• Hardware failures
• Viruses
• Incorrect use of UPDATE and DELETE statements
• Software bugs
• Disasters, such as fire or flood

To prevent data loss, you can implement a recovery strategy for your databases. This article explains the traditional database recovery techniques that are out there.

If you are only concerned about backing up your WordPress blog then simply use a database backup plugin explained in the Must Use Plugins List article.

Full Database Backups

A very common backup strategy is to back up the whole database in a predefined time series (once each night, for instance). With such a backup strategy, it is possible to recover a database to the state it had when the last backup occurred. This strategy is implemented by using full database backups. A full database backup contains all data and database Meta information needed to restore the whole database, including full-text catalogs. When you restore a full database backup, it restores all database files yielding data in a consistent state from the time the backup completed.

Using Differential Backups

The main advantage of a full database backup is that it contains all the data needed to rebuild the entire database. But this advantage can also be a disadvantage. Consider a database where full database backups are performed each night. If you need to recover the database, you always have to use the backup from the previous night, resulting in the loss of a whole day’s work. One way to reduce the potential period of time that can be lost would be to perform full database backups more often. But this itself can be a problem. Because all data and parts of the transaction log are written to the backup device, it can be very time-intensive to make a backup. Also, you need a lot of storage space to hold these backups, and a full backup can decrease the performance of your database as a result of the large amount of I/O it requires. Wouldn’t it be better to perform one full database backup at night and only take backups of data changes made during the day? This sort of functionality is provided by the differential backup.
The differential backup stores only the data changes that have occurred since the last full database backup. When the same data has changed many times since the last full database backup, a differential backup stores the most recent version of the changed data. Because it contains all changes since the last full backup, to restore a differential backup, you first need to restore the last full database backup and then apply only the last differential backup.

Performing Differential Backups

Performing a differential backup is very similar to performing full database backups. The only difference is that you state in the WITH option of the backup that you want to perform a differential backup. The syntax of the BACKUP DATABASE statement to perform a differential backup of AdventureWorks to a physical device, overwriting other existing backups on the backup device, is as follows:

USE master;
GO
BACKUP DATABASE AdventureWorks
TO DISK=’t:\adv_diff.bak’
WITH INIT, DIFFERENTIAL;


Using Transaction Log Backups

With the combination of full database and differential backups, it is possible to take snapshots of the data and recover them. But in some situations, it is also desirable to have backups of all events that have occurred in a database, like a record of every single statement executed. With such functionality, it would be possible to recover the database to any state required. Transaction log backups provide this functionality. As its name suggests, the transaction log backup is a backup of transaction log entries and contains all transactions that have happened to the database. The main advantages of transaction log backups are as follows:

• Transaction log backups allow you to recover the database to a specific point in time.
• Because transaction log backups are backups of log entries, it is even possible to perform a backup from a transaction log if the data files are destroyed. With this backup, it is possible to recover the database up to the last transaction that took place before the failure occurred. Thus, in the event of a failure, not a single committed transaction need be lost.

Combining Transaction Log and Differential Backups

Another possible backup strategy is to combine full database, differential, and transaction log backups. This is done when restoring all transaction log backups would take too much time. Because restoring from a transaction log backup means that all transactions have to be executed again, it can take a great deal of time to recover all the data, especially in large databases. Differential backups only apply data changes, which can be done faster than re-executing all transactions.
To recover a database when you have a combined backup strategy, you need to restore the last full database backup, the last differential backup, and then all subsequent transaction log backups.

