March 31, 2017 — I want to tell you something and I’m going to be brutally honest. That slideshow at the top of your homepage? It sucks! Listen, I get it. It looks pretty. It fills space. Maybe you even think it’s “impressive” and “eye-catching.” But it’s being ignored by that vast majority of your visitors while slowing down your website and diluting your message. By throwing a slideshow at the top of your homepage you’re basically saying, “I want to take the most valuable real estate on my website and completely screw it up.” I want to share some alternatives with you. I want to help you structure your website in a way that engages visitors, minimizes frustration, and produces better results. And for those few and far between times in which a slider *may* be appropriate, I’ll give you some tips and recommendations on what tools and techniques to use.

Presentation Slides »

May 11, 2016 — Having a fast WordPress site is probably more important than you think. The speed of your website affects nearly everything related to your online goals in some way – bounce rate, search ranking, conversion, page views, reader satisfaction, total revenue… I could go on but you get the point.

Unfortunately WordPress performance optimization has become clouded in a bunch of technical speak that makes it difficult for many of us to know where to start.
I too was once lost and intimidated when it came to this stuff, but I recently made the conscious decision to roll up my sleeves and learn what it takes to serve up websites with blazing speed.

The result: faster websites, happy clients, and even happier end users. Everybody wins!

And the very best part: It’s really not that hard to do.

I’ve been creating websites for over 17 years, but I’m still no development wizard like the type you’ll find walking these halls at WordCamp San Diego.
When it comes down to it, I’m just a dude with an interest in fast-loading WordPress sites who has spent a lot of time learning things the hard way. Through my efforts I’ve honed an easy and bulletproof technique that I want to share.

In this talk we’re going to cover:

Why performance is a major concern
How to measure page speed / performance
Why you need a good web host
Server-side caching, browser caching, and recommended caching plugins/techniques
Minification & Concatenation – What it is and how to do it
Image optimization
Content Delivery Networks – What they are and when you should use one
How to bundle performance optimization as a service to earn more money on your next web project.

Presentation Slides »