In the next few days not much will happen than setting the new server up and configure things the way it’s supposed to be. This is all handled by the great team of ConfigServer that I always use for new server setups, which leave me some time to focus on my upcoming 48 hour PHP exam this weekend and for my other 48 hour Javascript exam in a few weeks. In between I’ll also continue working on my webdesign projects.

I have had some time to scetch this project up and while I have some very cool things planned for this design I think the most interesting aspect will be to build a subcontentbox that will automaticly use subpages to the current page and put them into tabs using the jQuery UI widget. I’ll get plenty of use for my PHP skills trying to get that to work for sure. The second task that feels a bit daunting is to code the dropdown menu for the clientarea and make sure it work with WHMCS…

For this project however I will try some, for me,  new things and see how they effect the website’s performance.  The first thing to do will be to consider http requests and see how to make them as few as possible. This I plan to do by taking the three categories CSS, Javascript and Images and rework them slightly so that I hopefully will get very few http request.

For javascript, which I will have a few of, I want to bundle the scripts into one, or possibly two http request. This is done by adding the different calls into one combined call that hold all the javascripts required.  All javascripts will of course be minified to make them as small as possible and I will carefully look over the plugins to make sure redundant javascript is not added by them. I am considering adding the jQuery library from Google repository, but I’ll have to play with that a bit to see how that work out and what the benefits will be when combined with my other time saving efforts.

For CSS I will use a similar setup, taking advantage of the code written by Rakaz that allow the same combination of files  as for javascript files, reducing the CSS files into one single http request. I will use the minified approach here as well and we’ll see how much this will speed things up.

For images I will use sprites, which is essentially one big picture with many images that is used instead of many smaller ones. This will seriously reduce the number of http requests and I will use this throughout the website. The sprite itself will of course be minified as much as possible without reducing the experience. All images are of course plced in the CSS and not in the actual HTML code.

This is all good and it will reduce the number of requests alot, but I can do more.  Javscripts that are not essential should be placed at the end of the document which means that altough it att a second javascript http request it should increase speed for the visitors as it is added after the page loads. The actual pageload will be a little higher due to the second http request, but it will feel faster.

The http request can also be speeded up by dividing them into two hostnames since there are only two http requests at any given time for any given hostname, the other requests will be placed in que. So by splitting the http requests over two hostnames we can process two sets of http requests instead of just one. This will speed things up additionally.

The php function Flush() will be added to force the browser to load the HTML instead of waiting for the http requests to finish as is it’s normal behaviour. This will make sure the HTML is loaded almost instantly without waiting for the http requests which will, once again enhance the experience for the visitors.

In addition to this I plan to put the new Mortfiles website on its own VPS that will be equiped with LiteSpeed and lighttpd to make things really fly. Then I’ll just add Wordpress super cache to make all areas of the website into static files and add server compression to the files and violá…

pretty fast website…for a white guy

The reason is quite simply that I need a projectmanager that works well right away as the old one is not working the way I want and its quite honestly a bit depressing to use…Active Collab is something I have looked at for well over a year, but never really had the drive to get, but now as I am rebuilding and rethinking my entire worksituation I felt it was time even if the cost was…not the best timing

I will leave it in its basic state for now while I fokus on more pressing issues, like getting the 3 webprojects I have setup and ready to go and fokusing on my PHP and Javascript classes. In the fall though it will be redesigned and merged into Mortfiles Evolved.