection interval: 216000 seconds

For high traffic sites, lower the Garbage collection to 86400, or just leave it there by default.

Save Changes.

Minify Settings - JavaScript

TO AVOID PROBLEMS - DO NOT ADD AdSense, Chitika or such advertising code to W3TC!!

The process is similar to adding the CSS-files, but the problem is that many plugin- and theme-authors are not very good JavaScript coders, so they code can't handle minification.

• Enabled: Enable (checked)


• Disabled: Combine only after <head>


• Disabled: Combine only after <body>


• Disabled: Combine only before </body>


• Enabled: Comment removal


• Enabled: Line break removal

Go to your blogs page source, find ".js" files. Add them one by one to W3TC. Again, remove the "?ver=2.4.1" and similar version numbers if you see'em. For performance, it's better to Embed JavaScript to the bottom of the page = Embed before </body> and use the "Non-blocking" -option

Non-blocking can be used if the functionality of that script is not needed when loading the page, but only after the page is loaded. (In general, interface scripts can be non-blocking, and scripts that modify the content usually need to be "blocking")

If a script doesn't work correctly when embedded to the footer (before </body>), embed it to the same location you found it, e.g. Embed script located originally in the <head>, in <head> = Embed in <head>.

Also, you can change the order of the JavaScript files by dragging them, which might help if some scripts need to be in certain order. It's best to place the scripts in the same order they were in the source code (taken that everything was working).

If a script is only used/needed on certain pages, use the Template selector to choose the correct template from your theme, e.g. Page for page.php, Category for category.php, etc.

Disable 'Comment removal' and 'Line break removal', if you're having problems. And if everything else fails, remove JS-file from W3TC (and seriously consider getting rid of that poorly coded script!!)

Save changes.

Test your site functionality before enabling the HTML minify! If you're on Preview-mode, test your site after 'Deploy' and change configuration if needed.

Change the settings (e.g. Comment-/Line break removal, remove scripts from W3TC, etc.) if there's problems.

Did you have a lot of CSS- and JavaScript -files to go through? Maybe you're running a few unneeded plugins, widgets and external scripts? Do you really need them all? Remember - best performance optimization trick is to remove stuff.

Minify Settings - General

• Enable: Rewrite URL structure (checked)


• Enable: Automatically upload mofified files (checked)


• Minify error notification: Enable this to get error notification if something goes wrong.

Minify Settings - HTML

Note: After enabling HTML, your page source will become somewhat difficul to read, so adjust CSS- and JS-settings before enabling this. And if you ever need to look into your blogs source, disable HTML minifying then.

Best Performance:

• Enable: Enable (checked)


• Disable: Don't minify feed (checked)


• Enable: Inline CSS minification (checked)


• Enable: Inline JS minification (checked)


• Enable: Line break removal (checked)

Best compatibility with HALF-ASS coded themes:

• Disable: Enable (unchecked)

Add stuff to ignore-field as needed (Advanced stuff)

Save changes.

Skip Database Cache-, Object Cache- and CDN settings, as those are probably disabled for now + the default options work OK, even if you do have opcode-/memcache running on your VPS or dedicated server.

W3TC - Browser Cache

The browser cache settings will change rules in your .htaccess-file if you have the Browser Cache enabled.

Advanced users probably want to tweak their .htaccess manually, but this is an excellent way for non-techies to get .htaccess-based browser cache set-up.

Go through the settings, and set'em like this...

Browser Cache - General / Default

• Enable (checked): Set expires header


• Enable (checked): Set cache control header


• Disable (unchecked): Set entity tag (eTag)


• Enable (checked): Set W3 Total Cache header


• Enable (checked): Enable HTTP (gzip) compression


• Disable (unchecked): Do not process 404 errors

Save changes.

