Dec 26, 2010

Xmas 2010 discounts

For approximately 2 weeks we have 20% discount for all WEBO Site SpeedUp products (licenses). You can get them here:
WEBO Site SpeedUp Premium Edition (save $70).
WEBO Site SpeedUp Lite Edition (save $18).

UPD: action is closed

Dec 8, 2010

v1.3.2 released

It's the last public update for the leading web performance product - WEBO Site SpeedUp - this year. It includes a lot of new features and minor fixes.

  • Improved gzip. There were tested few new gzip-related patterns and WEBO Site SpeedUp support for missed headers, or firewalls, or improper server side configuration, or anything else was improved.
  • Added charset option. Now with charset option (it is available in System Status - Parameters) Extreme caching mode ic completely safe, and no charset will be broken. Charset is detected automatically on the first install, and can be manually changed.
  • Added option to choose between files exclusion or inclusion into CSS Sprites. Very useful option if you have only a few images that must be combined to HTML Sprites, then you can easily add them all instead of adding new and new exclusions.
  • Added option for load time counter (via GA). With this amazing option you can simply count through Google Analytics how many page views you lost with slow website. To perform this you need only to enable WEBO Site SpeedUp with only this counter for a week, and then perform acceleration (with counter enabled). Difference will be clear. All page load time values are being collected into Events (WEBO Site SpeedUp section), and of course you need Google Analytics counter installed on your website.
  • Improved SEO compatibility. Now all combined .php and cached fiels are closed via nofollow and robots.txt from search engines indexation.
  • Improved HTML Sprites.
  • Improved HTML caching.
  • Drupal 7.x added to supported systems.
  • Minor fixes

You can update to the last version from the WEBO Site SpeedUp itself or download it from WEBO Software website.

Special Xmas offer from LoadImpact

Load Impact makes stress test even easier with 50% Xmas discount. You can get it here:

loadimpact.com/specialoffer.php

Or just use the following campaign code: XMAS

Dec 2, 2010

Website stress testing

It is important before Xmas season to know more about your website reliability. And of course the exact number of your customers what can you website serve.

Long time there were no tools to perform such an evaluation (except the direct traffic punch) but now you can analyze your website metrics and perform all necessary actions before it go down due to large amount of your clients. One of the best of such tools is Load Impact. Let's look inside this tool and see how simple can be your website bottlenecks analysis.

Configuring a test

Setuping a test. Step 1Of course most of features are available even with free website test. But to get the maximum details and perfect result you should register and use any of paid plans (they start from $9 per day or $39 per month, it's really cheap). So the first thing is to setup the test. You can use the only website home page URL to get almost all data about its reliability. But can get a bit more.

With Proxy recorder (under Advanced mode -> Load script generation -> Record session) you can setup a set of requests for your website (with various delays); this will completely emulate your visitors' behavior and can tell you how many simultaneous visits your website can serve.

Setuping a test. Step 2: configuring proxyProxy recorder can be configured in a few steps (you just need to enable a proxy on a given port inside your browser, Firefox in this case), then start recording and go through the target website (to collect all requests, even dynamic and AJAX ones). Then just stop recording and get all these requests in textarea.

Setuping a test. Step 2: verifying proxyPlease be sure that proxy is configured correctly and test proxy settings before starting the test.

Setuping a test. Step 3: choosing stepsBefore you finish with test setup you should choose amount of visitors to emulate. For a small website 50 visitors will be quite enough.

If you just want to test website reliability for 500-1000 visitors, you can setup step as 100 (not to overload the system and overhead traffic limit).

In the case if you need exact picture of server down due to high load you need to choose 10-20 visitors in step and get complete picture. But this can take several hours to be completed.

Before you can save the test you need to verify it. Usually it is just a formal procedure to be sure that test is correct.

Running a test

After you have created the proper configuration you can run it. Please be aware of long duration of test performance - it can take up to several hours. After test is completed you will get a lot of different charts about pages and resources performance. Let's consider them more.

Test results. Acc. user load timeThe main graphics are user load time and accumulated user time. The first will tell you the delay for users before they get HTML page under current amount of simultaneous users online. The second will tell you how website is working under load, how long its pages are being loaded (totally, server and client side), and where is the limit of its reliability (where time becomes more than 10-15 seconds).

Also you can simply compare how different type of resources are being loaded - to find bottlenecks and to fix them properly. For example you can have relatively fast HTML document, but a lot of expenses on dynamic images generation. Or main expenses will be concentrated in HTML latency only. This will appear only after the test is completed.

Resume

Load Impact is a very easy tool to perform such tests, and simple load tests are completely free. So you can quickly check your website reliability and be sure that you are ready for Xmas shopping season :)

Nov 25, 2010

Website Availability Issues

Availability of the website is a very unpredictable thing. Sometimes from home (or work) your website is accessible, but your friends can't enter it. Also there can be a situation when sometimes your website up and sometimes down (and you can't even prove this). Or website is being loaded very slowly. Solution in each case can be complicated, but let's consider the basic types of such problems:

  1. Unavailability of a large segment of the network. In this case, users from one network segment can't get access to websites in the other segment (eg, due to routing errors). It's easy enough to install special utilities, but you can't usually perform anything in this case. And the problems of this level (global) typically affect hundreds of thousands of sites, and are being solved them quickly.

    You can only sit and wait. And hope that your users are in the same boat (in the same segment), which is your website.

  2. Unavailability of a hoster (small segment of the network). In this case, the problems usually lie on the side of the provider (and therefore can be corrected not so fast). Accurately set the frequency and nature of these problems manually is practically impossible, but it is relatively easy with tools for automatic monitoring.

    There is necessary in case of any downtime greater than 10-30 minutes to write to support of your ISP: maybe they do not know that something has fallen off?

  3. Great timeout. In this case, in fact, the site works. And open to all users. But not all users can wait for it :)

    It is also possible to check (server timeout with WEBO Pulsar, and the total download time with webpagetest.org. If you page generation time on the website is too large, you should apply any of optimization techniques. Otherwise there will be big losses among target users.

  4. HTTP-error on the site. Quite often it happens that due to heavy load (or service provider hardware failures) website starts with an error (500, 502, 503 or similar). Tracking of such things and in-time moving the website to a safer place is also possible, but this of course requires special attention.

    WEBO Pulsar would be the best for this purpose (to track when, what time, and with what frequency). With it all unprepossessing "kitchen" ISP come out and you'll know exactly what is happening with your site.

  5. The failure of the site. Sometimes there are minor incidents with the website (due to hardware failure or hosting provider network configuration change), when the availability of the website is not directly affected, but part of the website functionality is broken. For example, database queries are no longer handled. Or debugging messages have been appeared.

