We all know WordPress is one of the most versatile and easy to use CMSs, with plenty of features which made him one of the best blogging platform available on the market. However it still lacks and adequate support for multilingual blogs, for instance when we’d need ot post the same article in more than one language at the same time.

If the CMS itself does not provide enough support for this feature, we can sort thing out pretty easily with a few plugins:

• Google Ajax Translation, this Google API makes available translation to users on your blog frontpage. It is not to be considered a proper WordPress plugin but it works just as good.

• WPML Multilingual CMS, with this plugin we would be able to get a fully working multilingual blogs in just a few minutes. No need of any change inside the source code or tables, it works straight out of the box.

   

• qTranslate, with this plugin we would be able to manage content in different languages from the WordPress editor, through automatic translation and permalink management.

Page loading time is a crucial factor when it comes to estimate page’s usability as well as search engine’s rankings and Google’s Adwords quality score.

according to this statement, Google is going to update its assessment policy . Page load time it is soon due to become an important factor requiring specific assessment and optimization from webmasters and SEOs.

In order to calculate page loading time, you might try Pingdom. Pingdom is an online utility which calculates pages text, images and scripts, giving you also some interesting suggestions about improvement.

However, besides any Google statement about quality score or rankings, it’s always good to think about you user’s experience on your website: nobody likes websites taking too long to load.

Considering both usability and rankings, this should be some general guidelines to be followed one assessing and optimizing page’s loading time:

Text and page structure should load and be completely visible within the first 3 seconds
Any other element of the page must be visible within the first 8 seconds

These are only thumb rules of course. Always cehck your page weight and loading times. Working on this side of on-page optimization can lead to interesting discoveries sometimes.

Since my MacBook is gone and it will be for a while I guess, I was force to come back to my old laptop, a Pentium IV with only 256megs of ram.

I’m currently running Windows XP Pro which is fine but Firefox is just sucking up all the resources making everything else unbereably slow.

Here’s a short list of a few lightweight browsers I tried out in the past days:

K-Meleon: so far, the very best lightweight browser for windows. Basically it has got all Firefox funcionalities minus add-ons and a slightly old look&feel. It’s open source and works with the Mozilla rendering engine. It’s multitab and has got basically everything the old mozilla had.

Google Chrome: it’s Google’s wonderboy, truly a lightweight champion. The only bad thing it’s that it is not stable, not enough for me at least. Still the fastest so far.

Flock 1.0: another Firefox spin-off, at least 3 times faster and lighter. Still to much of a Firefox, which means huge memory leaks if left standing by. It’s more focused on social media but I noticed it is also quite lightweight.

23/03/09 update:

I just bumped into two other browser which even if they’re not exactly the most lightweight they may run smoothly on a machine with limited resources.

I’ve just found another one which is worth to be mentioned. Maxthon: originally born as an attempt to tweak Internet Explorer, its features and popularity escalated to a point in which is got funding from Google and one of Skype’s founder. It’s Classic Version its tiny and lightweight with a full set of features and that’s the one you should go for if you’re willing to spare some resources. It might be unknown to the most but is the most popular web browser in china. Give it a try and see if 186million users do actually know about web browsers.

AvantBrowser: according to its creators it’s the fastest browser ever. It uses the Internet Explorer shell built in windows (hence you gotta check your Internet Explorer out first).It’s largely inspired to Opera and it has got plenty of feature right out of the box, which makes it a really good alternative to using to many apps in a system with limited resources. It deserves a try.

10 best seo extensions for firefox

Starting from the very beginning with this blog, makes me think of the most useful tools to work on SEO and SEM online. Since I spend most of the time on a browser, tweaking Firefox might come handy. Explorer has got some toolbars, but nothing comparable to the more customizable firefox.

1. Ghostery – I”l pick this up from most useful real time analysis tool the analysis tools. Basically it scans the page looking for scripts (analytics, adsense, other ads) and displays a tiny box on the upper left corner. While using it, you automatically agree with online bug research. If you too smuggy to join this then you can rummage through the options and untick the bo.

2. Search Status – This addon actually changed the way I looked at the internet. Whatever website, I feel like the urge to check the Search Status box that shows page rank and alexa rank. My navigation habit has been seriously affected by it. Since I do quite some research on potential affiliates for campaign or just about the competition I can come across in my projects the “quality assessment” I mentally do on website as affected my habits as normal user as well.Anyway this tiny tool as way more to offer than this, check this page out.

3.SEOpen – Ok if search status was not enough for you, you might try this. Probably it’s the most complete SEO Firefox Extension. Need to check backlinks, page rank, reputation in real time? SEOpen makes everything easier and quick.

4. Total validationOne of the most underrated factors in search engine optimization is probably a W3C certification for your website. It guarantees a clean and tidy code and Google seems to love this.
Anyway, If you do not want to spent too much time on the online W3c check page, you might think about installing this addon. It checks everything you need without having to point your browser to the W3C website.
Plus, it makes sure you links are ok and also runs accesibility tests.

5. Niche Watch If you really into niche website focused on specific content and long tail keywords traffic, this might come more than handy. This extension allows to keep track of whatever happens on your niche, analyzing competitors and SERP.

6. SEO Hand It’s good to always be able to track keywords positioning into SERPs. This one makes it for you.

7. Keywords Generator Need to create keywords from scratch? This one generates a whole lotta keywords for you. Straight from Firefox.

8. SEOQuest Up to 30 useful seo tools in one tiny extension. Probably the best of the lot

9. XRay This one probably will suit better webmasters rather than SEOs. Anyway, it is always nice to know something about the source  code while you are surfing.

10.FireNES – Ok now we went through the whole list but there’s still something you need to install on firefox. It’s not about SEO or SEM it’s more like going back in time and turn your old NES on. 200 NES games on firefox available at any time!