The Full Recovery Model

As mentioned before, you need to tell SQL Server in advance which backup strategy you plan to implement. If only full database and differential backups are used, the database has to be set to the simple recovery model. If you also want to use transaction log backups, the recovery model must be set to FULL (or BULK_LOGGED). The full recovery model tells SQL Server that you want to perform transaction log backups. To make this possible, SQL Server keeps all transactions in a transaction log until a transaction log backup occurs. When the transaction log backup happens, SQL Server truncates the transaction log after the backup is written to the backup device. In simple mode, the transaction log is truncated after every checkpoint, which means that committed transactions (which are already written to the data files) are deleted from the transaction log. Thus, in simple mode, transaction log backups cannot be created.
To set the recovery model to FULL, use the ALTER DATABASE statement again. The following code sets the recovery mode of AdventureWorks database to FULL:

USE master;
GO
ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks
SET RECOVERY FULL;
GO
To set recovery model to SIMPLE, use the following command
USE master;
GO
ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks
SET RECOVERY SIMPLE;
GO

Basically, try to be prepared so you don’t get caught with your pants down like this

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The affiliate link manager plugin will revolutionize how you approach your affiliate marketing business by allowing you to automate the repetitive tasks (learn more on why use a link manager).

Affiliate Link Manager Features

Some key features of the WordPress Affiliate Link Manager Plugin include:

Documentation & Technical Support

• WP Affiliate Link Manager Documentation site (Contains all the documentation for this plugin)

If you are having any issue with this plugin then feel free to leave a comment in the comment area below or on the documentation site or post it on the support forum.

Minimum Requirements

• Please check the minimum requirements page

Get the WP Affiliate Link Manager Plugin

Affiliate Link Manager
Revolutionize your approach to your affiliate marketing business by automating the repetitive tasks.
Price: $27.00

Please see the Products page for packaged product deals.

Become an Affiliate

Like the WordPress Affiliate Link Manager plugin? Why not sign up for an affiliate account and promote it to make some money?

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any queries.

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Plugin Description

The bbCaptcha plugin adds reCAPTCHA to the registration page of your bbPress forum.

reCAPTCHA to bbPress registration

Installation & Usage

1. Unzip and Upload the folder ‘bb-captcha’ to the ‘my-plugins’ directory.
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in bbPress.
3. Go to Settings menu of bbCaptcha plugin and add the reCAPTCHA keys. You can get reCAPTCHA keys here if you don’t have it already for your site.

Activating bbCaptcha Plugin

bbCaptcha Settings

This Plugin in Action

You can see this plugin in action on the registration page of the Tips and Tricks HQ Forum.

Download Latest Version

Download the Plugin.

All the plugins developed by Tips and Tricks HQ are listed on the projects page. If you need help just leave a comment below.

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1. Keep a Tidy Workspace

If you have a messy workspace, then you can feel less motivated and more stressful. It’s important to have an area dedicated solely to work and to keep that area free from clutter.

2. Set Goals

If you know what you need to do every day, then you are much more likely to accomplish it. To-do lists are a must for the self-employed person. You might want a daily do-do list as well as a weekly to-do list.

3. Exercise

It’s tough to stay productive if you are always feeling tense and stressed. Exercise not only helps you get your mind off your work for a time, but it also keeps your brain in top shape to help you solve the important problems that come up in your work. By the time you get back to your desk, you will feel refreshed and ready to tackle anything.

4. Keep Busy

Even if you don’t have any current assignments, there is always something to be done. You could work on improving your website, on new ways of promoting yourself, or on sprucing up your resume. As a self-employed person, your work is never done. The last thing you want to find yourself doing is watching television all day.

5. Walk Away

If your work starts to become overwhelming, don’t hesitate to simply get up and walk away. Since you’re your own boss, you can decide for yourself anytime you need a break and whether you would be better off taking a walk or grabbing a cup of coffee. You’ll be much more productive when you decide to sit back down.

6. Treat it Like a Job

Treating your work like a job means that you should keep a strict schedule and stick to it. This may sound more rigid than you’d like, but doing so can help you to become much more productive in the long term.

7. Prioritize Income Activities

There are so many things you could be doing every day, so it is important to prioritize. You should focus first on those activities that generate the most income for you, then shift your attention to activities that generate less. You should seek to avoid activities that do nothing for your bottom line.

8. Keep a Daily Log

By keeping a daily log, you’ll be able to track where you are spending most of your time so that you know the areas in which you need to improve. Most self-employed persons overestimate the amount of time they actually spend in productive activities, so this will help you see if your results match your aspirations.