    Complete knowledge of such situations can only be possible with direct viewing the website (or its basic functionality check). With WEBO Pulsar, you can check how the presence of a specific text on the page, and its absence. This enables the most timely response to the problem.

WEBO CDN on maintenance

We are going to upgrade capacities of WEBO CDN to be able to serve more clients in the new year, so from the 1st of December, 2010 WEBO CDN will be on hold due to technical reasons.

We are sorry for any inconvenience.

Oct 14, 2010

v1.3.1 released

New version of the best website acceleration software - WEBO Site SpeedUp - is here. Main changes:

  • Added WEBO Nimblizer (image optimization tool). It is based on PHP5 imagepng function with all filters and compression (including GIF2PNG and BMP2PNG functionality) + PCR tool from bolknote. Performance is great (and it works locally instead of smush.it tool), efficiency is also amazing. Now Image optimization becase even simplier.
  • Cancelled PHP4 back compatibility. There was a blog post about such a decision. Now WEBO Site SpeedUp can be made easy, lighter, and w/o double code. PHP4 users can use 1.3.0- versions - all of them completely support this environment.
  • Added CSS Minify option. There were a lot of user complaints about broken styles after data:URI application. Now they can be used w/o CSS Tidy library (and it's an value in CSS Minify option).
  • Separated unobtrusive widgets configuration. One more global change to make product easier to understand and tune. Now you can use Wiki page and config.unobtrusive.php to create your own solution for unblocking JavaScript.
  • Added option to exclude GET params from URL hash on caching. This is a useful feature for e-commerce websites which widely use different campaign identifiers for the same content pages. Now these identifiers can be excluded from hash, and the same cache entries will be used.
  • Added unobtrusive support for Affiz ads, Google Translate widget.
  • Improved server environment detection.
  • Improved HTML caching (more stability and performance).
  • Minor fixes.

You can update to WEBO Site SpeedUp v1.3.1 right now - it is ready!

Oct 4, 2010

WEBO Pulsar - test your website availability

The last month we released new service to check and test your website availability - WEBO Pulsar. With its help you can prove your website uptime and response time (no network delays or transfer time included!).

To start use you just need to pass through quick registration and add your website (or web service). After a little time you will get a chart like the right one.

You can get all data not only with graphic, but also via CSV or HTML import.

You can also select a timeframe on this graphic and get detailed log info about any error (if such an option is enabled).

Features

There are a lot of methods and protocols to test with WEBO Pulsar - you can choose between HTTP and HTTPS, GET, HEAD, and POST. DNS, MySQL, e-mail protocols, and a lot of others are coming.

Also you can send POST data, check tested website or web page for a given phrase or text. And use HTTP basic authorization.

With WEBO Pulsar you can get notification right after your website is not available via e-mail and jabber. Twitter and sms notification have been also scheduled.

Prices and Balance

With WEBO Pulsar you use internal WEBO coins (w) to increase your balance and add websites to testing plan. Average cost of (w) is $0.005, all prices you can get in WEBO Software online store.

On the balance page you will get fees about your availability tests and one-time costs (i.e. detailed log or future sms).

Average month fee per website with 1-minute frequency is $6 only (HEAD method), 10-minute frequency costs 10 times lower.

Test your website availability with WEBO Pulsar!

Sep 22, 2010

Finishing with PHP4 compatibility

Due to some reasons (inability to support 2 different product / library branches with PHP4 and PHP5, backward compatibility through the whole code base, large size of final package) WEBO Software is going to end with PHP4 support for its products from October 1, 2010.

All old releases will work for PHP4 environments with listed requirements. WEBO Site SpeedUp (starting from v1.3.1), WEBO CDN, WEBO Server SpeedUp, WEBO Site InSight, and all the future products will work only with PHP5.

Please take this into consideration when you are installing or updating current WEBO Software products. We are sorry about websites based on PHP4, you can use all our current builds to conduct website performance optimization, and you will be able to do so with them forever.

Sep 15, 2010

v1.3.0 released

After long summer vacations we are releasing new stable WEBO Site SpeedUp build - 1.3.0. Some of the new features:

  • Improved HTML caching (especially for Joomla! 1.5x). A lot of minr fixes and general performance improvements, now caching for Joomla! and WordPress are really the fastest in the world. You have all supported engines and systems here - starting from simple disk caching and extreme mode (w/o any access to CMS core) to Memcached, and APC, and X-Cache. All in one package.
  • Added unobtrusive support for Unruly Media, GoViral Network, Exoclick, Carpediem, and new OpenX format. 5 more unobtrusive patterns are now supported, which makes your website really faster to your visitors.
  • Improved files merging. Added scriptaculous auto loader detection to reduce number of JavaScript files. Also a few tine improvements.
  • Added support for RackSpaceCloud CDN. Now all CSS/JS files can be easily uploaded to RackSpaceCloud automatically on creation. You just need to set [user]:[key]@RSC into FTP credentials option inside CDN settings and enjoy this synchronization feature.
  • Added 'nosprites' magic word. You can simply skip auto Sprites creation if use nosprites in class, ID, image names inside HTML or CSS code.
  • Reformed product structure (less files). Package over 2 Mb and over 80 files creates some difficulties to install it (due to default server timeouts / restrictions). We performed some structure changes to reduce overall package size and number of files. The next pack of changes is going to be applied in upcoming builds.
  • Improved configuration wizard. Wizard has been tested over 4 major browsers and over dozens of websites / configurations. Now it works stable in IE8+ / Firefox 3.5+. In Opera / Webkit-based browsers there are bugs with JavaScript errors detection (general inability to perform this in mentioned browsers), so Wizard works not so good.
  • Improved chained optimization.
  • Added rollback to custom version (1.2.0+).
  • Minor fixes (including a lot of compatibility changes for all supported systems).

You can download the latest version or just update your WEBO Site SpeedUp.

Aug 18, 2010

WEBO Software support level changes

We are continuing reformation of WEBO Software products / services to make them more market-friendly. We have started with licensing policy this month, but the last days we have changed support level agreement, made it clearer and added some new services.

WEBO products support

All corporate support levels can be found here, but let's describe them a bit deeper.

  • First of all we separated all support actions to e-mail support (basically it's enough for most of requests - just to be sure about WEBO Site SpeedUp product features), installation and configuration support.
  • Now all manual actions on customer websites are gathered under 'installation support', which can be very tricky, and its difficulty highly depends on current server side environment (we have dozens of cases when we had to add some fixes to the product / environment detection due to incorrect server side setup).
  • Also configuration support is moved to a separate instance, and you can request WEBO Site SpeedUp tuning at any moment - there is such an option now.
  • As far as some of speedup projects require a complete report about website load speed before and after acceleration - now we are offering such a service. You can request this report and accelerate your website with your own technical team - just with WEBO Software expertize and experience.
  • For corporate support we have added one more option - online support, which means 24/7 availability and personal support manager (with skype account).

