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How a bad web hosting service can negatively impact your online business

Lucian Apostol — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:40:26 +0000

The web hosting service is the most important aspect of your online business. Every piece of your website relies on the webshosting: the content saved in the database, the contact informations, products. If the hosting is down, your website is down and your business is 0. A good web hosting can take the stress out of you so you won’t worry any moment if your website is down or if it loads very slow.

Here are 3 ways how web hosting serviec quality can negatively impact your online business:

Downtime. If the hosting company can’t assure you an uptime of at least 99%, your website will be down often. If your website will be down 3% of time, then you are in big trouble. You may think that 3% is not that much, if you lose 3 conversions out of 100 but you have to pay much less to the hosting company then the profits are higher, right ? Well, it’s not that way. Usually a person needs more steps to make that conversion, so at one step he can get into that 3% of the time when the host is down. You will lose more than 3% in conversions. Looking just at numbers, 3% of an hour is about 2 minutes, 3% of a day is 45 minutes, and 3% of a month means 21 hours, almost a day.
Slow loading. If your website is loading very slow, a lot of your customers will give up. They will have a hard time to get to that landing page to complete that conversion. They will have to do something else while your website is loading, to open a new window, a new tab that will distract them and fail to convers. If the website is complex and have many elements, it is understable to take a lot of time to load, but the elements will appear as they load, so the user will still be able to view the text immediately and see the images later, but if when you load your website it keeps says “Waiting for website” for several seconds, then the visitor don’t know if the website is broken or it will appear later. Also, google ranking algorithm seems to take into account the website loading speed when raking websites.
Bad customer support. This is something you may not think about at the begining, but there is a time when you don’t know why something bad is happening and you suspect that there are some problems with the hosting. Fast customer support will help you to resolve the problem so you can get your website up and running again. However, there are hosting companies that prefer to employ people to do the marketing stuff, but they don’t employ people for live support, and the only way to contact them is to open a support ticket that will need 4-5 days to be resolved.

These being said, when you want to buy a web hosting service you may look at what others are saying about that service. I recommend you to look at web host ranking websites like webhostinggeeks.com or webhostingrating.com.

WordPress Back-Ups

Alexandru — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 16:49:57 +0000

This is a guide to help you make the all-important back-ups for WordPress.

Your WordPress database contains every post, every comment and every link you have on your blog. If your database gets erased or corrupted, you stand to lose everything you have written. There are many reasons why this could happen and not all are things you can control. But what you can do is back up your data. After all, it is important. Right?

Below are instructions to back up your WordPress Site and your WordPress Database as well as resources for automatic WordPress backup. In addition, support is provided online at the WordPress Support Forum to help you through the process.

Making backups is essential because problems inevitably occur and you need to be in a position to take action when disaster strikes. Spending a few minutes to make an easy, convenient backup of your database will allow you to spend even more time being creative and productive with your website.

Back up your WordPress database regularly, and always before an upgrade or move to a new location. The following information will help you back up your WordPress database using various popular server software packages. For detailed information, contact your website host for more information on the program, control panel, and resources they provide.

Accessing phpMyAdmin

While familiarity with phpMyAdmin is not necessary to back up your WordPress database, these instructions should take you step-by-step through the process of finding phpMyAdmin on your server and then you can follow the instructions below as a simple and easy backup or for more detailed instructions see Backing Up Your Database.

cPanel

On your main control panel for cPanel, look for the MySQL logo and click the link to MySQL Databases. On the next page, look for phpMyAdmin link and click it to access your phpMyAdmin.

cPanel Access Databases

cPanel Access to phpMyAdmin

Direct Admin

From Your Account page, look for MySQL Management and click it to access phpMyAdmin.

Direct Admin Access Databases

Direct Admin Access to phpMyAdmin

Ensim

Look for the MySQL Admin logo and click the link. Under Configuration choose MySQL Administration Tool.

Plesk

Click the button for Databases. Then choose the link to the WordPress database you setup during the WordPress installation. Then click on the button for phpMyAdmin.

vDeck

From the main control panel, click Host Manager, then click Databases. In the next window, click Admin. Another window will popup taking you to the phpMyAdmin login screen.