9. Limit Email Checking

Checking your email every 10 minutes can be devastating to your productivity. It can distract you from the tasks you ought to be doing, and it puts you into a response mode. It’s a good idea to set aside 2 or 3 times each day to check all your email at once.

10. Get Some Good Office Furniture

There’s a good chance that you’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time at your desk, so it’s a good idea to get some good furniture. A good chair is good for your back and will help you keep healthy.

Staying productive and organized when you are self-employed is a tough task and certainly takes a bit of self-discipline. If you follow some of the tips above, then you can make the process a lot easier.

During his employment as a staff writer at a leading supplier of ink cartridges, James has written on a diverse range of subjects from CLT-P4092C toner to the more interesting subjects of design and technology.

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Before I start, I would like to make one thing clear:

This article mainly covers the following topics:

• What affiliate marketing is and the different types of affiliate marketing
• The advantages of being an affiliate marketer
• Some tips and good practices to become a successful affiliate marketer

So, can you really make money from affiliate programs? Well yes and no; there is money in affiliate marketing but if YOU can make money from it or not depends on a lot of other factors such as your commitment, experience, site traffic etc.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Wikipedia

Basically, you as a publisher will be rewarded when you help a business by promoting their products or services. So for example, if you sign up for Tips and Ticks HQ’s affiliate program and promote it’s products then you will get a commission when the visitor you send from your site makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is probably one of the quickest and cheapest (not the easiest) ways to start making money online as you don’t have to create any products yourself. You simply link up a buyer and a seller, and you take a commission on the sale that has been referred by you.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

When you join an Affiliate program and choose the products that you want to sell, sellers provide you with a unique affiliate code that you can use to refer traffic to the target site. Most affiliate programs will offer ready made text links, banners and other forms of creative copies whereby you only have to copy the code and place it on your website to start referring traffic. When interested visitors click on these links from your site they get redirected to the product site and if they purchase a product or subscribe to a service you as the referrer make a commission.

The sellers can track your performance through your affiliate ID and the affiliate softwares (eg. WP Affiliate Platform) that they use. You also have complete, real time access to all sales and commissions stats.

You don’t need to sell products all the time to make a commission. Different affiliate programs can use different payment terms such as:

• Pay per Sale: In this program a merchant pays you a percentage of the sale price when the purchase is completed.
• Pay per Click: In this program you get paid based on the number of visitors you redirect to the Merchant’s website from your affiliate site, whether or not a sale is made.
• Pay per Lead: You get paid once the referred visitors provide their contact information on the target site by filling out a simple contact form.

Why be an Affiliate Marketer?

Affiliate marketing is considered to be one of the world’s fastest growing and best internet marketing techniques to earn money online and I will explain why:

• Cost effective: Marketing on the internet is cheap and you don’t have to worry about the production cost as the product is already developed by the seller. You don’t need a physical business location or hire employees either.
• Global Market: Online marketing gives you the opportunity to reach people all over the world easily.
• No Fees: You don’t need to pay anything to join affiliate programs.
• No Storage No Shipping: You don’t need to worry about storage, packing or shipment of the product. They are all taken care of by the seller.
• No customer support: You don’t need to provide any customer support or deal with consumer complaints as the Seller does that for you.
• Passive income: A regular job can give you a fixed income as long as you continue to work. Depending on your marketing skill Affiliate marketing can create a steady flow of income even when you are not in front of your computer.
• Work from home: If you make enough money then you don’t have to worry about going to work at the same time every day or getting stuck in traffic. You can work in the comfort of your own home.

Tips on Becoming a Successful Affiliate Marketer

After reading all the benefits of affiliate marketing if you think you will be rich over night by selling affiliate products online then you are wrong. Affiliate marketing is definitely an excellent way to make money online but it’s highly competitive too. In order to be successful in Affiliate marketing you need to know the market needs, learn how to promote products, what works and what doesn’t. The following are a few tricks on becoming successful in affiliate marketing that I have learnt over time.