Also all support is now available annually or until included support cases have not been completely used. Check all support options. All of these levels cover all WEBO Software products, including WEBO Site SpeedUp, WEBO Server SpeedUp, and WEBO CDN.

WEBO Site SpeedUp installation

Also we have cleared corporate website acceleration packages - now there is Basic, Advanced, and Corporate WEBO Site SpeedUp products, each of them means different level of technical support during / after acceleration process. Check WEBO Site SpeedUp installation services comparison.

Now you can simply choose required website acceleration level of services, or even create your own custom one.

Aug 3, 2010

Changes in licensing policy

There are several significant changes in licensing policy with our last 1.2.2 release. Let's review them in details.

First of all Lite Edition functionality has been expanded almost to Premium Edition (in basic optimization features). So now you can get notable speedup even with WEBO Site SpeedUp Lite Edition. Complete functions comparison. Community Edition can be used for non-commercial websites only.

WEBO Site SpeedUp Premium Edition still have some vital functions for SMB and enterprise websites. I.e. all optimization tools (Static Gzip, Image Optimization, CDN Synchronization, more coming) are available only in this edition. Also all cutting-egde Unobtrusive JavaScript functions (about social widgets and ads delayed load) are included only into Premium Edition (also with possibility to use HTTPS for CDN and restrict URLs from processing).

Secondly all time-limited functionality has been left to SaaS Edition only. Now all classic WEBO Site SpeedUp editions (Community, Lite, and Premium one) are distributed with lifetime license. All previous 1-year licenses have been automatically upgraded to lifetime ones (but the price of lifetime licenses have become greater, $89.99 for Lite Edition and $349 for Premium Edition). All customers with recently purchased lifetime licenses will get free Premium Support or additional licenses (to cover price difference).

Now all WEBO Site SpeedUp paid Editions (except SaaS one) include support. Lite Edtition includes 2 weeks of WEBO Software Premium Support, Premium Edition - 6 months.

All product updates will remain free. Forever.

We hope all these news are great to fans of high speed for their websites. And we are going to improve WEBO Site SpeedUp quality and interfaces to make '1-click acceleration' not a dream but reality.

v1.2.2 released

With new version website acceleration becomes even easier!

  • Added Configuration Wizard. Configuration Wizard allows you to automatically check all website features and tune all WEBO Site SpeedUp options in completely automated mode. It's available from welcome screen.
  • Changed licensing policy. Now Community Edition is completely equal to Lite Edition and almost equal to Premium Edition (by main features). Also all current keys have been converted to lifetime, all lifetime keys have received extended Premium Support.
  • Added SQL caching. There is SQL caching possibility for WordPress and Joomla! extensions - all CPU expensive queries (via another driver) can be cached successfully, what reduce HTML pages generation time. We are adding this feature for all the other native CMS extensions.
  • X-Cache added to supported systems.
  • Added native support for NetCat.
  • Improved HTML caching.
  • Added Italian localization.
  • Added support for base tag / header.
  • Improved PHP proxy library.
  • Minor fixes.

Download or update to the latest version.

Jul 5, 2010

v1.2.1 released

The next bunch of new features, improvements, and fixes with 1.2.1 version.

  • Added option 'Cache engine'. With this option you can choose between files / Memcached / APC and some other caching engines to completely speed HTML files caching.
  • Memcached and APC added to supported engines. There are not so many caching subsystems available, and we are going to cover them all this summer.
  • Added CDN sync tool (via FTP). Now you can simply synchronize all static resources via FTP with your CDN server (and check their status).
  • Added warning about huge resources consumption. A number of new messages (after some user reports) were added - now you can see how efficiently WEBO Site SpeedUp works for your website, and what possible troubles can occur with its performance on optimization.
  • Improved data:URI behavior.
  • Improved server side caching.
  • Improved support for Windows Server / IIS.
  • Improved files' merging.
  • Added native support for Magento.
  • Added Urdu localization.
  • Minor fixes.

You can update your WEBO Site SpeedUp right now or download the latest package (also for corporate users).

Jul 3, 2010

Server-side caching engine

We are happy to announce a brand new server caching engine for WEBO Site SpeedUp.

This caching engine is available for several WEBO Site SpeedUp native plugins like WordPress and CS-Cart and it can be very helpful for many heavily loaded websites.

Here is the brief description.

  • Formerly, with WEBO Site SpeedUp plugin you could only cache HTML documents on a certain static site sections, or for certain browsers with specific cookies, etc. Now you are able to provide cached pages to almost every user on every page of your website.
  • Server caching feature is now implemented on a system level. This makes possible for WEBO Site SpeedUp to deliver pages for your website visitors up to 4 times faster than before, and even faster than with many other caching solutions available.
  • Cache is automatically updated when needed. For example, when someone someone creates a new blog entry or comments it, all related pages are updated in a cache automatically and without your attention.
  • And of course, along with the new caching feature all familiar WEBO Site SpeedUp features are fully available.

And this is just the beginning. Right now system level server caching already works for WordPress and CS-Cart WEBO Site SpeedUp plugins. But stay tuned, as we are already working on similar solutions for Joomla and some other systems.

Jun 25, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp supports CS-Cart

WEBO Site SpeedUp for CS-Cart

With new version (1.2.0) WEBO Site SpeedUp completely supports CS-Cart as a native addon for this popular e-commerce solution. This addon has the following useful features:

  • Complete server side caching for anonymous users (and w/o any items in cart).
  • Smart cache clean up on product modifications.
  • Clean interface to access to all products features.
  • Complete client side acceleration provided with WEBO Site SpeedUp main product.

WEBO Site SpeedUp installation to CS-Cart is very easy. It's described in Wiki (and documentation): code.google.com/p/web-optimizator/wiki/InstallingCSCartPlugin. Also there are a lot of articles about application tuning and configuration.

WEBO Site SpeedUp for CS-Cart shows about 2-2.5x client side acceleration among 4-5x server side speedup (totally 10x speedup), and it is a must-have addon for successful CS-Cart e-stores.

You can check addon discussion on CS-Cart official forum here and here.

