Wackao » Ripul Kumar

Which is the Fastest WordPress Theme?

Ripul Kumar — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 05:10:16 +0000

WordPress is the best and most preferred CMS of all times. With more than 50% of websites now running on wordpress, wordpress themes are in demand these days. And as a result many popular Themes Clubs and Stores have come up. Many of these are now every designer’s list such as Elegant Themes, Theme Forest, Mojo-Themes and many more.

A common trend which has been seen in the premium theme stores is that though these are good looking themes but because of their nature and design, these themes are slow loading and are not w3c validated, which is a major concern when it comes to ranking higher in Search engines. Such themes are particularly important for small blog owners who want to get attention from Search engines which in most of the cases is the primary source of visitors.

This motivated me to find the fastest WordPress theme and following were the results which you’ll see:

1. SwiftThemes

2. vCandy

3. WP Simpy

4. After Burner

5. TwntyEleven

I did a small comparison among these themes and here are my results:See Results

I even tested out with TwentyTen and TwentyEleven themes under the same installation by switching themes and found that vCandy did come out to be the fastest theme with lowest loading time.

Plus best of all vCandy is 100% W3Cvalidated. See yourself

Download vCandy

Developers Hacks Siri for other Devices

Ripul Kumar — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:59:40 +0000

Recently Apply launched its iPhone 4s with a new and revolutionary feature “Siri”. Seems like developers/hackers of the world are now putting the feature into good use. Recently a hacker demonstrated how he can use “Siri” from iPhone to control his wifi thermostat.

Now this is some cool stuff.

Spam Blog comments have advanced levels

Ripul Kumar — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 05:41:47 +0000

How could I ever miss this? As the technologies in the web advance level by level so do spam on the web. One such medium of Spam are Spam comments on blog posts. Now, spam comments on your blog posts are not only focused on creating backlinks to the originator the sponsor but also to impact your site SEO negatively by creating spam in your blog comments. Surprisingly these comments pass the well known “Akismet” one of the most well known and excellent tool for WordPress blog/site owners.

Here is a screenshot of spam-comments which I regularly receive:

Interesting Fact: All these spam comments have spelling mistake & website as facebook or bing or google.com .

Lets have a 2 min Pause for the Legend! “Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)”

Ripul Kumar — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 03:42:10 +0000

Finally the day we all never wanted to see has come, as the Wikipedia says Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011). A true legend, the most renown and successful entrepreneur of our era has passed away. A person who has touched every one’s heart and redefined design, a great personality, the best presenter and a truely inspiring figure , lets all keep a 2 min pause for the legend.

At APPLE Official Site:

See tribute to Steve Jobs from Gizmodo :

A Tribute to Steve

Job’s Speech at Stanford

Best Google Doodle Ever!

Ripul Kumar — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:39:28 +0000

Today Google has launched a new Doodle which is the best Doodle Ever. It is amazing to see how Google is supporting HTML5 through their doodles and telling common folk about it. Yes! there is no flash involved.

The way I see the future it is definitely going to be the HTML5/CSS3 way, with Apple and Google supporting HTML5 and IE9 subjecting to the power of CSS3, in future all the browsers would start supporting HTML5. Though Flash has its own future with open source Paper Vision 3D. HTML5/CSS would challenge flash on all the 2D animation and effects and possibly replace flash in this arena, Flash would move on to higher levels of animation and 3D websites would become more popular.

Unable to call in iphone

Ripul Kumar — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:33:16 +0000

Yesterday my iphone was acting just like a paper weight for me…

I don’t know why i was not able to make any call to any number..though i was able to receive calls.

My network was completely fine, all other function, apps were doing fine and no hanging problem…

It just goes blank after i dial the number…completely blank.

One thing i noticed was whenever someone calls me i was able to make call within 2-3 minutes but after sometime back to the problem. The same was with the messages.I can receive the messages but i couldn’t send any.

The solution which got my phone working was i resetted all my network settings….

Amazing Apps for $0.99

Ripul Kumar — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 15:51:57 +0000

Well, I was just searching for some good apps for mac and found something very interesting. There is a big sale going on, Gameloft has released its “back to school” campaign where you get 4 Awesome apps for $0.99. These apps were previously ranging from $4.99 to $6.99.