1. Only Choose a Handful of Good Products

The first mistake a lot of affiliate marketers make is that they register with too many different affiliate programs and try to promote everything. Pursuing affiliate marketing down this path can become very overwhelming and you won’t be able to promote any product properly. All you need in order to be successful is a handful of good products to promote. Try to understand the market needs and look for products that align correctly with the topic of your site.

2. Use Several Traffic Sources to Promote Products

Most affiliate marketers put up the ads only on their sites. There is nothing wrong with this approach but know that there are many other traffic sources that you can tap into and promote the products simultaneously. The more targeted traffic you can send to the sales page the more your chances are of making money.

Google Adwords can be used to drive targeted traffic to a sales page. You simply make an ad in your adwords account then use your affiliate link in the target page URL of the ad. Obviously, you will have to continuously measure the conversions and see if the campaign cost is less than the campaign profit in order to keep the campaign running but I am sure you get the idea.

3. Test, Measure and Track Your Affiliate Campaign

It is a very good idea to use different product promotion strategies so you can figure out what is working and what is not. Try to do split testing and measure the performance of each campaign then take actions accordingly. Changing a few things here and there can increase your profit dramatically. Make sure to place the banner ads on different areas of your site’s pages. Some positions will make the ads more noticeable than others.

Most affiliate programs will give you basic stats that you may need but there is nothing stopping you from using your own conversion tracking software too. There are many conversions tracking sofware out there that you can use to track your affiliate campaign.

4. Research the Demand of the Product

If you try to sell a product that is in low demand then chances are that you are not going to get many sales no matter how hard you try. So it is a good idea to spend a bit of time researching and finding out if a product that you are thinking of promoting is a product that your audience needs. If your site gets decent traffic then you can conduct an online survey and easily get input from your visitors.

5. Stay Current with New Methods and Techniques

Affiliate marketing is a very competitive field and people are always coming up with new techniques. Try to stay current with these new techniques and market trends otherwise you will fall behind.

6. Choose the Right Merchant

When you promote a product you also promote the person or the company who is behind the product so try to choose wisely. You don’t want your visitors to go and buy a product following your advice then come back unhappy. Do you think that this visitor will come back to your site and take your advice again? Most likely no; this can hurt your credibility in the long run. Usually, websites/company that offer good customer service will have better customer satisfaction so try to stick with promoting their products.

7. Use Helpful Tools

If you are serious about affiliate marketing then try to find tools that will help you be more efficient. There are many helpful tools out there. If you are using a WordPress powered site then consider getting a plugin similar to the Affiliate Link Manager.

Don’t just hope and pray that visitors will buy; setup everything correctly and make it happen! If you think that visitors will click on your affiliate links and buy just because you placed dozens of affiliate links on your website then you are wrong! You need to have a structured plan in place. Affiliate marketing is a business so you will have a much better chance of succeeding if you treat it like one.

I am sure I haven’t covered everything so please feel free to share your tips in the comment area below.

This guest post was written by Asif who is the owner of WP Handy Hints.

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1. Acknowledge your customers

Send an email to thank your new users for signing up to read your newsletter. This reminds those users that you have received their opt-in request. It should also give your customers an idea of what they should expect in your writing as well as how frequently they should expect to receive it.

2. Make privacy policies crystal clear

Your readers want to know that their information is not going to be sold or given away to other users or companies. Place a link to your privacy policy within your newsletters.

3. Unsubscribing should be as easy as subscribing

People unsubscribe for a variety of reasons. Don’t feel offended or take it personally when someone doesn’t want to be subscribed to your newsletter. Immediately remove the subscriber when requested.

4. Stay in their minds, don’t anger them

Do you like it when a place sends you an email every day? Do not send your email out as frequently as possible. Send out a newsletter every week or two. People unsubscribe for receiving too much email.

5. Make it personal

People want to believe that the information in your newsletter is just for them. Subscribers care about how you can help them personally. Starting a newsletter off with ‘Dear (name),’ is a lot more effective than ‘Dear newsletter subscriber.’