Jun 21, 2010

v1.2.0 released

With a lot of minor compatibility fixes, better CDN support and SaaS Edition new version of WEBO Site SpeedUp was released. What is new:

  • SaaS Edition. Now all trial keys work in SaaS mode, and you can pay only for enabled features. SaaS Edition is the same in functionality as Premium Edition, but every paid feature has its own price, and overall day outgo is calcualted as simple sum of enabled paid features. Also license prolongation is made simplier: you just need to increase internal application balance via modules codes. This will allow you to use WEBO Site SpeedUp as long as you want for your website. Also you can easily switch optimization cost by selecting active configuration and pay only its price.
  • Added option 'Extreme mode' for HTML caching. After deep research into website performance we added new feature which allows you to put performance of your website to the new level. With RewriteRules on Apache level you are able to completely eliminate all server side costs and make your website really faster than lightning. This option fits only static (or almost) websites, because all pages are hard cached, and cache reload is possible only as a manual action.
  • Fixed HTML Sprites placement. Improved internal logic for HTML Sprites images placement, this eliminated a number of known issues with them.
  • Added separate cache for mobile agents. Now website content for all known mobile agents is separated (as well as it done for IE browsers and the others), and you won't worry about your website compatibility with mobile browsers.
  • Improved caching for CSS/HTML Sprites. Now all Sprites has unique URLs to force cache reload on their re-creation. Please note: you must disable and enable WEBO Site SpeedUp to make this feature working.
  • Improved PHP proxy library.
  • Improved caching / gzip / CDN usage.
  • Minor fixes.

You can download or update your WEBO Site SpeedUp to get all these new features.

Jun 16, 2010

WEBO Software landed in Portland

Download PDF, 577 Kb

Most of our site pages are loading in under 2 seconds, compared to the 8 or 9 seconds we started with. This has lead to a substantial increase in the both the average time on site as well as the number of page views. The increased speed has also resulted in a higher conversion rate.

Langocity is a e-commerce website based on Magento that specializes in selling a wide range of foreign language courses and translation software. Their server is located in Portland, Oregon, and receives 30-40,000 visitors from east to west coast every month. Even with mid-level VPS hosting specifically tuned for Magento (which is used as a CMS solution for Langocity) and current CDN (EdgeCast) the site’s load time was too high, resulting in many visitors exiting the site after only several pageviews.

Langocity described the situation, “Even with a well provisioned and tuned server, Magento has a reputation for being somewhat slow, due to the complexity of the shopping cart software. We wanted to improve our pageload times, which were unacceptably slow both for our U.S. customers as well as our customers overseas.”

“In the past, we had implemented a content delivery network on our site, but due to Magento’s complexity, it wasn’t possible to combine all of our JS and CSS files and have them delivered over the CDN without incredibly complex customization. We were concerned with having to support this customization over time, which would be a distraction from the core business. WEBO Site SpeedUp allowed us to fix this issue easily while also optimizing the site in a number of other ways that we hadn’t even considered implementing due to the amount of work it would have required.”

WEBO Site SpeedUp has a numerous number of optimization modules, and almost all of them had to be implemented to completely speedup Langocity, starting from assets merging and finishing with advanced CDN settings for secured connection. Fortunately all of these modules are included into one package with various settings, which makes the website acceleration process very simple and straight forward.

According to Langocity, “One issue that WEBO Site SpeedUp really fixes is an implementation of a wide range of speed optimization techniques that your average developer is not aware of or isn’t too interested in implementing due to the time or effort required for what appears to be a small payoff. For a lot of people, shaving a few milliseconds off page load here or there isn’t worth optimizing. However, when you start applying a wide range of techniques those milliseconds add up to multiple seconds saved, which is very substantial. Since WEBO Site SpeedUp is applying the changes to our site without having to modify our underlying Magento installation, it’s saved a great deal of time and allows our Magento developers to focus on making sure the site runs well, rather than having to spend time implementing very complex page optimization techniques.”

After WEBO Site SpeedUp had been fully implemented, Langocity’s website became about 4x faster. Customers are clearly enjoying the faster site as Langocity has experienced a significantly higher conversion rate and lower bounce rate since WEBO Site SpeedUp has optimized the site.

Jun 10, 2010

WEBO Software supports healthy life style

Download PDF, 721 Kb

Website load speed was remarkably increased, and this makes happy both website visitors and editors.

Web portal about health, «Be healthy» (vllv.ru) was launched in spring, 2010. Right after its launch there was decided to speed the website up to make it ready for high traffic and public visitors. This way not only server resources usage should be optimized, but also visitors loyalty increased. Website audience at most consists of megacity residents, and they are accustomed to high website load speed. Therefore there must be applied exceptional measures to increase website quality.

Web portal uses a lot of external widgets (from social networks and Google), so its load speed depends a little from the current CMS (Joomla!) and VPS hosting. To improve the situation there was necessary to use only client side technologies acceleration, and it was the finest hour for WEBO Site SpeedUp.

Unobtrusive JavaScript (delayed loading) modules usage significantly improved current website load speed value (Google Webmasters data showed 2x speedup). And by the web portal management team, “website load speed was remarkably increased, and this makes happy both website visitors and editors.”

You must follow rough technological criteria and quality standards to make website working at maximum. And website load and interaction speed is crucial at this point of view (especially to fit audience expectations). Fast websites not only consume less server resources (CPU and I/O) per visitor, but also provide more comfortable pages surfing and information mining.

WEBO Site SpeedUp, being a complex solution to speed the website up both on server and client sides, allows you to apply tremendous set of technologies easily for your website and combine them on demand. Superior results of application work are proven by thousands of accelerated websites and a lot of satisfied users.

Jun 4, 2010

v1.1.3 released

More and more features before coming SaaS edition of WEBO Site SpeedUp:

    Improved HTML caching engine. We made one big step to include different in-memory solutions to handle HTML caching (to improve website response time). For now only disk is supported (by default), but we are going to add memcache, XCache, eAccelerator, etc soon. Also HTML cache is now separated by directories what improves I/O timings.
  • Added option to use HTTPS host with CDN. CDN usage was made completely compatible with all of known CDNs.
  • Added option to exclude JavaScript files from minify. It's very useful if some JavaScript files are already minified, and additional minify can break them. Now you can safely merge and minify all your JavaScript code.
  • Added option to include unobtrusive JavaScript loader as inline code. One less HTTP request with unobtrusive logic (with window.onload).
  • Improved JavaScript merging. Some minor fixes with JavaScript file placement and fix for Shadowbox base URL.
  • PixelBack and Verisign added to supported widgets.
  • CS-Cart added to supported systems (by native addon).
  • Minor fixes.

You can update to the latest version or download it from the website.

May 26, 2010

Healthy speed for website about health, WEBO Software says no smoking

Download PDF, 326 Kb

After acceleration we noticed remarkable drop in server load and user session time enlargement.

