What we’ve been up to

• CMS;
• Image;
• Optimising;
• Caching;
• Passing 100 designscans;
• Next;

CMS

We upgraded our ExpressionEngine version from 2.7.3 to 2.9.0. ExpressionEngine is the core for DesignScan. This update has first been done on our developer version of DesignScan.me so that all problems where solved before moving to the live version.

It took longer than we participated, but we did it. Lot of modules, plug-ins and extensions needed to be updated or code slightly altered to run with the new EE 2.9.

• Template codes needed to be altered (due to a new conditionals parser)
• Testing member section and payment module (mayor update as well)

Image

From now on we use “lossless” compression for our image compression.

• gifsicle
• pngquant
• pngout
• jpegoptim

gifsicle -b -O2 --no-names --no-comments --same-delay --same-loopcount --no-warnings {{path}}
pngquant --quality=70-85 --ext=.png --force {{path}}
pngout -q {{path}}
jpegoptim --strip-all --all-progressive -q {{path}}

This resulted in significant savings in terms of KB's.

Optimising

We combined and minified our stylesheets and javascript files.

• for css: minify
• for js: jsmin

Resulting in appealing 1 stylesheet file and 1 javascript file.
Our HTML is minified as well, look at our websites source code.

Caching

We use APC (Alternative PHP Cache) as php Opcode.
Redis for key-value cache and store
Server: Gzip enabled.

Result

Passing 100 designscans

Great news, we past the 100 DesignScans last week.

Next

Working on some nice video tutorials, will go live this week.
Going to complete our support section.