Browser Cache - Cascading Style Sheets & JavaScript

(default = OK, no changes)

• Enable (checked): Set expires header


• Expires header lifetime: 31536000 seconds


• Enable (checked): Set cache control header


• Cache Control Policy: cache with validation


• Disable (unchecked): Set entity tag (eTag)


• Enable (checked): Set W3 Total Cache header


• Enable (checked): Enable HTTP (gzip) compression

Browser Cache - HTML

(default = OK, no changes)

• Enable (checked): Set expires header


• Expires header lifetime: 3600 seconds


• Enable (checked): Set cache control header


• Cache Control Policy: cache with validation


• Disable (unchecked): Set entity tag (eTag)


• Enable (checked): Set W3 Total Cache header


• Enable (checked): Enable HTTP (gzip) compression

Browser Cache - Media & Other Files

(default = OK, no changes)

• Enable (checked): Set expires header


• Expires header lifetime: 31536000 seconds


• Enable (checked): Set cache control header


• Cache Control Policy: cache with validation


• Disable (unchecked): Set entity tag (eTag)


• Enable (checked): Set W3 Total Cache header


• Enable (checked): Enable HTTP (gzip) compression

Save changes.

You might change the Cache Control policies if you have issues with proxies, but other than that, the above config is solid.

You don't have to, but if you now go and check your root .htacces-file, you'll see that W3TC has added loads of rules there.

W3 Total Cache and Mobile Browsers: User Agent Groups -settings

This is where you'll do tweaks for different agents, e.g. mobile users, but you can skip these for now.

W3TC - Content Delivery Network settings

This is where you'll configure W3TC and the blog to use your CDN or (sub-)domain to server files in the Media Library, the Theme-files, minified-files, etc. W3TC does all this automatically.

In case you are interested in taking CDN in to use, WP Total Cache and MaxCDN make taking CDN into use very, very easy (read my WordPress CDN guide for the step-by-step instructions).

Preview Mode & Deploying the changes

After you've done all the settings, go back to the General Settings -page and hit 'Deploy'.

You'll see 'Preview settings succesfully deployed'

Hit 'Disable' to disable the preview mode and "go live"

Hit 'Empty Page Cache'

Hit 'Empty Minify Cache'

(as noted at the start, the 'Deselect this option to disable all caching functionality.' option seems to be broken, just ignore it, even if its unchecked by default)

If you want, check 'Combatibility Check' for some info. If you're on shared hosting, these are pretty much out-of-your-control, but will give some clue in case you have problems with W3 Total Cache.

It is normal that Opcode cache and Memcache extension are 'Not installed', unless you have a Virtual Private Server or dedicated server and have'em installed there.

But now you're done, you have succesfully installed and configured W3TC on your blog.

The Extended W3 Total Cache Guide

Installing and configuring W3 Total Cache is not overly complicated, but there are a lot of options in it (even that some are OK by default). I noticed that with all the step-by-step instructions, screenshots and additional tips, this guide started to bloat beyond a blog post - so I turned a detailed version of this post into a PDF and uploaded the eBook to my Scribd (embedded below).

UPDATE: Since then Scribd has changed their ways and made the download paid/difficult, but I uploaded the PDF to a free file sharing site, so you can download the W3 Total Cache Installation and Configuration Guide from Mediafire.

W3 Total Cache Installation and Configuration Guide

Don't be too scared about the 30+ 45+ pages, it's a simple step-by-step guide, but there are many options with the plugin and I wanted to include clear screenshots of the settings to make things easy for you.

Scribd has changed their ways and made download difficult and/or paid, thus the PDF is now uploaded to a free file sharing site. Download the W3 Total Cache Installation and Configuration Guide via MediaFire.

Updates and Versions

2010-07-12: 1.0 Post published.

2010-08-15: 1.02 Minor updates and corrections.

2010-10-30: 1.1 Total post re-work and update to the PDF guide.

2011-03-28: 1.2 Checked that everything is up-to-date. Updated CDN info. Uploaded a new version of the extended edition to Scribd.