Health portal "How to stop smoking" (kurenie-yad.org/) appeared in the year 2007. Portal evangelizes healthy lifestyle and smoking cessation, proving for its readers large number of collateral materials. Portal attracts about 60,000 visitors every month, and its load speed significantly influences website quality and its popularity so far.

There are visitors from all over the world on this website. Moreover «How to stop smoking» uses a lot of social widgets (Google Connect, Facebook Connect, etc) to hold audience. This all sets strict requirements to the overall website performance, especially ti its client side. In this case project's VPS hosting plays well and allows us not to implement additional caching layers to speed the website up.
After the first stage of website acceleration (regarding Google Webmasters data) its load speed increased by 30%. Common actions to accelerate the website helped a little, so there was decided to integrate additional WEBO Site SpeedUp modules with delayed social widgets load (Unobtrusive JavaScript). After their implementation website load speed increased almost 3 times (up to 3.1 seconds against 9.1 seconds initially). Vlad Kulikov, project administrator, said that "after acceleration we noticed remarkable drop in server load and user session time enlargement."
High website load speed is required to form a stable users core. In this case the use of embedded communication tools of known social networks only make the client side speed slower, forcing to implement more aggressive methods to change the website load flow, based on the latest research and development in the area.
Website load speed primarily influences the website quality and its ability to target the owner's business goals. Therefore, in conditions of acute competition and the high quality standards it's necessary to implement the most stable, productive and time-tested solution - such as WEBO Site SpeedUp. Practice shows that the acceleration site is worthwhile for a few days, in rare cases a week, but it brings increased profits to the website owner even after a full ROI.

May 16, 2010

v1.1.2 released

Every day there are more and more fast websites around us. And we are happy to support this trend. So features of the new version of WEBO Site SpeedUp.

    Added pre-defined CDNs. Now you can simply choose between few patterns to distribute your static assets through CDN. Supported now manual configuration, some pre-efault configuration (cdn subdomain) and Coral CDN. Coming: WEBO CDN specification.
  • Added 'FTP upload access' option for paid CDN. Few CDN require files to be uploaded manually via FTP (i.e. EdgeCast). Now you can setup FTP access string to upload all assets created by WEBO Site SpeedUp to CDN automatically.
  • Added 'remove duplicates' option. This option can reduce amount of JavaScript code in case of complicated frameworks usage. I.e. if there are two jQuery libraries, the second one will be automatically excluded from merging. This reduces download time and JavaScript initialization time as well.
  • Removed check for .htaccess possibility. After various minor troubles with dozens of environments this check is disabled. We are going to re-test this functionality (not to enalbe .htaccess options on unsupported environments and enable them on supported ones) later.
  • Added cache integrity check. Now all system libs stored in cache directories are re-checked for new versions (to update them as soon as new version is released).
  • Added exclusion from CSS Sprites images used with AlphaImageLoader. Very helpful feature because you can't apply CSS Sprites for IE if this image is used in filter.
  • OptimizerAdded webonautes to achievements. Now you can use 5 webonautes to indicate your website acceleration, also achievements page was expanded with total webonautes number.
  • Magento added to supported systems.
  • Improved server environment detection.
  • Minor fixes.

You can update to the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp or download it from the official website.

May 4, 2010

SWIFT tool for slow websites


Several days ago we released a new tool for websites which are revenue-focused and are trying to maximize their income. It's SWIFT - Slow Websites Investigation for Financial Target, www.webogroup.com/corporate/test-speed/.

Now you can just enter your website address, get its load speed, get projected acceleration, and calculate how much do you loose every month with your current website speed.

We included a number of pre-defined patterns for e-commerce activity: e-stores, blogs, corporate websites, news, and portals. Also there is an industry selector to specify your model more accurately.

You earn money with every visitor to your website, also you miss some opportunities with a slow website. Now you can just calculate how much do you miss every month.

Try it now: SWIFT - an easy tool to calculate missed revenue.

May 1, 2010

v1.1.1 released

After a lot of R&D andtesting we are ready with few core improvement in WEBO Site SpeedUp.

  • Fist of all, there added normal CDN distribution for CSS/JavaScript files. We are going to include a number of pre-defined rules for CDN hosts naming (i.e. for Coral CDN), but now you can just enable CDN distribution for all files (w/o actual merging). 'Multiple hosts' group of options renamed to 'CDN'.
  • Changed Unobtrusive JavaScript logic (widgets are moved to window.onload). The second major improvement. Now a number of critical widgets (Google Search, Google Connect, Facebook Connect) can be loaded after the whole page is ready (window.onload).This significantly improves website load speed (by Google Webmasters).
  • Added support for Google Search widget.
  • Added support for Google Connect widget.
  • Added support for Facebook Connect widget.
  • Added support for Novoteka widget.
  • Improved data:URI (failures handling).
  • X-Cart added to supported systems.
  • Improved UI.
    Minor fixes for achievements logic.
  • Minor compatibility fixes.

Apr 14, 2010

v1.1.0 released

  • Achievements page was added. We are introducing new concept of website speedup - speedup achievements. Now every user can get how its website is fast in terms of industry standards / evaluations and measure website performance through time. For this purpose there is Achievements page inside the product and its external copy to share with your friends, colleagues, or even boss :) More info about WEBO Site SpeedUp awards.
  • Improved caching / gzip for some systems.
  • Improved server modules detection (CGI environment).
  • Improved UI (a lot of minor fixes to make it easier).

Apr 12, 2010

WEBO Software Blog updates

We've just updated our company blog design. It's all nice and shiny now and meets our corporate style as well.

This update also adds functionality that allows you to share blog posts via Twitter, StumbleUpon or memorize them with Delicious social bookmarking service. Each post has three corresponding icons for that.

Don't forget that you can follow the blog updates and even post comments updates with your favourite RSS reader or via email. You will find Follow Us and Subscribe via Email blocks on a sidebar and subscriptions links inside each post, at the very bottom.

And of course we are always happy to get your feedback so if you have any suggestions or ideas about our products and services, feel free to drop us a line or two.

Apr 2, 2010

New design for user guide


This night new user documentation has been released - and it has tremendous design. With the help of Prince we were able to convert all Wiki markup through HTML to PDF. And with detailed design implemented (through modern CSS3 properties and custom layout) new version of user documentation is amazing.
Now you can read it and enjoy improved typographic quality or even print this manual (71 pages now) - all pages are enumerated according to book format.
Check it out, download WEBO Site SpeedUp user guide

v1.0.5 released

Few compatibility and performance improvements in the new build of WEBO Site SpeedUp. List of changes:

  • Page 'Cache' moved to 'System Status' tab (Cache). Now all information about cache files is located on System Status (what is more clear), and there is much less info (because huge blocks of information on the previous Cache page seemed not to be useful). We are working on complete Cache Manager tool (to re-create cache blocks for separate website sections / pages), but it will be a little later.
  • Excluded 'Performance - Quick check' option. It's misconfigured in the most of cases, and actual performance gain was very little.
  • Fixed minor compatibility issues. Some more environments now not caused 500 errors on switching between configurations.
  • Improved minify for CSS files.
  • Improved client side caching.
  • Improved UI (minor fixes).