Ferozo

Login to your Ferozo Control Panel by using your credentials. Once inside, go to the “Base de Datos” (“Data Base”) menu and then click on “Acceso phpMyAdmin” (“Access phpMyAdmin”). A new window will open displaying the phpMyAdmin login screen.

WordPress versus Joomla

Alexandru — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:56:12 +0000

When you’re looking forward to creating a website, you will probably try some of the content management systems. Two of the most popular among them are WordPress and Joomla. In this post I will try to explain some of the major advantages and disadvantages of these two systems.

I would like to start with WordPress, which is one of the easiest to use systems available today in the internet. Although, many people think that WordPress can be used for blogging only, you can easily configure it to work in many other ways too. Furthermore, to install that content management system on a server is really easy. That way you will allow people, who do not have any knowledge in web development to create their website in just a matter of hours. Furthermore, you will not have to develop additional scripts to get the comments of other visitors, because they are already built in it. On the other hand, WordPress do not provide suitable workspace for developers, because when you try to make some modifications in it, for example to create a shopping cart, the whole system is likely to crash. Finally, when you try to upgrade your existing system, you will usually end up having a lot more bugs than you used to.

Joomla on the other hand is one of the best content management systems for designers, web developers and administrators. That system allows all its users to create great looking websites and also it is really easy for use, by beginners. Furthermore, there are many developers, who create tools, which rapidly improve the performance of Joomla. If you are a developer, you can choose that system, because it offers large capacity for customization and development. However, when you take a look at the user interface of that system, you will find that actually is not so easy for use by people, who do not have any idea of web development and also it is far from user friendly.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the choice between those systems depends on the purpose of your website and also on your knowledge of web development and design. In addition, when you compare the simplicity of both those systems, you will notice that working with WordPress is a lot easier, so there are many beginners, who choose it instead of Joomla. When you take a particular project, you should check exactly what are the requirements of your client, before you choose any of these content management systems.

3 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

michael — Fri, 06 May 2011 11:37:21 +0000

For better or worse, as a society we’ve become less patient as we become more technologically advanced. There was a time when the only way to get online was with a 14.4 kbs modem. You would hear that funny, staticky beepy noise and wait as your dial-up connection was established with an ISP. Then, you would open up Netscape and proceed to wait some more. Heaven forbid you should surf onto a page with more than one image; you might have to wait up to 30 seconds for the page to load.

These days, with our smartphones and nearly ubiquitous broadband, it seems that no one is content to just wait anymore – and that’s something that as a website owner, you must know. If your page takes longer than about three seconds to load, your visitors will click the back button and navigate to sites with faster services, such as those utilizing cPanel VPS hosting. Even if you show up at the top of Google’s search results, your website won’t be making you any money at all if it’s too slow.

Want to make your site truly load as fast as people can think? Here are three factors to keep in mind.

1. Stop transferring so many files.

You know the “http://” you type (or used to type) at the beginning of a web address? That HTTP stands for “hypertext transfer protocol”. In a nutshell for non-computer geeks, HTTP is how computer browsers communicate with the server where a website actually lives. According to Jonathan Hadley, every time your browser has to go back to the server and say, “Oh hey by the way, I’m missing a picture on this page, do you have that? And what about that other Java applet you were telling me about?”, it takes the page longer to load. It takes your browser less time to serve up one 30k file than three 10k files.

To reduce the number of files your website transfers, create libraries. For example, you can combine three separate CSS files into one longer CSS file, or you can combine multiple bits of JavaScript into one file. Allow any “extra” files that can’t be combined to be cached. When a browser caches a file, all it has to do is check to see if the file has changed since the last time it transferred the file.

2. Use smaller images.

People without much experience in web development assume that simply re-sizing an image is all that’s needed to make it load quickly. In other words, they take that 2 MB photo they took with their digital camera and plop that image into their blog or their website. Seeing how huge the photo displays on the page, they grab a corner of the image and drag it inward to make it smaller.

