Hi there,

Glad to hear your site is performing well! :-)

The 200 number I threw out is just a suggestion. Obviously you can exceed that number if you want to and may not encounter any extra issues.

It was just a piece of advice for trying to optimize site loading times. If you don't notice any issues with more than 200 items, then you should be fine. I only encourage users to utilize the dropdown menu system to break items up.

Regarding the home page, WordPress only supports the standard index page (in this case the map with all posts) and normal pages you create as representing the home page. You might have some luck searching for a plugin that allows you to display a category page on the home page. If not, you can always adjust the 'showposts' number in the index.php file to display a number you specify.

Hope that helps!

Chris

Thanks. I use caching, the images are fairly optimized. Chaching is current off as I move things around, but when on, the site loads pretty fast. Traffic is not high enough yet for CDN or dedicated hosting, but something I have to keep in mind for sure.
I guess the loading of high numbers of points on the Google Map is the concern, as I don't have control over google's performance.

What sparked my topic is Chris's post here (near the bottom) http://www.themolitor.com/forums/topic/the-navigator-category-cannot-exceed-297-posts
advising that no more than 200 should load at a time.

I see categories as the obvious way of breaking up the loading and avoiding going over 200, but how do I do this on the Front Page? Is there any way of having it pull up the last 200? or 200 random points in this case? That would be perfect actually, solving this issue for a lot of users.

In my case, any design changes that you would recommend (maybe I'm just not seeing an option or way to organize) would be helpful. I'm just trying to get around loading so many points at first.

The theme runs great but any updates or tips for those growing our sites, which will be well exceeding 200 points would be really helpful. Thanks!

cache plugins(my favorite is W3 total) using a CDN, have a quality host share hosting just doesnt cut it if you want performance done right.

also use tools like google pagespeed etc, optimizing all of you images etc..

-Chris K

Here's the site, growing fast, and performing well:
http://nyhistoric.com/
The front page is a PAGE with no location information, so the map pulls up all the locations in the system. It's great because I can put up a welcome message and some usage tips and, at the same time, display a bunch of locations for people to explore and get started. (you can zoom out to see all the points we have mapped so far).
Based on advice from another post, it is recommended not to load more than 200 posts at once. Since I'm at 198 now, I need to figure out what to do to best introduce my users to my site and keep it performing well. I see I can add a background image to the front page, but I'm hoping there's another option. Any ideas?