Improvements to the News Section of our Website are Paying Dividends.
The article you are reading was created, published and hosted on our own webserver right here in Arab, Alabama. Running your own webservers is not for the faint of heart, but it’s something I’ve been doing since 1994. So much has changed over the years. Especially since we transitioned from IBM to Dell and from Novell to the Microsoft platform for all servers back in 2006 to 2008.
Static HTML web pages are so much simpler to host and serve, but more time consuming to create. For frequent updates such as our news and announcements, it just makes sense to utilize WordPress, an open-source content management system. Ah, but like everything in life, it comes with a good side and a bad side.
WordPress runs on PHP coupled with MYSQL, not Microsoft’s IIS (Internet Information Services). There are many complications involved in making these three things work together. However, when you get it right, it is a beautiful thing!
As of 11/26/2022 the Stars are Aligned
After publishing this post about 401-K and IRA Limit Increases for 2023, I tested the page at three of the major online tools for web developers to check website performance and discover optimizations. Here are the results.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights (SC, USA)
GTMetrix (Vancouver, Canada)
GeekFlare (London, England)
As you can see, the test results are extraordinary! Every web publisher strives for these kinds of results. After recently updating one of the platforms I use, the update broke something else, which then had to be upgraded, causing a domino effect of changes to be made. Two weeks and a lot of work later, I’m so pleased that I just had to share the achievement.