2012-0912: Uploaded the PDF to MediaFire

Summary

Installing and configuring W3 Total Cache is a simple 7 5 step process, which you can take right now to speed up your WordPress blog:

1. (Uninstall WP Super Cache, or any other caching plugin than W3TC, like WP Cache, WP Minify or such)


2. (Place the essential rules to your WordPress htaccess)


3. Install the W3 Total Cache -plugin


4. (Optional: Check the General Settings, defaults OK, can be skipped)


5. (Optional: Adjust the Page Cache Settings)


6. Adjust the Minify Settings


7. Adjust the Browser Cache Settigs


8. (No need to touch the Database Cache or Object Cache -settings, the easiest step!)


9. Advanced: Configure the CDN settings if you're using one (or skip!)

Download the W3 Total Cache Installation and Configuration Guide from MediaFire for detailed step-by-step instructions.

p.s. I've been told I should be selling my own products, and ask money for eBooks like this one, instead of putting it out there for free... I don't know about that, but if all goes as planned, there'll be plenty of opportunities for you to buy stuff from me at some point, but for now, you'll just have to get it all for free. Sorry.

p.p.s. If you like what I'm doing here, subscribe to this blog via RSS or email and connect with me on my Facebook -page.

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Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

W3 Total Cache -Plugin: The Complete Settings Guide

Here's more posts like to this:

1. How to setup WordPress CDN with W3 Total Cache and MaxCDN


2. How to uninstall WP Super Cache


3. WordPress htaccess: The Definite Guide

via Make Your Own Website Tools Tips Tricks http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zemalf/~3/UQGSxWIXT18/ Best WordPress Hosting

How to uninstall WP Super Cache

Summary: Here's how to uninstall WP Super Cache in order to replace it with the better (the best!) option, W3 Total Cache.

WP Super Cache is an awesome plugin, but W3 Total Cache is better. We don't want (can't have) both, so here's how to uninstall WP Super Cache.

Do this only if you are ready to replace it with W3 Total Cache right away. Caching is essential for blog performance, and you don't want to have the blog running for too long without caching.

Before you begin: BACKUP your blog, including the root .htaccess -file. Uninstalling WP Super Cache is quite simple, but having a backup is smart, in case something does go wrong.

5 Steps to Uninstall WP Super Cache

Notice: You need to run WP Super Cache uninstall.php instead of just deactivating and deleting the plugin to ensure everything that the plugin is removed fully and files are cleaned on the server.

1. Go to WP Super Cache settings. Turn OFF caching in WP Super Cache settings. Clear the expired files. Clear the cache.

2. Go to Dashboard and Plugins. Deactivate the WP Super Cache from Plugins screen. (Do not DELETE yet)

3. Edit the file uninstall.php in your plugins/wp-super-cache/ directory and set

UNINSTALL_WPSUPERCACHE to a non blank value (e.g. '1').

define( 'UNINSTALL_WPSUPERCACHE', '1' );

4. Open your browser and load wp-content/plugins/wp-super-cache/uninstall.php directly. You must be logged in as an admin, and you must confirm the action.

5. Go to Dashboard and Plugins. Find WP Super Cache, click remove and confirm removing all files.

How to Verify that WP Super Cache was Uninstalled Successfully

The above 5 steps will uninstall WP Super Cache and clean all the files on your server. However, just to make sure, you can follow these steps to ensure everything was cleared successfully:

1. Open wp-config.php (in the WordPress install directory) and ensure the line is removed:

define('WP_CACHE', true);

2. Go to /wp-content/ and check that the files advanced-cache.php and wp-cache-config.php are not there (delete them if they are there).

3. Open the .htaccess -file at the root of your domain and make sure the WP Super Cache rules are not there. The WP Super Cache's rules are between commented lines:

# BEGIN WPSuperCache

...

# END WPSuperCache

Delete the rules between the BEGIN/END WPSuperCache, including the commented lines themselves.

Note that WP Super Cache's rules might already be removed from the .htaccess -file. Also, do not remove the WordPress redirect rules, or any other special rules from the .htaccess.