6. Use catchy and descriptive headlines

You want a newsletter that will capture the attention of your subscribers. Try out a test of newsletter headlines to see what works the best. Give readers a hint of what you are sending them.

7. Don’t sell

The pieces that you do with the autoresponder are designed to build trust and entice readers to keep you in mind when they need to get your products. They do not need to be pressured into buying because they already know that you exist.

8. Reward subscriber loyalty

Even though selling outright is frowned upon, offering time limited coupons is not. With coupons, you are not going for the hard sell. Instead, you are telling the customer that you will be there when they are ready.

9. Offer useful and relevant tips

Customers are reminded of the experience that they received when a newsletter is emailed to them. You want to keep that rapport by sending them tips about subjects within your expertise.

10. Keep it simple

Make sure that you have something mastered before adding a new mailing. This applies to services as well as content. You want to make sure that you do one thing very well before moving on.

The autoresponder can help you gain more visitors to your site. You are keeping your customers thinking of your services once every week or two. Offer great content to your readers and they will keep coming back.

This guest post was written by James Adams, a staff blogger and reviewer for an online supplier of franking machine ink cartridges based in the north of England. Subscribe to their blog’s RSS feed for updates on his latest posts.

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Unit Testing – PHPUnit

Unit testing is an effective practice for developing software, where you can test your functional units of your code, catch the bugs and fix them early in the project. PHPUnit is a member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks, the same family where the popular JUnit framework for Java belongs to . It enables to you write tests on pieces of your code, run them automatically and analyze their results.

» Read the PHPUnit documentation

Debugging – Xdebug

Debugging is an important part of development process. The more efficient your debugging process is, the faster you build something. Instead of relying on echo(), print_r() or var_dump() functions, you should try using XDebug. Xdebug is a multi-purpose tool, providing remote debugging, stack traces, function traces, profiling and code coverage analysis.

» Read the documentation

Documentation – PHPDocumentor

A good documentation is essential to the success of any software project. If you want your code to be read and reused by other developers, PHPDocumentor can help you with its automated documentation engine. All you have to do is to comment the code according to its specification. It is also possible to generate separate sets of documentation from the same source.

» Read the tutorial

Version Control – Git or Subversion

If you are working on a multi-developer software project, you cannot use the underlying file system to keep track of changes made to the code. Otherwise people will be overwriting or deleting each others code. With a version control system, you can create a repository of the source code, branch out from it when you need to add a new feature, submit the changes and then merge it with the main branch after testing. Thus it makes it easier for you to synchronize with the work of others, track changes and also switching back to the old code when something gets messed up. Git and Subversion are the two most popular version control software. The first one is distributed in nature, while the second one is a centralized system. You should choose depending on the nature of the project and your development needs.

» Get started with Git
» Subversion Tutorial

Development – NetBeans IDE for PHP

It’s time to leave the good old Dreamweaver and go for an integrated development environment or IDE. As the name suggests, an IDE gives you all the facilities like debugging, testing, documentation, version control, deployment in a single environment. There are a lot of IDEs to choose from, but you should definitely try out NetBeans. It’s very user-friendly, has great code-assistance(for HTML/CSS and JavaScript as well), small footprint on system resources and absolutely free! You can add/remove plugins from their online plugin repository to make it more useful.

» Download NetBeans

Project Management – PHProjekt

A project management tool allows you to co-ordinate the project with your client, collaborate development with the coders, track issues and bugs, manage development milestones etc. PHProjekt is web-based tool that can be deployed in your company intranet network. It has a project structure tree that can be subdivided into sub-projects, and unlimited tasks can be added to these. It also features a resource reserving system, this should make your team more efficient and productive, and allow you to know who’s using what, when.

» Get PHProject

What do you think of the list? Anything you might want to add? Any alternatives you prefer? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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2. Are you concerned that one of your customers might upload your eBook on a file sharing site and you will lose sales?

3. Would you like to automatically stamp the footer of your PDF eBooks with the customer’s personal details (e.g. name, email, address) upon purchase to discourage sharing?

If you have answered “yes” to all of the above then the WP PDF Stamper plugin might be a good solution for you.