The pic says it all guys, download these apps before its too late.

Silent Ops – ~~$6.99~~ ? $0.99
Backstab – ~~$6.99~~ ? $0.99
N.O.V.A. 2 – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance – ~~$6.99~~ ? $0.99
Dungeon Hunter 2 – ~~$6.99~~ ? $0.99
NFL 2011 – ~~$4.99~~ ? $0.99
Rayman 2: The Great Escape – ~~$4.99~~ ? $0.99
Splinter Cell Conviction™ – ~~$4.99~~ ? $0.99
Fast Five the Movie: Official Game – ~~$4.99~~ ? $0.99

Update(1st October,2011) Sorry Guys! the Offer has now Expired!

Why you should not use “digg digg”

Ripul Kumar — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:14:55 +0000

Many Bloggers must have used the social bookmarking wordpress plugin “digg digg”.

For those who don’t know about “digg digg”.
It is a social vote button or simply the social bookmark plugin used by bloggers.

It display counts for popular social butons such as digg,Facebook, Reddit etc etc.

I installed this plugin two weeks back on my blog. Though the plugin looks great but slowly and gradually my traffic decreased to half.

I was not able to make out what was the reason of this sudden drop in the visits and then two days ago while i was checking out my blog posts i came to know that the page is taking a hell lot of time to open that was the reason of the sudden drop in visitors to my blog.

I deactivated the plugin and my page was opening very fast.
So, what i did was disabled my plugin and to my surprise my daily visitors to my blog are back.

See the screenshot below

Ajax for CSS , Adapt.js makes CSS awesome!

Ripul Kumar — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 06:45:50 +0000

“If you haven’t heard about Adapt.js then you are missing a lot of updates in CSS” was the comment of my friend who is a CSS expert. I am using 960 grid in my WordPress themes and websites and still somehow I missed Adapt.js.

Adapt.js is an open source script which is licensed under the GPL and MIT. It is a very light weight javascript 826 bytes and is being termed as “Ajax for CSS” . Adapt has been developed by popular developer Nathansmith who also developed the 960 Grid system.

Adapt is a JavaScript file that determines which CSS file to load before the browser renders a page. If the browser tilts or resizes, Adapt.js simply checks its width, and serves only the CSS that is needed, when it is needed.

See usage here | Source at Github Here

Now, I recommend that as most of the CSS designers should follow Adapt.js and use different styling for different screen resolutions, so that the website looks good in all resolutions.

Is Google +1 going to change web search?

Ripul Kumar — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:04:31 +0000

Recently Google with its launch of two major products Google+ and Google +1 has created stirs in the SEO world. Many fear it is going to change how Google searches the web? This is even confirmed when you log in to Google web master central you see a +1 search impact and Google recommends it to put it on your site.

Is it going to change web search?

Yes AND No

Why Yes AND No?

Google +1 is not like digg or twitter or facebook likes because it is related to your Google account which almost every second person has. Think of how much social information Google has about you via Google+ and everytime you +1 something Google knows it.

There are both pros and cons to this:

Pros

1. Google is able to identify real traffic and detect spams.

2. Google can see who recommends what, therefore more information.

3. Locate from where recommendations are coming, so improve search results locally.

Cons

1. A new quality blog or site has a disadvantage as it might have the social circle to expand and showcase itself with +1′s.

2. It is give rise to more cheap tricks and +1 is not fool proof.

There would be many more pros but more important to me are the cons of +1 impacting search. Popular sites would able to get more +1′s , whereas smaller sites would not. Like we have several services going around for fake tweets, retweets, diggs, stumbles, facebook likes, services for fake Google +1′s has already started, I jot got a mail from someone to get 200 +1′s for $50 and they are 100% authentic users.

Accuracy of search results from the fact that the user is able to find what it is searching for. Searching becomes critical when the user is able to get results from pages from unknown or not so popular sites which serves his aim and purpose.

How much Google would be able to address this issue via Google +1 remains to be seen?