General web tips (4)

Life as a web developer is a changing one - all the time. The online tools I used a couple of years ago might not be around anymore. Other tools, like the Adobe Photoshop, are tried and true. They stay with me year after year. I’d like to share some of the online tools I currently use in my business.

Google Tag Manager is a new, free service from Google that helps you set up and manage your web site code snippets. Tags, as Google call them, are code snippets like the Google Analytics tracking code and more. You can add any type of tags to the tag manager, not only Google related ones.

I have previously written about how to add Javascript snippets to your Joomla web sites. The tag manager makes this even easier, and you can get away with adding just one piece of code.

Reduce server loadA while ago I came across this small tip in an online conversation. It might not be a huge thing, but it can have an impact if you have a site with lots of traffic.

80% of the end-user response time on a website is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: Images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.

One thing which can increase load-time in a website is the way redirects are handled.

Skype is always looking to create a better user experience for their users. The developers of this excellent communications platform have created a plugin for users to install into their browsers. The plugin creates buttons on phone numbers which makes it easy to call directly, using Skype.

I recently discovered that the Skype plugin actually remove the phone number entirely on some sites.