Plugin Summary

The WP PDF Stamper plugin allows you to dynamically stamp a PDF file with the customer’s details (e.g. name, email, address etc.) upon purchase. If you are wondering why it is important to stamp the PDF eBook before giving it to your customer then this page is for you.

Plugin Features

Below are just some of the notable features of the WP PDF Stamper Plugin:

Plugin Demo

• Example eBook (before and after stamping)
• Live Demo with PayPal Button

Footer Stamp Visual Overview

Footer Stamp Visual Overview

Documentation & Technical Support

• Documentation site (Contains all the documentation for the WP PDF Stamper plugin)

If you are having any issue with this plugin then feel free to leave a comment in the comment area below or on the documentation site or post it on the support forum.

Minimum Requirements

• PDF Stamper Plugin Minimum Requirements

License Agreement

• PDF Stamper License Agreement

Buy the WP PDF Stamper Plugin

WP PDF Stamper

Protect your eBooks from being uploaded to file sharing sites by automatically stamping the footer of your PDF files with the customer's personal details (e.g. name, email, address) upon purchase! More Info

Please see the Products page for more packaged product deals.

Become an Affiliate

Like the WordPress PDF Stamper plugin? Why not sign up for an affiliate account and promote it to make some money?

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any queries.

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1. Visual Distinction: Customers associate with the branding that you offer yourself. Present a professional image by placing your logo on every page and keeping the same format on all of the pages within your site. When customers see that particular format, you want them to recognize it as yours.
2. Recognition: Let clients know about the recognition that your company has received. A real referral and award is some of the best public relations that you can ask for. Don’t forget that the awards that you receive can be verified by your customers.
3. Secured Transactions: If you show your clients that you want to protect their data by using secured communication, you are taking a great step to gaining their trust. You are showing them that they can trust you with their valuable information and trust the products that you are selling.
4. Respond Personally to Correspondence: When you offer a suggestion, you want to know that someone has looked at it and evaluated it. You want to believe that there’s a possibility that they will follow it if it is feasible. If a customer gives you a suggestion or complaint, take the time to express your gratitude to that customer for expressing their opinion. Form letters are infuriating, and it shows your customers that you really don’t care.
5. The Truth will bring you Trust: If you are claiming that you are the people’s choice award winner for three years running, somebody will do fact checking for you and make sure that you are indeed the people’s choice winner. If there is any doubt about the claims that you are making, don’t make them.
6. Spinning and superlatives: Hype and superlatives make many people cringe. Respect those people by not trying out the hard sell. They will come back to you if you rely on giving the best products and services.
7. Social Media Presence: Your customers will perceive you as being more accessible if you are seen as being in all of the same social media places as they are. Being everywhere instills a sense of trust in your customer’s mind. They see you offering great advice about a subject that you’re passionate in, and they want to be closer to that.
8. Stop talking about yourself: If you are constantly talking about yourself, you are not talking about what a customer most wants to hear about. It is important to let them know about your accolades and your triumphs, but they really want to know what you can offer them. How are you going to serve the customer and please them? If all a customer sees is ‘me’ and ‘I,’ they’re bound to be turned off.
9. What happens behind the scenes?: Tell customers about what happens behind the scenes. How are decisions made at your company? Talk about creative ways that you’ve overcome adversity. People want to hear that from you, and framing it in humility develops that trust that you are craving.
10. Simplify and streamline: The simple rule is that you want to make it as easy for customers to buy stuff from you as you possibly can. You don’t want them to be distracted with the protocol and the logins, you want them to get quickly to the checkout button. Make your site easy to navigate, and have them create a log in after the sale.

The process of building online trust is gradual. Most of the techniques come down to treating customers the way that they want to be treated. By following the preceding tips, customers will show you patronage.

This guest post was written by James who is a manager at an online store called Cartridge Save who specialize in reviewing and comparing products like HP 350 ink to help make customers’ buying choices easier.