What you do not realize is that from the computer’s point of view, that smaller image is still 2 MB to process. Even though the image itself is smaller, it’s the same amount of data, and by re-sizing it you’ve instructed the browser to “take this data, and display it at this size”.

To make images load about a gazillion times faster, open your image in Photoshop or a similar program. First make sure that the resolution is set to 72 dpi, and then change the image size. Once the image is the size you want it to display on your website, do a “Save As” and put this new, smaller image into your website. Instead of having to process 2 MB worth of data, the browser now only has to process 30 K.

3. Change hosting companies.

There may come a time when you need to change hosting companies or upgrade your hosting plan. When your site starts to get a lot of traffic, the starter-kit server won’t cut it anymore. As Improve the Web suggests, you’ll need to move your site to a cPanel VPS hosting or a dedicated physical server.

These three tips are a good place to start in speeding your website up – and thereby keeping customers at your site.

LG Promotes New Optimus 2X

Lucian Apostol — Mon, 02 May 2011 12:40:39 +0000

Have you ever heard that you got fined because you were walking slow? Well, that sounds ridiculous and intriguing as well and LG has tried this new marketing way to promote the launch of their all new LG Optimus 2X. LG has definitely tried the best marketing strategy that can catch the attention of the people in a world where they are surrounded by smartphones. Today, all major cell phone companies have launched their smartphones for the people. Hence, LG has decided to do something different that can attract the attention
of the people.

Now you will find inspectors fine people in London for walking too slowly. At the very first glance you feel irritated because you certainly have the right to walk slow or fast. However, on a busy Oxford Street you will now find inspectors that will tell you to walk faster so that you down slow down the people. Well, this is really a great way to grab the attention of the people on the streets because they would definitely start talking about this and in no time people will know that it’s just a promotion campaign from LG for their new LG Optimus 2X which was recently launched in UK market.

LG claims that this smartphone will definitely change the way people look at their smartphones because this one comes with a dual core processor that can give you amazing speeds on your smartphone to surf the internet and to navigate through the content. The dual core processor added to the LG Optimus 2X is designed to improve the overall performance of the smartphone. Hence, you will see that you are able to surf the sites quickly and at better speeds. It also works to help you with the multitasking features and you would find it better than other smartphones as there is virtually no lag time.

LG Optimus 2X comes with Android 2.2 Froyo which enables you to quickly download all Android based apps and games from your smartphone and to make it a much better device. The smartphone also comes with 1080p full HD screen with Content Mirroring features.

How memory is affecting your working experience

Lucian Apostol — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 06:56:48 +0000

Memory is not only important for remembering things like to buy milk in your way home when you go back from work, or to call your accountant to tell him that something changed. If you learn a lot of things and your memory don’t help, you waste a lot of time.

Although you can write things down to save memory is a good habit, you can’t write everything down. Nowadays, the information is freely available online so writing it down won’t save you much time because it is going nowhere and you can read it again and again. The most important thing nowadays, related to memory, is to remember where to find the information, or at least to write down the path.

But again, writing down won’t solve all of your problems. Let’s say you learn about some jquery tricks and you write down few links to pages with jquery resources so you can find them easily when you want to use them. You write them down and you forget. When the time comes to build or upgrade a website, it is a minor chance to think how to implement those jquery scripts in the website your are working on because they are not in your active memory. Yes, you can remember that you wrote them down, but you can’t think about it right this moment, the moment when you need it.

So, even if you write a lot of things down you still need a good memory to remember what your wrote down. The key to solve this issue is a better memory management and a better “writing down” system that will help you to organize your information and memory better. This can be achieved only with a lot of practice, and tips ad exercises can be easily found. I recommend you to look into some memory training and management courses, and for this you can read a zox pro review.

I think the fact that brought us into this is that in school the teachers wanted us to memorize a lot of things without thinking at the facts, or, in other words, they wanted quantity, but not quality of what we learn. Today, quantity it’s useless, because all what we’ve memorized in school we can find everywhere at a simple search. We don’t have to memorize everything just the important facts and where we can find the info. This is the key.

Can Java development to be brought to the web ?

