More Bug Fixes

After trying to deal with xhtml validation errors:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer

I started rewriting the Etomite news module again to automatically finish closing all html tags. I also adjusted it to show more of the story by default.

Then I ran YSlow and optimized my site to get a 89 (B) grade. I can't get an A without moving to CDN servers. This was worth it! My site is much more responsive, smaller, and renders without errors.

One of the easy fixes YSlow suggested that made the most difference was to set my Etags:

http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2007/07/high_performanc_11.html

By adjusting my .htaccess file on my Dreamhost server. I added the line:

FileETag MTime Size  

And now  the browser doesn't have to recheck every image on page reloads. It's actually a Dreamhost bug that causes it.

I also added:

<FilesMatch ".(ico|pdf|flv|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|js|css|swf)$">
Header set Expires "Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:00:00 GMT"
</FilesMatch>  

To my .htaccess to set a longer expiration date on my files.

Overall I got my http requests down from ~5 on a reload to 1 (I have a random image on each page).

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Message:

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