Phil

IF you can log into the admin, deactivate all the plugins and test again. If faster, reactivate plugin one at a time and see if there is one plugin causing issue.

Check that site_name and Site_url in database table ‘WP-Options’ are the updated folder.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-plugin/

If you have access to the server, upload a html page with some images etc and test if it too also takes a while. If it does, it is most likely the server so contact the host. If not, it could be the WP install so try changing themes or disabling plugins to test if theme/install/plugin causing the issue.

1. Maybe need to find another plugin (like this: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/advanced-recent-posts-widget/) as the default widget will pull all posts from all categories.

2. To remove the category from urls, ‘Open Settings’ -> ‘Permalinks’ and set as custom, with /%postname%/

1. Nope.

2. Javascript menus are not bad for SEO. Why not create a menu in Appearance -> Menus, then add a ‘custom menu’ widget to your sidebar from Appearance -> Widgets.

Have you tried improving image quality of resized images via the functions.php file (BACKUP this file before trying):

function ajx_sharpen_resized_files( $resized_file ) {

    $image = wp_load_image( $resized_file );
    if ( !is_resource( $image ) )
        return new WP_Error( 'error_loading_image', $image, $file );

    $size = @getimagesize( $resized_file );
    if ( !$size )
        return new WP_Error('invalid_image', __('Could not read image size'), $file);
    list($orig_w, $orig_h, $orig_type) = $size;

    switch ( $orig_type ) {
        case IMAGETYPE_JPEG:
            $matrix = array(
                array(-1, -1, -1),
                array(-1, 16, -1),
                array(-1, -1, -1),
            );

            $divisor = array_sum(array_map('array_sum', $matrix));
            $offset = 0;
            imageconvolution($image, $matrix, $divisor, $offset);
            imagejpeg($image, $resized_file,apply_filters( 'jpeg_quality', 90, 'edit_image' ));
            break;
        case IMAGETYPE_PNG:
            return $resized_file;
        case IMAGETYPE_GIF:
            return $resized_file;
    }

    return $resized_file;
}   

add_filter('image_make_intermediate_size', 'ajx_sharpen_resized_files',900);

Yep, you can either have it like this:

Blog category
– sub-category 1
– sub-category 2
– sub-category 3

or just ‘Blog category’ and all posts in there.

Creating the new blog category will auto create a /blog slug (if thats what you call the slug when you create it)

You can then create a menu item in ‘Appearance’ -> ‘Menus’, create a custom Menu item with blog as the url and order it wherever you want in the menu.