I’m pleased to announce that the meaningfulmoney re-branded site went live yesterday.
I offered my services for free as way of sponsoring this project with Pete Matthew. I’ve posted before about my views on financial education and it just felt right to help out with a site that is clearly leading the way when it comes to accessible, financial education for all.
Version one of meaningful money was built and hosted with squarespace but Pete was coming up against their limitations as the site grew.
The site was ported across from Squarespace to WordPress; a perfect platform for MM.tv to grow from.
It was an absolute pleasure working with Pete. I know he’s brimming with ideas on how to push the site and brand into other channels and look forward to being there to help with developments if and when it’s required.
Now, on to the geeky stuff!
The tech behind the site
Given the nature of this site, there’s some interesting technology that powers this site and helps to promote it. I’ll explain as much of this below:
Stay snappy!
Given the current and future projected visitors to this site, it’s important that the site can handle as many concurrent visitors as possible. No one likes a site that takes forever to load!
We’ve installed a WordPress plugin called “super cache” to the site which helps reduce the server resource usage and load time. Here’s how :
- The first time a page is requested, the web server pulls together every element of the page (header, text, images etc) and “builds” that page.
- The built page is then stored in a folder for future use.
- The first visitor to the page is shown the built page, after the building work has been completed.
- Any subsequent visitor to that page doesn’t wait for the page to be “built” but instead gets shown the pre-built page. It takes less time for a server to display a pre-built page than having to build it each time.
Hey search engines, i’ve done something new!
In my view, WordPress is such a fantastic tool for getting into the search engines. Out of the box it’s already well coded for the search engines, but with a few extra plugins you can substantially improve the Search Engine Optimisation of the site.
On MM.tv, i’ve installed and customised the awesome “WordPress SEO by Yoast” plugin. I’ve mentioned this plugin before, but i honestly love the level of detail and customisation that can be achieved with this plugin.
To help push updates “out there” i’ve setup for WordPress to metaphorically knock the door of the major search engines with an itemised list of everything that’s changed since the last time they looked at the site.
This technology really works. It’s the same technology that makes blog posts byProposito and Informed Choice appear within google searches minutes after being published. Technology at it’s greatest!
Ignoring the immediate door-knocking of the site, it’s also packed with the special code that the search engines crave. Team that up with the social elements built into the site and the search engines have no reason not to push this site further up their rankings.
Lower the barriers of entry…
Historically, only the die-hard fans of a website would leave comments. This was usually because the sites they were visiting required them to create “accounts” before they could post anything.
The problem with this is that people have become more protective of the data they give out, even though they share it all with Google, Facebook and Twitter!. Why push people away when you could allow commenting on the site using the accounts they have with other services, like twitter, facebook and more?
Enter Disqus.
Disqus is a superb commenting plugin that allows your visitors to leave comments using their social media accounts. It’s a doddle to setup, and the effect it has on commenting is incredible! I set this up on my site months back, and up to then didn’t have a single comment on my site. Now (dependent on the post!) i get a lot more of a discussion. Don’t block out your community, let them in!
So that’s the little insight to the tech that sits behind the MM.tv site. Let me know if you have any questions at all about the site, or WordPress in general.
