My biggest complaint with Google’s implementation of the Google +1 button code is that it loads slowly. For a company obsessed with speed in the search results it returns, Google did a lousy job of making the +1 button load fast on Web sites. Thankfully, Aaron Peters did a full analysis of Google +1 button performance and provided a solution to make Google +1 buttons run faster everywhere. You should definitely read all the why behind the configuration in Aaron’s post, but I’ll cut to the meat of it so that you can tweak your own button code.

In running a performance testing using Pingdom tools, I had already caught the fact that Google +1 redirects the JavaScript provided from an http URL to an https URL. That redirect to https will slow a page load by .5 seconds for many users, which, on top of all the other things going on in most sites, adds to an already obvious load time. If you do nothing else, change the JavaScript call for the Google +1 button from this:

<script src=”http://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

to this:

<script src=”https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

If you want to go all the way in speeding up your page load, use the asynchronous code tweak below to load the Google +1 button in a non-blocking way. I tend to place all my asynchronous JavaScript files just before the closing /head tag, but Aaron recommends placing this code just before the closing /body tag at the end of your page as noted in his comment. Either option is much faster than trying to use the stock code provided by Google.

It’s that easy. You will see that all of your friends are now highlighted. QED.

My System (for comparison)
• MS XP Pro
• Service Pack 2
• Intel Core 2 Duo @2GHz
• 3.25 GB RAM

1) Install Microsoft IIS onto your computer. For this step you will probably need the Windows software cd that came with your computer.
a. Go to Control Panel
b. Click on Add/Remove Windows Components
c. Check IIS, hit “Next” follow on-screen directions

2) Download PHP from http://www.php.net/downloads.php. Currently I am using version 5.2.9.
a. Extract the Zipped files to C:\PHP. (PHP’s website

3) PHP 5 includes a CGI executable and a CLI executable as well as the server modules. All .dll files for PPHP can be found in the folder C:\PHP\ext

4) Add php5ts.dll to the Environmental Services PATH
a. Click on “Start”
b. Right-click on “My Computer”
c. Select “Properties”
d. Select “Advanced”
e. Select “Environmental Variables”
f. In the bottom panel, scroll to and double-click on “PATH” at the end of the statement, add “;C:\PHP” Do NOT forget the semi-colon, and do NOT change anything else!
g. Click “OK” on the Environmental Variables window and then on the System Properties window. Restart Computer.

5) Configure PHP.
a. Navigate to C:\PHP
b. Rename php.ini-recommended to php.ini and open in any text editor
c. Search for “doc_root”
d. Delete preceding semi-colon and change to “doc_root=C:\inetpub\wwwroot
e. Search for “cgi.force_redirect”
f. Delete preceding semi-colon and change to “cgi.force_redirect=0″

6) Configure IIS
a. Click on “Start”
b. Right-click on “My Computer”
c. Select “Manage”
d. Maximize “Services and Applications”
e. Right-click on “Web Sites” and select “Properties”
f. Under the “ISAPI Filters” tab click on “Add”, set filter name to “PHP”, set Executable to “C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll”
g. Under the “Home Directory” tab set “Execute Permissions” to “Scripts Only”
h. Under the “Documents” tab click “Add” and enter “index.php” and Click “ok”
i. Click on “OK” for the “Web Sites Properties” window.
j. Restart IIS
i. Right-click on “Internet Information Services” in the “Computer Management” window
ii. Select “ALL Tasks” then “Restart IIS”, then select “OK”

7) Test PHP
a. Open a text editor (such as Notepad)
b. Enter in this:
c. Make sure to save as “phpinfo.php” in the directory “C:\inetpub\wwwroot”;
d. in Notepad, when saving, select the file type as “All Files”. If the file is saved as .txt it will not work.
e. Open up your favorite browser and use this link:
i. http://localhost/phpinfo.php
f. Your browser should now display a complete listing of PHP attributes.

Done!

Next time, configuring MySQL to work with PHP.

Please don’t hesitate to link to this article!