Update your WEBO Site SpeedUp or download the latest build.

Mar 31, 2010

Industry-compliant website speed test

Website load speed became significant metric to measure overall website performance and its success (in terma of online marketing efficiency). To help webmasters and managers understand what is the industry standard and how it can be reached we created a scale with website load time and, it's evaluation (in words, not numbers), and possible acceleration grade (with accurate numbers also). All numbers are strictly linked with the current industry standards and you can be sure that after this test is your website slow or not.

You can just enter your website address here: www.webogroup.com/home/test-speed/ and get its speed evaluation. Also there is a link to detailed website load speed test, and a possibility to renew test results.

Mar 29, 2010

Website performance awards

One of the most prominent feature of new WEBO Site SpeedUp builds is ability to represent current website performance with visual awards. For this purpose we created a rocket which is being improved during website acceleration.

So if you have a slow website, and you have accelerated it - you will be able to share your results with friends, colleagues, and with every your reader or visitor.

There are a lot of words about nothing :), so let's see actual examples.

Rocket examples

If you have tuned WEBO Site SpeedUp to 55 (Options Grade), combined YSlow + Page Speed + WEBO Grade is 95, you have 17 objects per page, and your website has been accelerated by 310%, and its size has been reduced by 10% - you will have this rocket. And then you can share it with everybody, and place everywhere.

This can represent moderate website, which performance has been significantly improved, but w/o hard WEBO Site SpeedUp integration.

The second example - WEBO Site SpeedUp Options Grade is 84, YSlow + Page Speed + WEBO Grade is 65, there are 9 objects per page on your website, its size has been reduced by 70%, and it has been accelerated by 520%.

This website has been accelerated very significantly with a lot of performance features (from WEBO Site SpeedUp) implemented, and with very good trafic savings.


And the last one - you have reached 96 in WEBO Site SpeedUp Options, YSlow + Page Speed + WEBO Grade is 34, there are 4 objects on your website's pages, overall acceleration is 5%, and size reducion is also 5%.

This website hasn't been accelerated much, although WEBO Site SpeedUp was tuned very well. Maybe there a lot of 3rd party widgets, or very limited hosting, and this has lead to such result.

Create your performance award!

There are about 500 different rockets which can cover almost every performance situation with your website. And right now we have 3 different sizes for them - 81x81, 125x125, 250x250 (so there are 1k+ variants). Please share if you have any additional ideas or want some other sizes for your website / blog.

Mar 26, 2010

Get WEBO Site SpeedUp for free

WEBO Site SpeedUp for freeIf you are web performance geek you can get free WEBO Site SpeedUp Premium Edition for your websites for free. All what you need is to install WEBO Site SpeedUp and tune it to maximum performance.

After gained acceleration you need to send a letter to free@webo.name with your website address and write about achieved results.

More information about this offer

Mar 19, 2010

v1.0.4 released

Some minor improvements in usability and compatibility. More info:

  • Improved HTML Sprites. General logic made more stable and fast.
  • Fixed mhtml processing for IE7@Vista. Now users with IE7 will get the same fast website as the others.
  • Improved server side environment detection. Fixed a few issues with CGI systems.
  • Minor UI fixes.

Download the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp or update from the product.

Mar 9, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp for Joomla! screencasts

We are starting with a set of product screencast to help users with product tuning. The most important features will be described in step-by-step manuals.

Here is the first one - JavaScript / CSS files merging tuning.

All screencasts will be available on our website - www.webogroup.com/home/site-speedup-joomla/video/

Mar 7, 2010

v1.0.3 released

A lot of minor usability and accessibility fixes (both in administrative interface and application core logic) is this release. More info:

  • Added option 'Safe JS combine'. It guarantees that in case of broken JavaScript it will be loaded separately and won't harm other scripts. Here is used try-catch envelope (which reduces a bit performance, so it can be disabled).
  • Added Basic configuration set. Basic configuration includes all first-priority performance actions, and it is a bit better than Safe one. But it can fail on a few environments.
  • Added welcome screen after installation. Major UI improvement - now there is welcome screen with quick actions and new features right after WEBO Site SpeedUp installation.
  • Added Error screen on failed automatic installation. With welcome screen also added Error screen to help understand what is worng (very rarely) with WEBO Site SpeedUp installation (and which actions can be applied).
  • Other UI fixes and improvements.
  • CSS Sprites logic improvements.
  • Improved server environment detection.

Download the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp or update from the product.

Feb 26, 2010

HTML Sprites - silver bullet against small images

Last builds of WEBO Site SpeedUp include amazing client side optimization approach - CSS Sprites for HTML images. Let's review underneath logic and all related techniques.

CSS Sprites - why HTML?

Actually we are speaking about combining images to a larger one which can be positioned with CSS property background-position. It's impossible to convert raw HTML images to CSS Sprite (to be correct - it's possible but leads a lot of restrictions and drawbacks, i.e. we will have to drop a huge part of images' functionality and properties).

So before any actual operations with images in HTML code (like <img src="..." />) we should prepare them. How? We should convert all images to 'fake' ones - transparent stubs which have initial image as a background, and the same width and height.

Converting HTML images to CSS images

Well. To reduce amount of data (we are going to speed up website, not to increase its load speed) we should choose very efficient approaches to insert transparent stubs. And we have 2 choices:

  • Insert call to 1x1 transparent GIF image (yeah, bad known spacer.gif which was used a lot several years ago to make table layout). Its size is only 43 bytes (but 1 more HTTP request).
  • For modern browsers we can use 82-bytes data:URI chunk (which represents this image - data:image/gif;base64,R...Ow==. A bt more data (with gzip usage - about 100 bytes for 1 HTML document, or nothing). But minus 1 HTTP request (cool!).

To provide the best practices here we can combine both approaches - for IE7 and lower use the first one, for all the other browsers - the second one.

Playing with HTML Sprites

It seems now we have all parts for HTML Sprites logic and can reveal it.

  1. First of all - parse initial HTML code to find all images, get their sizes (and skip some large ones).
  2. Then create an array of CSS rules based on given HTML images - just background image (plus no-repeat and zero background position), width and height.
  3. Then just combine all images in 1 CSS Sprite (using existent CSS Sprites logic over current set of CSS rules).
  4. Finally (with a number of CSS classes) replace initial HTML images with stubs with calculated styles.

