WordPress’ Photon slowing my site down

WordPress’ Photon slowing my site down

WordPress has a content delivery network called “Photon” and what this content delivery does in WordPress’ own words:

Give your site a boost by loading images in posts from the WordPress.com content delivery network. We cache your images and serve them from our super-fast network, reducing the burden on your Web host with the click of a button.

I’m not sure what the issue is. However, on the site that is having the issue with Jetpack’s Photon module, well, it only has 600+ images and that’s including generated thumbnails. So, I’m really not sure what the problem is. Also, after scouring Google to find out if others are having issues, I found results suggesting that I was not alone.

From what I gathered the WordPress staff or people who’ve worked on WordPress plugins were saying the issues could range from a wide variety of issues. It could be that my site has another plugin which is conflicting with the Photon module, it could be that the design of my website is not compatible with Photon, or it could be that my images are too large. It could be anything essentially, which doesn’t really help. So for now, I’ve disabled it until I can find or come up with a solution.

Another design update

Another design update

I’ve changed the design, yet again, as I wasn’t happy with the previous design.

The real reason I changed designs was due to the bad SEO that the other design had and it seemed that it was over-bloated more than anything without giving any real reward in terms of search engine optimization. It’s definitely a nice design and everything, but the SEO aspect fails in that regard. The new design on the other hand has many more options to feature articles that are hidden from the front-page, thus any hidden articles are also shown on the front-page and receive more attention thus will rank higher in search engine results.

Photography website update

I have also updated my photography website; although, that still need working on. I’m almost finished in completing it, but I’m quite sad with the result that I’m getting as the theme I am using wasn’t not built with photography in-mind. It’s hard to say, but the previous design that I was using is specifically for photography-type websites. Unfortunately, this web design is not. I’m pondering on whether to switch back or not. I think I’ll be able to tweak it and work with it to make things work! Either way, please visit this part of the site! – I’ve tried my best to make it look similar to my blog.

Jonathan Jones is an avid blogger, and a friendly guy! He also likes to type in third person because it makes it seem like there is more than one person running this site, thus concluding that he would in the future like to be a businessman.

Hard Drive failure and what to do.

Hard Drive failure and what to do.

Recently, my 500GB hard drive failed on me and I looked on the internet for anything that could recover my files from the hard drive, which admittedly, I should have backed-up.

Hard drive failure

F:\ is not accessible. Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cyclic Redundancy Check Error & what I did.  

I searched on the internet for a solution and found out what the error message means. CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check), I looked at a few solutions however none of them worked for me. So, I thought instead of trying to get my hard drive accessible again, I thought I’d just get the data off first that I needed. (The data I should have  backed up)

Recovering files on a failed hard drive

Recovering files on a failed hard drive

Recovery

So, I found this as a solution. I’ve managed to already get access to around 1,000+ files (Though they aren’t the files I need, so I’m continuing the scan), however there is a data-limit on the program, since I’m using the trial version. (The program, bought, costs around $59.) The paid version allows you to download as much information from the defective hard drive, while the trial allows you to only take off around 1GB of data.

That’s all I need as I’m purely trying to recover a web design which I originally bought and I want to place it for free on my website over at SimpleTemplates.org. It’s only a small file.

How long?

However, according to the program to scan the entirety of the 500GB hard drive, I need to wait 255 hours, which is around 2 weeks of concurrent scanning. I can do this, but eventually or before all that, it will find this web design, so I no longer need to continue any more scans.

So, what program are you using to do this?

The program I’m using was created by Power Data Recovery. (Google search; not direct link to their site) – They make other premium programs for hard drive failures which includes automatic back-ups and the like.

Also for future reference, I have also done some research into other programs that have been recommended in the blogosphere:

  • PC Inspector File Recovery
  • NTFS Reader
  • Restoration
  • Undelete Now!

Hopefully, someone will have found this useful. Hardware failures, especially hard drive failures are not fun at-all.

Another new website up!

Another new website up!

I recently bought another website called, Simple Templates.org and I hope to add more designs to its portfolio.

I already have a web hosting design, which I had created quite sometime ago.

I still need to make a few edits to the site and I think I’m also going to add a blog to the site, to give out updates and web design help.

Why website security is important.

Why website security is important.

I’ve recently just experienced something which has inundated my experience as a person who runs websites that are online. Security is a big thing and as soon as you let your guard down, there are people out there who will go out of their way to find ways to exploit websites which haven’t been updated. i.e. Easy targets

Since I’ve been working full-time, my main website armour.ws faced a few attacks from people trying to upload .html files which contained phishing websites, mainly or only to do with banks.

I first noticed this when my web host informed me and when Google also informed me. I’m not surprised at-all if they’ve penalised my website. But all that matters is that I’ve secured my website.

I’ve totally re-installed WordPress on that site, backed up everything again, looked at the MySQL database for any anomalies and I’ve started anew with the design to ensure that it wasn’t the theme/design causing any cracks in terms of security. I’ve also installed a few firewall scripts for WordPress, essentially a tool which will scan all my files for any anomalies.

I just let my guard down, stopped updating my website and suddenly I find myself being attacked. Now things should be okay, but I’ll say something, it would have been a lot easier to keep my site updated from the start. I spent most of the day making modifications, backing up, optimizing the MySQL database and changing a few aspects and fixing a few things on the website itself.

I will also stress, as would other experienced webmasters, MAKE BACKUPS constantly. You never know when you’ll need a backup to help you out of a disastrous situation.