Site speed is getting more and more important, not less. And knowing that your site is loading quickly can benefit your readers as well as your site. But once you’ve made your images as small as possible, what can you do to improve your page speeds? The Page Speed Firebug plugin can help. You just load this plugin (you must have Firebug installed already) into Firefox, browse to a page you want to check, and run the analysis. Not only does it tell you where your pages are slowing down, it shows you how you can fix it.

• Improve Your Download Times: Page Speed
• Creating Speedy Graphics for Download
• The Size of Your Pages
• "Thank You for Your Patience"
• Web Site Optimization for Fast Downloads
• See all the Software Picks
• Suggest Software for the Pick of the Week

Social networks are getting more and more popular. People use them to connect with friends and colleagues, stay up-to-date on things that interest them, you can even use them to assist in your job search. But there are so many different ones out there. I have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account focused primarily on this site. But are there other social media sites that you use?

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Back in April, Google announced that they were adding a new signal to their ranking algorithm – speed. I have been told recently that web page sizes are no longer as important because many people have high speed internet connections. Google has found in their tests that the slower a site loads, the less time people stay on that site. So, even if all your customers have DSL or better connections, they still will benefit from a fast site. And you will benefit from happier customers. One way to speed up your site is by having the web server compress the files before delivering them. This can reduce load times significantly.

How to Speed Up Your Web Pages

• How to Compress Websites with Gzip Compression
• Speeding Up Your Web Page
• White Space in HTML Can Slow Your Pages
• Remove Comments from HTML to Speed Download Time