Heres a showcase of something a little different to what you are used to

Check out the newly optimised Circle Design

My site is the same minimalist, simple site. With a slightly newer header (smaller and on the horixontal axis rather than vertical)

It has been recoded with Server Side Includes, all images have been optimised. The coding has been trimmed back to bare bones. The written content is all brand new, with emphasis on certain keywords and getting the visitor passionate about contacting me.

The whole site is validated tableless xhtml/css except the sitemap pages xhtml. I am having trouble trying to get nested lists validated in xhtml. A little more research should fix this though.

The home page is 20.429kb and loads in 4.27 seconds on a 56kb connection. Once the images and css is cached the page loads in 1.4 seconds. You can view the whole site speed report here.

Comments based on the above would be appreciated, also if you are considering optimising your site, contact me if you would like to talk about how I did it. I am applying the same techniques to all the sites I administer, and all the new sites I am designing.