In case you're wondering, the default WordPress .htaccess rules (also in WordPress Codex) look like this:



# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

</IfModule>

# END WordPress


Or for blogs installed in subdirectory:



# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /subdirectory/

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /subdirectory/index.php [L]

</IfModule>

# END WordPress


WordPress installations need to have at least the above code (either the normal or the subdirectory option) in the root .htaccess file. Without these rules, the WordPress permalinks won't work.

4. Check that the directory wp-content/cache/ has been deleted.

5. Check that the directory wp-super-cache from your plugins directory has been deleted.

6. Open a page in your blog, e.g. the homepage and make sure it loads OK.

References and Further Information

For further information and detailed instructions about WP Super Cache uninstallation, check out:

• How to uninstall WP Super Cache


• WP Super Cache -homepage


• WP Super Cache -plugin for WordPress


• Creating and editing WP .htaccess

What Next?

The third step of the WordPress Speed Challenge is to take the W3 Total Cache -plugin into use, and the W3 Total Cache -plugin for WordPress: Installation and Configuration Guide is now available (for free) on Scribd. Read, download and share it here: (and more importantly, take action to take the BEST caching plugin for WordPress into use!)

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

How to uninstall WP Super Cache

Here's more posts like to this:

1. Is Your WordPress Blog Super-Slow (Because of Plugins)?


2. W3 Total Cache -Plugin: The Complete Settings Guide


3. WordPress htaccess: The Definite Guide

via Make Your Own Website Tools Tips Tricks http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zemalf/~3/gcleUoSB1Nk/ Best WordPress Hosting

How to Backup and Optimize the WordPress Database

Summary: On the step 2 of the WordPress Speed Challenge we're gonna automatically backup and optimize the WordPress Database. This is important before doing any changes.

WordPress Speed Challenge - Step 2

As a preparation for the challenge, we installed the essential tools every blogger needs, and on the first step of the WordPress Speed Challenge, we analyzed the blog performance, and saved the results from YSlow, Page Speed and total loading time via Pingdom to a spreadsheet or a text file.

If you are new to this, begin by reading the WordPress Speed Challenge introduction and work through the preparation and step 1 before moving on.

After getting the tools and initial baseline from the analysis metrics, we move to the WordPress optimization steps. The first optimization step, and the step 2 in the WordPress Speed Challenge, is backing up and optimizing WordPress database .

More about security than speed

Having regular and automatic backups will ensure that your precious work is not lost in case something breaks (or worse, your site gets hacked or something). Because of this, I included the backup as a part of the WP Speed Challenge, even that the backup itself has very little to do with speeding up WordPress - Although it will be signicantly faster to restore a backup than re-write each and every blog post on your blog if the original data is lost...

With the WP-DBManager -plugin we can take the backup, and we can schedule it as well, making the backups automatic. And since on the challenge, we're optimizing our WordPress for speed, we get a chance to automatically optimize the WordPress DB as well.

The speed benefit of the database optimization with the plugin is not significant, unless you have an older blog with lots of unused data in the database. Thus, don't expect this to make your blog faster, but I'm sure you understand how important it is to have backups from your blog - the optimization is just a little bonus on top of having your hard work saved in case something goes wrong.

Action: Backup and optimize WordPress database

See how you can easily have a piece of mind that your blogs data is safe by using couple of minutes to set the automated backups and optimization with my instructions.

Here's what you should do NOW:

1. Install the WP-DBManager -plugin


2. Backup the WordPress Database with the plugin


3. Optimize the WordPress Database with the plugin


4. Configure automatic backup and optimization for the future

Read the full step-by-step instructions here: How to automatically backup and optimize WordPress database.

Next in the WP Speed Challenge

After analyzing the performance and backing up and optimizing the WordPress database, the next step in the WordPress Speed Challenge is to edit your WordPress htaccess, and then do the ultimate optimization tweak that will make your blog REALLY FAST - installing the W3 Total Cache -plugin.

