It’s been about a week now since the 4.0 update for WordPress codenamed “Benny” was released. Overall, 4.0 makes the step from draft to publishing a much more seamless experience and I love it.

The new update includes a lot of bug fixes and security updates as well as lots of nice nifty new features that WordPress enthusiasts will love. Video embeds are so much easier now. All you have to do is paste in the URL directly from your web browser into your blog post; no more looking for the video embed codes. In addition, WordPress 4.0 supports more sites not just YouTube Sites like WordPress.tv, Ted.com, Vimeo.com, Spotify.com and a ton of other media sites are all supported with this new feature. Furthermore, video and audio files are playable right within the editor.

Plugins are a lot easier to find with the new interface as well. Instead of an all text interface, the plugin view now sports thumbnail pictures of all the plugins plus a whole lot more detailed information that you will find useful. Even currently installed apps show more detail than they ever did before. Without even opening the page, you can more easily see how popular a plugin is as well as when it was updated and even if its compatible or not with your current version of WordPress. Clicking the “More details” link opens up a pop-up window giving you a more detailed description of the plugin. Prior to this you had to go directly to the WordPress.org page for the plugin in another browser window or tab. Certainly the new plugin view makes this makes plugin searches and selection a whole lot easier.

Editing and viewing your posts is a lot more fluid as well. With 4.0 you get a better picture of what your finished masterpiece will look like on your blog page. The new media library, sports an interface with infinite scrolling of your uploaded media. I find this is a great tool to find any broken media as I do occasionally find. Being able to scroll my media lets me find things more easily. The editing window fits your content as you write and keeps the formatting toolbar in view even as you scroll your post, kind of the same way you might freeze panes in Microsoft Excel.

Ultimately, I think the 4.0 update makes the WordPress interface more fun!

One of the features touted about the latest WordPress 3.2 release is that its lighter and faster.  So why is being lighter and faster important? Because having a lighter and faster website makes it easier for your blog visitors stick around. Just think about it, who likes slow websites anyway? If your site takes too long to load you run the risk visitors will quickly navigate to another site. So here are a couple of simple ways to optimize  WordPress.

Reduce Your Plugins

Yes we all love plugins and there are quite a number I can’t live without. But if you are trying to optimize WordPress you want to make sure you reduce them as much as possible. Why? Because  plugins have the potential to impact your blog performance. They will sometimes draw extra (http) requests as in the case of some social plugins. Personally I try not to go with more then 20 or 30 plugins but bit for some others that might even be too many.

Shared hosting is a wonderful thing but it still has its caveats. That is, some people will encounter wordpress memory limit problems when they administer their websites. I came across this problem recently when I started getting 404 errors after making posts and trying to re-configure one of my websites using the theme settings. I inquired with my web host provider Dreamhost and was told that my websites were approaching the memory limit.

They gave me advice on how to track and reduce my memory usage and also mentioned that I could simply upgrade to a private server account in order to increase my memory threshold. This disappointed me a bit because I wasn’t quite prepared to extend the budget for web hosting just yet.

That said, I tried to figure out a few more ways to reduce my memory limit with a little research and tinkering on my own. I’ll list my findings below:

1) Examine Your Scripts

In my case I had a bad script which was putting visible gobblety gook on the header of my web page. It was a problem I noticed but didn’t realize was related to my memory/page speed problems. Bad scripts can slow down a page significantly. You most likely wont have any added scripts if you are just starting out but as you implement other features into your website you may be required to paste a script or two into your header and this is where the problems can start.

2) Use Firebug

You can test for all web page loading elements by using the Firefox browser and the FireBug add in. Speed page is another tool you can use and it

So I’ve worked long and hard at this project of mine, and that is trying to figure out which WordPress Themes I was going to buy for my website. I was done with trying to make a free WordPress theme work. It was just too much of a hassle and the lack of tech support and options to customize it was making want to pull my hair out.

So if my experience hasn’t convinced you, I’ve listed quite a few more reasons why you might want to purchase a premium WordPress theme:

1) More Control: You have more control of your website appearance and functionality as some of the better premium themes come with customization options that you can easily change without having to edit the code itself. Yes, WordPress is easy but its not that easy. Website themes or templates make it easier for you to customize your site the way you want it to look and function. I’ve found that free themes are some of the hardest themes to work with if you have no knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP code and have bigger ideas in mind for your website.

2) Tech Support: Professional WordPress Suppliers almost always provide tech support to purchasers of their WordPress themes.

3) HTML/Browser Compliance: You can be assured that the theme is professionally made and internet code compliant from a trusted source.

4) Free Upgrades: When you buy a WordPress theme from a reputable source, all future upgrades are usually provided for free or at a low cost.