Lucian Apostol — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 21:25:19 +0000

Java is one of the most popular programming languages. The main advantage of Java is the cross-platform capabilities. Probably the most important feature is that it is very different. The code is not compiled like c++ or other compiled languages. In the C++ case, a program that is compiled on windows won’t work on other operating systems. This causes a lot of compatibility issues.

On the other side java code is interpreted on run-time, but as you may think, you need another layer to do the job. This is why Java never works stand alone and you need what it is called a java virtual machine. It is nothing complicated, on Windows is just like any other software you install and forget about it.

Can Java apps to run on the web ? Yes, in fact they are somewhat popular, but it is not the best solution. If you want to run a Java applet on a website you need to have the java virtual machine installed on your computer. You can install it very fast, but if you are a webmaster you can’t assume that all your users have it installed. This is why most webmasters avoid placing Java applets on websites. Other reason is that it is hard for Java applet to interact with other elements on a webpage.

On websites, javascript is widely used, which is a scripting language derived from Java. Practically it is the same language, but you can add the code anywhere on a webpage if you specify that it is javascript code and it will be interpreted right away. Javascript is used on most websites these days.

There is a middle way here, where Java developers can use their skills to write web apps without causing compatibility problems. There is a Google Project that very few are aware of. It is part of Google web toolkit, and they provide you some libraries you can use for java development, create the app you want to run on your website and compile it ( using the provided compiler ) into javascript code. It is simple as I say it. Things are more complicated, you have to use a IDE, for example eclipse, load the libraries, configure it to use the GWT shell and compiler and then upload the files to your web server, but at least you have a starting point.

What you need to start a website

Lucian Apostol — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:23:05 +0000

I’ve talked a lot here on my blog about how easy is to start a website using wordpress content management system. Basically, it is easier than reading this post, but starting up a website with wordpress is not what you want. You don’t want a website, you want an online business, even if it is a community website, a content website, a tool website, a service website or even a simple blog.

A website can be up in 5 minutes, but an online business takes weeks or months to set-up. You need many things to complete the process of starting up: a good hosting, content, promotion and monetization plan.

1. Domain and Hosting

The choosing of the right domain and hosting is very important for the future of your online business. While you can change the hosting later, the domain is something you will stick with for a long period of time. Long story short, a good domain should be not too long and spellable. There is a long debate if it is good to use keyword stuffed domain or to use a short domain name that can be branded.

If you use a keyword stuffed domain name you will have a starting advantage and your website may appear higher in seo from the start for the exact keywords you have in your domain, but this only if the keyword is not too competitive, so you have to choose the name very well so the keyphrase is searched enough times and the competition is low. If you choose the wrong keyphrase then you lose the only advantage you had by having a keyword stuffed domain.

If you choose a short domain people will remember it often and you can take advantage of returning visitors. Another advantage is that you can alter the topic if you want.

The hosting is not that important as the domain is, but you also need to make a good choice. Moving to a new hosting will give you a headache because you have to move the files, the database and you will deal with the file permission problems. Few years back when I was more involved in freelancing I was used to charge a lot for moving websites to new hosts. If you are not a techie guy then you will have to pay some money to move. Do make sure you do the right decision you can consult a Web Hosting Search Directory.

2. Content

The content can be articles written by you or by others, or a tool or service you offer to your visitors. First of all you will want to make sure that you don’t provide the same content that is found on another few hundred of websites. If you get into a very competitive topic then you have only to lose.

If your website is article based, then it is not that hard to write unique articles, even if you write about the same things that others are writing. There are infinite things to write about and your unique articles will be spidered by search engines and you will end up with some traffic.

If your website is based on a tool, then you really have to check out the competition. You can’t expect massive traffic on a site with a PageRank checking tool, while there are thousands of similar websites. The tool is very easy to be added on a website and you will probably never catch up with websites already established.

3. Promotion and Advertising

If you don’t promote your website people will never find it. The promotion ways are very different, depending on your topic, targeting, your budget and many other things. I will not list here tips on how to promote a website because you can find the info all around the web on Webmaster Forum Blogs.

