Web Performance Matters

I've recently revised some details of the site's structure and layout, mainly to improve navigation and content findability.

Here's a rundown of the changes:

• Home: I rearranged the Home page layout to bring the list of links to recent posts much closer to the top, expanded that list to include all posts in date order, most recent first, and placed notes about other access methods at the foot of the page.
• Performance Topics: I moved this page from the "About" section to the "Performance journal" section, and split its content. The overview of the journal's subject matter went to a new Introduction page, and I added the relevant category link to each entry in the lists of Performance Topics.
• Indexes Page: I created a new Indexes page in the journal section. It contains an alphabetical index to all posts, and pointers to all the other ways of finding what you're looking for.
• Content Search: On all journal pages, the sidebar now includes a (new) integrated site search feature from Squarespace that is very effective. Try it!
• Site Abstract: I converted the introductory paragraph from the home page into a short abstract explaining the purpose of the site, and added it at the top of all journal summary pages pages -- i.e. journal pages that list multiple posts.
• Email Feed: In addition to the RSS and Atom feeds, you can now subscribe to the site and be notified of updates via email, using the FeedBlitz service. See the link near the foot of the sidebar.
• Print Layouts: I mentioned previously that there are print and email buttons at the foot of each post (see below). I have improved the print template, so that my introductory post illustrations no longer overlay the post title when a post is printed.
• Broken Links: Thanks to the reports of Google's crawlers, I was able to locate and fix about a dozen broken links within the content.

As I said before, the first law of debugging is: There's always another bug. So I'm sure someone will find one that I have missed. If you do, please post the details as a comment below, and I'll do my best to fix it.

Thanks in advance!

Tags: site update, performance, indexing, findability, content search, squarespace