Web site technology tips - share yours!

[*Shira*]

For those of you who have used some nice techy tips in authoring your web sites, what were they? Please share! Here's one of mine that Kizzie and Lauren asked about on another thread.

If someone tries to embed a graphic on Shira.net from a forum message here, the image doesn't display. My secret can be found here: Stop Hotlinking with htaccess. Test your Image Hotlink Protection with our Hotlink Checker from altlab.com.


So, what are YOUR tips?

[KDizzle]

Shira, you rock! Thanks for this info! hmm, now let me think to see if I know any web site tech tips.

[Asim]

This is somewhat advanced, but makes a powerful change for many web sites:

A little-known fact is that browsers and web servers support a form of compression that's basically "invisible" to the end-user, but speeds up many pages in terms of loading. It also cuts down on the amount of data you send out, so it helps with the bandwidth bills as well!
If you have access to your .htaccess file, and your ISP supports an Apache module called mod_gzip, you can use this page to do the speed-up. Other folks might have to dig a little deeper, and try the info on this page, instead, which also boasts a more in-depth (and technical) discussion of what's going on.
Many of the bigger ISP have pages devoted to specific advice for them; I recently used this page to do it on a Dreamhost site I support (but do not own).

Another powerful technique is caching, which basically encourages your user's browser to store your page longer. For sites that do not change often, but have a good bit of repeat traffic, this can cut down bandwidth and load times considerably, and also help increase some people's load times on your site in repeat viewings (since they load it from their local machine, not over the 'Net!)
This article is a pretty good overview of the process, with fairly simply code to put into your .htaccess file. But for a decent, full-bore overview with lots of details, try this article instead.

Hope all of this helps!

[azhaar]

Wow, thanks Asim! I'll definitely be delving into that when I get time ...

[azhaar]

btw my host is HostingZoom. In my admin control panel I have a HOTLINKING section where I can select what type of files to protect (I protect all my multimedia files). I can also allow access from particular websites (for example, sites I use for advertising) which I find really useful.

[Narimeh]

This article is a pretty good overview of the process, with fairly simply code to put into your .htaccess file. But for a decent, full-bore overview with lots of details, try this article instead.

Hope all of this helps!

Awesome. Thank you.

[toria_dances]

I use Free Webmaster Tutorials - Quackit.com to get html codes for cool stuff like a scroll box