All this looks very simple. But what are drawbacks?

Troubles and solutions

As far as we need to check size for any image (just to get its dimensions an skip it if it's very large) - we will have a lot of I/O requests with any HTML document. So this can significantly increase server side load time. That's bad. But we can cache calculated dimensions for known images (such dimensions are being changed very rarely) - and skip all future recalculations.

But with every HTML document (with cached calculated dimensions) we have one more expensive CPU operation - CSS background positions calculation (even with completed CSS Sprite we need to get actual positions of given images inside it). But good news here is that we can also cache such calculations (to a set of CSS rules for given HTML image).

Also we must have per-page or per-website modes. Just because you can have thousands of small images through the whole website - but you don't want your visitors to download them all at once.

With all such approaches HTML Sprites technique works both on a high-end servers and weak VDS/shared hosting. And reduces by 20-30% number of HTTP requests for every your web page. That's really amazing. And it's ready to use - just download WEBO Site SpeedUp or update to the latest version.

Feb 25, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp v1.0.2

New version with HTML Sprites support and more performance.

  • Added HTML Sprites. There are now 3 new options: apply HTML Sprites, dimensions limit for them, and 'per-page' mode (you can combine small images for the whole website, or for the currect page only). HTML Sprites combine small HTML images and replace initial images with transparent one. This can greatly reduce total number of objects on your website.
  • CSS Sprites refactored. To meet strict resources limit on shared hsoting / VDS core logic for images' placement in CSS Sprites was refactored, and now it consumes much less memory, but a bit more CPU.
  • Added option 'Days to store cache files'. Now you can restrict number of files in cache with this option (outdated files will be deleted automatically when new ones are being created).
  • Improved unobtrusive JavaScript. Fixed layout bugs in a few cases and reduced DOM tree size.
  • Added support for ICO files into CSS Sprites. Now ICO files (as well as JPEG/PNG/BMP/GIF ones) can be combined both to CSS or HTML Sprites.
  • Improved JavaScript merging for DLE.
  • Social Engine (3.19) added to supported systems.

Feb 17, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp v1.0.1

We didn't stop with product improvements, and after major 1.0 release continued to make it better. So here is a scheduled 1.0.1 update.

  • Greatly improved CSS Sprites. There were added a few complicated cases to CSS Sprites logic, fixes memory consumption (approximately by 20-50%). Also improved CSS properties in case of complicated selectors restoration.
  • Added automated request for 7-day trial key. Now you can test Premium Edition for 7 days (for 1 website) after installation, no performance or feature limits.
  • Fixed endless redirects on 404 errors. In some cases side caching with wo.static.php lead to recursive redirects. Such situations were fixed.
  • Added 'Share results on Twitter' buttons. Now you can post your optimization results directly to Twitter.
  • Minor UI fixes.
  • Improved static resources caching in case of symlinks usage.
  • Improved external resources fetching (i.e. in case of dynamic background images).

Download the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp or update from the product.

Feb 10, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp 1.0 released!

After 2 months of creating, tuning, and polishing of the new interface, old and new bugs resolving and general compatibility improving we have released version 1.0 of this outstanding application to speed your website up.

Also we have released our new corporate website (formerly web-optimizer.us) to allow wide range of website acceleration products and services - www.webogroup.com.

Here are few words about new features in 1.0 (in comparison to 0.9.7).

  • Added option 'Performance -> Restore CSS properties'. It is responsible for correct CSS Sprites creation (parsing CSS rules' tree), but it can be CPU expensive, so it's disabled by default.
  • Improved Unobtrusive JavaScript. Added BlogBang? and eBuzzing added.
  • Improved external files fetching. There were fixed some bugs with external redirected files (or 404 errors on them).
  • Improved paths automatic calculation. Added better support for symlinks in directories.
  • Improved JavaScript merging behavior on HTML/JS/CDATA mess (added more rules for pseudo HTML comments).
  • Improved HTML minify and fixed its compatibility with System - Cache in Joomla!. Now HTML documents are even less in size!
  • Improved .htaccess rules (fixed unstyled websites).
  • Minor improvements in UI. Reduced number of files (with CSS Sprites), fixed minor layout bugs.

Get the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp or update it from internal interface.

Feb 5, 2010

WEBO Software increases efficiency for the website of charity fund "Happy World"

WEBO Site SpeedUp increased efficiency of Russian charity fund - "Happy World".

WEBO Site SpeedUp is a wholesome product to speed up a website. There can be not enough time to tune hosting environment, sometimes you need any solution out of the box - that's about us. And it's much easier to have only one module to optimize website performance than apply handy changes to CMS or web server.

Children's charity fund "Happy World" (www.hworld.ru) was created in 2005. The foundation raises funds and provides assistance to children with serious illnesses. Only the last year 199 children received the necessary treatment at $2.6 million. Wards fund are children from poor families. They want to get well and together with their peers go to kindergarten, to school. Strong, reliable adult hand help to cope with the seemingly insurmountable problems, - says about fund activity Olga, its coordinator.

Geography of the project is quite broad - it covers the whole Russia territory. For this reason site of a charity fund for the last few years changed 6 hosting providers, which were periodically unable to bear the load. And now the website uses a distributed hosting from Media Temple (virtual hosting on the "clouds") with Joomla! + Apache + MySQL.

Average load on www.hworld.ru is about 20k unique visitors a month. But during the fund-raising campaigns it can increase several times. Once a campaign to raise funds for the treatment of one of our wards began, - says Michael, a fund technical specialist - and there were more than 8 000 unique visitors per day. It was necessary to accelerate the website load time for visitors and fit a dedicated hoster power. Due to the rapid increase in attendance it urgently needed to optimize Joomla! CMS. There was chosen the product for the universal website acceleration to achieve this goal - WEBO Site SpeedUp.

As Michael says, after the installation WEBO Site SpeedUp reduced consumption of GPU (unit of measurement of power consumption which is used in Media Temple). This allowed to fit the provided power and not to overpay for a non-optimized site. There have been indications that the site was being loaded faster. Both the first and returned visits were speeded up with competent caching. Latter is extremely important for the fund - there are a lot of regular visitors, and it is a huge benefit for them - fast website load speed and website stability.

What is the most important thing - in the most tense moments for the host when a child's life hangs in the balance, and is going active raising for medical treatment, we are confident that the site is working as quickly as possible, saving the lives of children - concludes Michael.

Website load speed is connected not only with the robust website performance, but also with the confidence of visitors to the website information. For charity fund the last fact leads the priorities list. And if there is any possibility to increase confidence of visitors to the charity - you need to do it now, do not fish or cut bait. Because the child's life depends on the decision about donation.