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

How to Backup and Optimize the WordPress Database

Here's more posts like to this:

1. How to automatically backup and optimize WordPress database


2. Top 4 WordPress Optimization Steps for Speed


3. WordPress Speed Challenge – Make your WordPress blog faster!

via Make Your Own Website Tools Tips Tricks http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zemalf/~3/T-BWOZQ-nTQ/ Best WordPress Hosting

How to automatically backup and optimize WordPress database

Summary: Learn how to to automatically optimize and backup your WordPress database, so the DB stays fast and you don't lose all your hard work if something bad happens.

Introduction

Backing up the WordPress database is the smartest thing you can do and one of the first things to take care of after setting up a new WordPress blog. With the instructions in this post, you don't have to worry about losing everything you've written and done to your blog if something breaks. And best of all, the backups are automatically emailed to you, so you'll have them even if the whole server blows up.

While taking care of the backup, we'll also automatically optimize the WordPress database by removing unnecessary data, making the database cleaner and smaller, which in return makes database calls faster.

The speed gain of WordPress database optimization is very small, even non-existent, but since we get the DB-optimization as a bonus while having a backup, installing the WP-DBManager -plugin to optimize and backup your WordPress Database is first of the 4 WordPress optimization steps in the WordPress Speed Challenge.

1. Install the WP-DBManager -plugin

I have chosen and recommend a plugin called WP-DBManager for optimizing and backing up the WordPress database. First, because it works like a charm, and second, because it's automatic after setting it up once. For backup, the other awesome option is the WB-DB-Backup -plugin, but as said, I prefer the WP-DBManager because it also optimizes the database and it can be scheduled for automation.

To install the WP-DBManager, go to your WordPress Dashboard (admin area)

1. Click 'Plugins'


2. Click 'Add New'


3. Type in the search field: "WP-DBManager" (without quotes)


4. Click 'Search Plugins' -button


5. Check the results for WP-DBManager and click install now

WP-DBManager will automatically create a folder called backup-db in the wp-content folder if that folder is writable. If it is not created, create it and CHMOD it to 777. See WP-DBManager installation instructions for more info.

The plugin will also ask you to create a .htaccess -file to the backup-db directory, which you can do by copying the htaccess.txt from the plugin dir to the backup-db dir, and rename it to .htaccess there. The .htaccess -file is needed to ensure no-one can access the backed-up files but you. Here's what should be inside the .htaccess -file placed in the backup-db dir:

<Files ~ ".*\..*">

order allow,deny

deny from all

</Files>

WP-DBManager does not backup the files in your server, just the WordPress MySQL database.

2. Backup the WordPress Database

After getting the WP-DBManager -plugin installed, let's create the first backup manually...

Go to your WordPress Dashboard (admin area)

1. Click 'Database'


2. Click 'Backup DB'


3. The Backup Status checks should be green ("Excellent. You Are Good To Go")


4. Choose to GZIP (compress) the results if you want


5. Click Backup

3. Optimize the WordPress Database

Optimizing database will clean and optimize the WordPress database, removing unneeded data, making the database calls faster (because there is no unnecessary data to go through).

If you go to Database (Database), you can see the overhead on the right hand side, and at the bottom of the table, you'll see how much unneeded data you can remove right away (by doing the optimization).

Here's how to do the optimization manually...

1. Click 'Database'


2. Click 'Optimize Db'


3. (Scroll down if needed) Click 'Optimize'

4. Configure Automatic Backup and Optimizations of the WordPress Database

After doing backup manually once and optimizing the database by hand, we can now automate and schedule the WordPress database backup...

