Building on the previous blog post on website optimization , this post is going to be on optimizing images on your site. If YSlow displayed that your images should not be scaled in HTML or make favicon small and cacheable, then this post is for you.

Correcting Dimensions in IMG tags

A lot of people do this. They use ,say an image that is 1200 x 784 pixels, they want displayed at 120×90. They then use html to scale it down. This practice works as in it displays fine but not on the optimization and site speed end. You see if you use Html to scale the images usually by using the img tag, transmitting the image will take a long time.

There are a lot of tools out there which can help you do this. I personally use Paint.NET. Its free and easy to use. You can download it from http://www.getpaint.net/

That brings us to our next step. Firefox’s YSlow comes with a tool called Smush.it Smush.it is our shortcut when it comes to image optimization. Reducing images, art, screenshots etc. would have been a lot of work otherwise.

How to use Smush.It

Open up Firefox .

Open up YSlow.

Under the YSlow tab, you should see four tabs on the top left. Click on Tools tab.

Click on All Smush.it™ . This should open a new window and you should see your images either being processed or optimized. You’re going to have to download them as .zip

Unzip them and upload the optimized images back to your server replacing the previous images. Preferably overwriting them. Repeat them for other pages of your site.

Info on using sprites to reduce emoticon load times for forums.

I’ve not looked into this much because it doesn’t apply to me . But an indepth explanation on how to use CSS Sprites to reduce load times can be viewed using the link below
http://sixrevisions.com/css/css-sprites-site-speed/

Content Delivery Networks .

This part can become an expensive affair. If you can afford this then by all means do so. It is worth the price and your website visitors will thank you for it. Now for the rest of us there are alternatives.

I use CloudFlare. It is a CDN that comes bundled FREE with a HostGator account. If your site is huge and the solutions that follow don’t help you out much , then I suggest getting a hostgator account to use cloudflare. Serving niches uses Cloud Flare. It is one of the many reasons I think anybody gets to see this Site. So it works wonderfully.

copyblogger.com uses http://www.netdna.com/ the Net DNA Content Delivery Network. So that could be another option you’d want to check out.

Googling “Content Delivery Network” should give you more options. I say this because I don’t too have much info what CDN’s the major websites use.  Bigger websites tend not to discuss their technology choices too much.

That brings us to the end of the Optimizing Images Blog Post. Next time we’ll look into working with CSS and Javascript on our pages to help optimize our website and entice visitors to stay longer.

Posting after what seems a long time. I’m currently working on a company website. I had ask myself these very questions. I’ve decided to stick with a catalogue for the time being . An online catalogue until i figure out what to do with the shopping cart and how they want to handle it.

That being said this article is a great introduction to selling online/ setting up an ecommerce website.

• What are you selling?
• What shopping functionality should you offer?
• How will you take payment?
• How will items be delivered?
• What reporting and other functionalities are required?

It discusses the various considerations you have to make.

Do you need an open source software ?

Is modification to a commercial software your best solution ?

Or maybe what you need is a complete custom made solution

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/02/getting-started-with-e-commerce-your-options-when-selling-online/

It honestly couldn’t come from a better source. It’s an article published on the smashing magazine blog. It helped me save tons of energy and get the big picture.

Before this I had been modifying and working on and trying to achieve similar results on other CMS’s and various other means. They all fell short or became too complicated or was taking too long. This article clarifies it all .

If you’re in a real world business and are considering going online , then you need this. Get into ecommerce now while local marketing is still hot and easy. Its going to get harder to compete a few years down the road. You really couldn’t be considering this at a better time.

Once again here’s the link

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/02/getting-started-with-e-commerce-your-options-when-selling-online/

Good Luck

Surfing the web has been classified as unproductive for a long time inspite of the fact that it speeds up things a lot. That classification has annoyed the living daylights out of me. I refuse to call reading Entrepreneur.com or googling for Information a waste of time. That being said the link that follows is a great way to surf more efficiently.

http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-achieve-your-goals/

Enjoy !