Feb 2, 2010

High Performance for Contra Costa County

WEBO Site SpeedUp was installed in Halfway to Concord website and significatnly increased its profitability.

Traffic is seasonal based on local election cycles and holidays, but we can document a 20 per cent increase in visits since implementing WEBO Site SpeedUp.

Launched in early 2004, Halfway to Concord (www.halfwaytoconcord.com) is a blog covering news, politics, culture, business and various events for Contra Costa County. The site's hyper local focus has helped it become a leading independent online news source for East Bay of Northern California, USA.

Halfway to Concord has more than 12k unique visitors monthly, most of them return to the website at least once a week. The website core is a WordPress installation on a Bluehost dedicated server. But even this didn't provide sufficient page load time which was more than 5 seconds for every page. And Bill Gram-Reefer, Halfway to Concord founder and editor, decided to improve user experience with speedier loading site to increase readership.

Because of its hyper local focus and audience, Halfway to Concord cannot currently accelerate with CDN usage or any number of particular WordPress hacks. There must be a solution to provide maximum website performance. "We had slow loading pages", says Gram-Reefer. "Many visitors chose to move on before page load."

CDN or other network distribution solutions didn't fit because the website is located very closely to the vast majority of its visitors and server response time is not crucial. But a complete set of performance optimization practices - including file compression to multiple host usage and unobtrusive logic implementation - provided by WEBO Site SpeedUp resolved all issues.

"While experiencing some expected bumps in the road during implementation, WEBO Software tech support was helpful and gracious, eager to help customers instead of berate them for asking questions", Gram-Reefer adds. Through close collaboration, Halfway to Concord was accelerated approximately 2.8 times, especially for return visitors. And they were grateful!

Finally YSlow was improved from 56 to 90. This brought about 20 per cent increase in visits. With a few simple actions automatically handled with WEBO Site SpeedUp, the website became faster and could handle more advertisement and visitors.

Only a full range of website load speed optimization methods can help such local websites or small blogs to provide new levels of user experience for their readers. And this can be easily achieved with very little effort.

Jan 26, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp v0.9.7

We are moving to completely stable and featured v1.0 and here is one more update on this way. In the version 0.9.7:

  • Improved UI. All icons were recreated and combined to a few of CSS Sprites (via Auto Sprites tool). Now the whole interface loads faster and there are less files in package (update is going also faster).
  • Added option to exclude WEBO Site SpeedUp logic. You can define in System Status -> Settings a number of parts of URL to exclude from processing - and they won't be accelerated with WEBO Site SpeedUp. This field has the same syntax as for Server Side Cache exclude option.
  • Improved smush.it callbacks. Reviwed some more issues with bunch image optimization of a huge amounts of data. Callbacks from smush.it tuned a bit.
  • Improved static gzip tool. Now it can use gzip console tool if it's allowed to be executed from PHP.
  • Improved CSS Sprites logic. Fixed a minor issue with ancesting seletroes lookup and improved CSS Tidy merging qualities.
  • Improved gzip on CGI enviroments for CSS/JavaScript files.
  • Fixed minor compatibility issues.

Download new version from here or just update it from your product interface.

Jan 20, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp v0.9.6

One more intermediate version before stable 1.0 release. We fixed a lor of UI bugs (makeup / client side logic) and improved general stability.

Changes log:

  • Improved general UI stability / fixed minor issues.
  • Improved Apache modules detection / .htaccess changes.
  • Added rollback to stable feature.
  • Fixed issue with rewriting current JavaScript / CSS files with wo.static.php equivalents.
  • PHP Fusion (7.0.5) added to supported systems.

Now there is the complete set of native modules (WordPress / Joomla / Drupal / Bitrix).

Download the latest WEBO Site SpeedUp

Jan 12, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp v0.9.5

Today we have released the first (official) version of new WEBO Site SpeedUp. Its general state is beta (release candidate), but all unstable issues are related to UI only. Main core stability is improved (since version 0.6.7) and some new features were added.

Get the latest version.

Before public 1.0 release we are going to review and improve current user interface (in terms of usability and response times). Also it seems support for punypng optimization will be added to 1.0 (since they have API get up).

Feel free to submit any bugs here, we appreciate your help in improving this awesome software package.

You can also check public demo of WEBO Site SpeedUp.

Jan 8, 2010

WEBO Site SpeedUp public beta


Here we are with the hottest performance optimization software. We are still working to pplish it but you can enjoy this stuff under you favorite CMS. Here are WEBO Site SpeedUp 0.9.5b download links:

Installation is the same as usual - just copy plugin in WordPress or Drupal to general plugin directory and activate it via administrative interface. Then go to Settings page and play with WEBO Site SpeedUp interface.

For Joomla! 1.5 you just need to install appropriate package (via Extensions installer) and go to the component's page.

Upgrade procedure

If you are using old version and want to upgrade to the newest one -- please store file web-optimizer/config.webo.php somewhere (just as a backup), than upgrade your package to this beta version. Usually you need to update it once more - from WEBO Site SpeedUp interface (Update is located in System Status -> Updates -> Show me beta versions). Then configuration file will be altered to fit new structure. If you have any troubles with upgrading - please contact us. It seems you should have at least backed up configuration file to perform restoration.

Joomla! users please note that there is no standard way to upgrade current Web Optimizer plugin to WEBO Site SpeedUp component + plugin. So please somehow save settings from plugin interface / database. You will be able to set them back (WEBO Site SpeedUp by default is in a debug mode, website won't be hurted, cache files will be saved).

Known issues

There a few minor bugs we are still working on:

  • Not all blocks are loaded at once on Control Panel (home) page in IE.
  • Interface doesn't look perfect under IE6/7.
  • Optimization results may be counted incorrectly sometimes (just not countered properly).
  • Some pages / UI elements will be changed a bit to make overall design better.

Complete ist of WEBO Site SpeedUp / Web Optimizer packages also is located here: http://code.google.com/p/web-optimizator/downloads/list

Jan 6, 2010

WordPress Performance: Step-by-Step Every Day


We are going to completely review all sides of WordPress-based blog performance with a set of articles. For this purpose we created a simple blog on a shared hosting — www.speedingupwebsite.com — and every day there will be new articles about WordPress performance (both server and client sides).

We will review all possible plugins variations (on this website) and give you complete information how you can speed up your WordPress blog. No more '10/20/30/40+ tips about WordPress speeding up'. All information in one place. All failures and successes and all detailed manuals right here. And all of them will tested on a real website.

Keep tuned: www.speedingupwebsite.com or via RSS. If you have any ideas to cover in tests and comparisons - please share them in comments.