Go to your WordPress Dashboard (admin area)

1. Click 'Database'


2. Click 'DB Options'


3. Ignore the advanced options on top, look down to 'Automatic scheduling'


4. Set Backup frequency, e.g. once a day


5. Enter an email address you want the backup to be sent to


6. Choose if you want to GZIP the backup file


7. Adjust the optimization schedule, once a week is fine


8. Click 'Save Changes' -button

Source and references

• WP-DBManager -plugin homepage


• WP-DBManager at the WordPress.org plugin directory

Summary

The first thing one must do after WordPress install and configuring the settings, is to setup automatic backups for the database. In case you have a WordPress blog, and you have not done this, you MUST DO THIS RIGHT NOW. Here are the action steps:

1. Install the WP-DBManager -plugin


2. Backup the WordPress Database


3. Optimize the WordPress Database


4. Configure Automatic Backup and Optimizations of the WordPress Database

Do this, and you have backed up your WordPress database, optimized it for faster usage, and automated the backups and the optimization for the future - ensuring both tasks are done automatically in the background.

Backing up and optimizing the WordPress database is more important for security (we have a backup to go back to), than speed, since the speed gain of the WordPress database optimization is quite minimal - although on a cluttered, old blog, optimizing the database can significantly speed up the database calls.

As mentioned, setting up the automatic backup and optimization of the WordPress database is the first thing to do after a fresh WordPress install. And it is essential to backup the database before making any changes into the database or the blog.

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

How to automatically backup and optimize WordPress database

Here's more posts like to this:

1. How to Backup and Optimize the WordPress Database


2. Top 4 WordPress Optimization Steps for Speed


3. The 6 most essential WordPress plugins

via Make Your Own Website Tools Tips Tricks http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zemalf/~3/yF14qEqoHko/ Best WordPress Hosting

Top 4 WordPress Optimization Steps for Speed

Summary: See how four simple steps makes it easy to speed up WordPress in order to retain readers and ensure the search engines don't punish your blog for being slow.

WordPress Speed Challenge Recap

In all it's simplicity, the WP Speed Challenge is a step-by-step process of analyzing the performance before optimization, doing the optimization, then analyzing the performance post-optimization and finally checking the results by comparison the before- and after results of the analyzation.

• On the preparation, I showed you the 10 tools every WordPress blogger needs.


• On the first step of the WP Speed Challenge, you analyzed the blog performance and recorded the results to a spreadsheet.

WordPress optimization is not any more complicated than that. Now that you have the baseline metrics stored to a spreadsheet or a text file, you can begin the WordPress speed optimizing.

Optimizing WordPress for Speed

The 4 most important WordPress optimization steps are...

1. Install WP-DBManager -plugin to optimize and backup your Database


2. edit your WordPress htaccess,


3. install and configuring W3 Total Cache -plugin


4. optimize your blog images

Two out of those four you can already learn from my previous posts - go ahead and work on those (.htaccess -file for WordPress and optimizing your images).

The other two, installing WP-DBManager and W3 Total Cache are also simple, but there are things "you just have to know" to get it right, but with my instructions, including how to configure them properly, it'll be easy as pie (and you do love pie, right?).

4 Steps Is All It Takes

To avoid confusion, the first optimization step, optimizing and backing up the WordPress database does not speed up the blog very much. The optimization of the database is good for speed and performance, but it's not much. However, the step itself is very important. In case something goes wrong with your blog, you will love me for telling you to have an automatic database backup done with a plugin.

The other 3 steps will speed up WordPress a lot, with the W3 Total Cache being the most important one (If I'd need to choose one optimization step, that would be it, by far in fact). Optimizing images and placing speed-optimized WordPress HTACCESS in place will help on their own, and complement what the W3 Total Cache plugin will do.

Together, these 4 steps will take care of 90% of WordPress optimization you need to do in order to make your blog fast.

This might come as a surprise to you, but that's how simple it really is. The only tricky part is getting W3 Total Cache installed and configured properly, and even that is not really that hard. The rest is a cakewalk.

---

Original post from Zemalf's Website optimization blog:

Top 4 WordPress Optimization Steps for Speed

Here's more posts like to this:

1. Top 7 image optimization tips for SEO and site speed


2. .htaccess rules for site speed optimization


3. How to Backup and Optimize the WordPress Database

via Make Your Own Website Tools Tips Tricks http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zemalf/~3/ON1Cow3wMI4/ Best WordPress Hosting