WordPress Archives - Fauxzen.com

Remove Javascript and CSS versioning from WordPress

September 23, 2015 By Shelby DeNike

Reading Time: 1 minute

While trying to optimize my site a while back I came across some issues with Javascript and CSS versions causing caching issues, or rather not being cached. This lack of caching of the Javascript and CSS files was lowering the site score on many testing sites including WebPageTest.

I searched around a bit and came across the following code snippet which will remove most, if not all of the versioning from Javascript and CSS files on your WordPress site.

To enable this you will need add the following code to your themes function.

//* Remove JS/CSS versions
function remove_cssjs_ver( $src ) {
	if( strpos( $src, '?ver=' ) )
		$src = remove_query_arg( 'ver', $src );
	return $src;
}
add_filter( 'style_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 1000 );
add_filter( 'script_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 1000 );

//* Remove JS/CSS versions

function remove_cssjs_ver( $src ) {

if( strpos( $src, '?ver=' ) )

$src = remove_query_arg( 'ver', $src );

return $src;

}

add_filter( 'style_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 1000 );

add_filter( 'script_loader_src', 'remove_cssjs_ver', 1000 );

If you are using a caching plugin such as WP-Super Cache/W3 Total Cache you will need to of course clear your cache before these changes will be shown

New theme and no comments

October 20, 2014 By Shelby DeNike

Reading Time: 1 minute

I have been using the Genesis Framework for sometime now on this site and just about every other site that I manage, but I decided that we needed a break from one another… at least for just a little bit. In keeping up with WordPress and its development I figured I would give the new Twenty Fifteen theme a test run and see what it had to offer. So far I am digging the minimalism of it, as well as the default features that are included. The inclusion of Social links is really nice an allowed me to remove another plugin that was used previously to achieve the same function.

If you are feeling adventurous you can grab it from the nightly build, or directly via Git or SVN.

Also with this change I decided to finally do away with site comments, which is something I have been thinking about doing for sometime. Removing comments also allowed me to remove yet another plugin, that being Disqus. I may end up enabling comments on specific posts from time to time depending on the content, but overall I think they are gone for good at this point.

Installing HipHop Virtual Machine

July 7, 2014 By Shelby DeNike

Reading Time: 1 minute

I recently read an article about how you can install HipHp Virtual Machine (HHVM) for a 2x+ speed boost on your site. The newest version of WordPress works 100% with HHVM, but unfortunately some of the plugins out there don’t. I decided the pros out weighed the cons and decided to install HHVM on my development server. Outlined below are the steps for installing it on your own.

wget -O - http://dl.hhvm.com/conf/hhvm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu saucy main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hhvm.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hhvm
sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh
sudo update-rc.d hhvm defaults
sudo /etc/init.d/hhvm restart
sudo /usr/bin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/php php /usr/bin/hhvm 60

wget -O - http://dl.hhvm.com/conf/hhvm.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

echo deb http://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu saucy main | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hhvm.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install hhvm

sudo /usr/share/hhvm/install_fastcgi.sh

sudo update-rc.d hhvm defaults

sudo /etc/init.d/hhvm restart

sudo /usr/bin/update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/php php /usr/bin/hhvm 60

[Read more…]

WordPress roles cheat sheet

May 3, 2014 By Shelby DeNike

Reading Time: 1 minute

Chuck Reynolds recently posted a nice little cheat sheet detailing what each WordPress role allows. I thought I would steal the image and host it here as well since it could be very useful for anyone new to using WordPress roles on their site.

WordPress_roles_cheatsheet

Swiftype now enabled

January 23, 2013 By Shelby DeNike

Reading Time: 2 minutes

With my contact tweaking and screwing with Fauxzen I decided to enable Swiftype. It just went active on the site today and so far it has been flawless and the indexing from the blog to their site was fast and flawless.
Don’t get me wrong the standard built in WordPress search seems to work great on a daily basis, but Swiftype offers some really cool features that just aren’t there or well in actuality probably needed for a normal users WordPress install.
They outline some key features on their site like Drag and Drop ranking for one. The Drag and Drop ranking this will let you order the way search results are found. This could be really handy if you have paid posts/ads on your site and you want to channel traffic to post X instead of Y when people are searching for W.
They also offer realtime analytics of searches, this again can really help you tune your site to provide more relevant information, as well as helping you see what kind of things interest your site visitors when they come to your site. The one that really sold me which while simple and not all that amazing was the auto-complete feature, the little bit of eye candy is really nice and may help people find other entries that the normal search might not have yielded.
Installing Swiftype was a walk in the park, they provide a nice WordPress plugin that you install and plug in your API key that you get from your account on their site. Once you have done that there is a simple button to click to have their crawler index all the pages on your site. Thats it, no extensive configurations that end up taking the better part of the day to setup.
Overall it has been less than a day so far using Swiftype but I think I might keep it around for a while. I am very interested to see how much their pricing ends up being once out of public beta as that will more than likely be the determining factor for me if I end up keeping it installed or now. So go ahead and go give it a try.