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In the first section of this article I have listed the well known WordPress caching plugins and my recommendation. The next section has a list of few nice utility type plugins which you might find useful (depending on your situation). Please note that you don’t need to install all of the plugins listed here on your site (Just pick whatever fits your needs).

Top WordPress Caching Plugins

W3 Total Cache

A lot of people still use the WP Super Cache plugin. WP Super Cache is a nice plugin but have you tried the W3 Total Cache plugin yet? If you are using a WordPress caching plugin and you have never tried the W3 Total Cache then you seriously need to give this plugin a go. W3 Total Cache is a relatively newer caching plugin with better performance and the configuration is much easier and cleaner. It works nicely with the WP eStore, WP eMember and the WP Affiliate Platform Plugins too (more details here).

W3 Total Cache is the fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. Trusted by many popular sites like: mashable.com, smashingmagazine.com, yoast.com…. tipsandtricks-hq.com and others.

W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

Hyper Cache

Hyper Cache is a new caching system for WordPress, specifically written for people who have their blogs on low resources hosting provider (CPU and MySQL). It works even with hosting based on Microsoft IIS.

WP-Cache

WP-Cache is an efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching WorPress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a HTML file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

DB Cache

The DB Cache plugin caches every database query with given lifetime. It is much faster than other HTML caching plugins and uses less disk space for caching.

1 Blog Cacher

1 Blog Cacher is a WordPress plugin that caches your pages in order to increase the response speed and minimize the server load. Cached files are stored in HTML files, and organized in directories emulating the URLs (if “safe_mode” is not enabled), so it’s easy to display the content of the files and organize them (for instance deleting the cache for a given entry, for all categories, for all searches, for all posts from a given date, etc.)

Other Useful Site Speed Related Plugins

Clean Options

As you go on installing, using and uninstalling plugins on WordPress, the ‘wp_options’ table becomes bloated. Even some themes use this table to store settings related data. Some of those records don’t get deleted as the plugin/theme is uninstalled. The table continues to grow and contribute to progressively slower load times. The Clean Options plugin gives users an easy and safe way to get a bloated wp_options table down to a manageable size. It’s equipped with many built-in safety features so you don’t accidently delete any data that’s needed for your blog to operate.

IFrameWidgets

Bloggers often add various widgets to their site for social networking, advertising, weather update etc. Widgets remain hidden until they are completely loaded. Some of these widgets could be written using slow JavaScript, causing your page to slow down. If they somehow give up, the page gets broken as items after the slow widgets fail to load. The IframeWidgets plugin eliminates this problem by loading the widgets within an Iframe. Iframes load parallel to the rest of the page, so if one or more of those sluggish widgets hang, the page on its own remain unaffected.

Optimize DB

Optimize DB lets you speed up your MySQL database, without you needing to learn complicated optimization techniques. This plugin runs the ‘optimize table’ command on your WordPress tables and defragments them. This significantly reduces the query execution time and physical space on disk. Use it to optimize the tables which are updated the most.

CSS Compress

CSS Compress is a nice plugin to reduce the size of bloated CSS files. It removes comments as well as white space characters from the CSS (new lines and tabs). It also performs GZIP compression. Using this plugin reduces the CSS for the default “Kubrick” theme from 8 KB to 1.7 KB! It’s also very easy to install and use. If you are using the W3 Total Cache plugin then you shouldn’t need to use a CSS compressor plugin.

Digg Protector

Many bloggers have complained about ‘invasion of Diggers’. If one your posts get Digged, it’ll drive a lot of traffic, stretching out your server-load to maximum. Most of this load is caused by high amount of images that are loaded. The Digg Protector plugin will determine if a visitor is from Digg, and if he is then the plugin will serve him a remotely-hosted version of the image, taking the load off your site’s server. Otherwise, the plugin will serve the locally-hosted (on that server) image.

PHP Speedy

Another handy tool for boosting site performance. PHP Speedy can speed up the download time of your web pages by joining together all the appropriate files and compressing them. The recently released version(0.4.7) requires WordPress 2.6 or higher.

Hopefully you will find some of these plugins useful.

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