4. Monetization

The monetization is another well dealt topic on the web. The possibilities are a lot, but for a starting website you will not have too many options. The only viable options for new websites are advertising networks. My advice is to not get downhearted by the low amount of money you make at the beginning, because you can lose the motivation. Once your website grows and traffic comes more options will open and the amount of money you make will be much higher than you can expect if you do the simple math.

How to Properly Install Your Open Source (Free) Software

Cathy Pierce — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:44:43 +0000

When you are using open source software, you are accessing software that has source code that is not only made available to the general public, but can be changed and modified in any way by the general public, as well.

What do you mean you don’t read binary?

When the open source product is distributed, there are no exchanges of fees or royalties, so as to keep the integrity of the concept genuine and a trusted image among users.

Using Fink for Custom Installation

Installing open source projects is often done using “from scratch” applications, and also targeted towards programs that are through other sources. The Fink project is one such effort that uses a port and package to install open source Unix programs to Mac operating systems, and features a quick installation for binary distribution. This is ideal for users who prefer more flexibility and to build their own open source programs from sources using a compiler.

With Fink, packages are downloaded and built automatically. They’re installed to a tree that offers full dependency tracking, but the flexibility in choosing the installation process gives the user the control over pre-packaged binary distribution or manually installing the open source software.

Installing Open Source Software

If you prefer not to use Fink for software installation, do you know how to otherwise install your open source product? Since there are numerous open source products and even product installments, following is an overview on how you can install your open source software easily and without any additional web programming required.

You can use your computer’s operating system to install the pre-built binary package if you prefer, since this is the recommended method from many open source advisers.

If you do not choose the binary package method, you may opt for manual installation. Be sure to carefully follow installation instructions so as to avoid any likely issues. Installation can be achieved by the following short steps:

1. Download and uncompress the source code from the software
2. Move into the extracted directory that’s located in the terminal.
3. Next, run “./configure” to configure the software.
4. Run “make” to compile the software.
5. Run “make install” to install the software.

After these few steps, the system may inquire as to whether or not Windows is a friend of the particular open source software that’s being used. Acknowledge that as a negative and move on. The system requests this information because the software that you’re trying to install was not accompanied with a make build system, so it is harder to compile the information from the source code.

6. After completion, go to the project website.
7. You will then find a port for either Windows or your own version of it.
8. Now, you’re ready to download and run the installer.

You’re done, but there will likely be more shortcuts displayed, so go ahead and accept those and move on and end the installation process.

Basic installation skills are really all that you need if you do decide to download your open source software project.

Tips for Getting Your First Website Online

Lucian Apostol — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:04:38 +0000

In the earlier stages of the internet the look of a website was the one of the most or if not the most important factors that a company or individual prioritized during the planning and construction of a site. Since a lot has changed through the years this type of strategy is no longer as effective as before. Massive competition and numerous rival websites have mushroomed and are aggressively marketing similar or related products and services online. Search engine optimization one of the most effective methods of online marketing and is the key to successful websites.

It is very important and truly beneficial to start search engine optimization as early as possible in the development and planning of a website. Breaking through in the market place online is a demanding and challenging task for start up websites. The lifeblood of newly launched or websites that are just being developed potential traffic or users are determined by search engines. Bing, Yahoo and the most prominent which is Google are responsible for ranking sites that come out on results lists which makes or breaks company and individual websites. The more relevant traffic that is directed towards your site the more chances of gaining a share of your consumer market.

Most companies or owners are aware that search engine optimization is needed for better chances of positive search ranking results but continue to act on it after the website is launched or during the latter stages of development. Decisions to act on search engine optimization can prove costly and timely. Incorporating SEO methods during the design stages will provide immediate chances for results once a website is launched. Additional costs are secondary against the missed opportunities to increase in ranking if the optimization is applied after the site is already active.

Finding a professional website designer in London that understands SEO is ideal for any start up businesses. Working with a company or designer with SEO in mind early on in the planning and development of the site would not only speed up the process of building a search engine optimized website but also prove to be less costly than readjusting an active or a partially finished website. Avoiding common, perhaps many mistakes during the designing of your website can be addressed by web design companies to ensure an effective search engine optimized website.