August 2016 - 4GoodHosting Blog

Tweaks to Speed up Your Website – Part II

4GHadmin | 29 August 2016

As a website owner, the impact of your website speed on traffic, conversions and revenue should not be underestimated. A report by Akaimi found that 46% of people on the internet expect a wesbite’s pages to load in less than 2 seconds and 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Many other studies have been published on the impact of website speed, another study found that a 1 second delay in site loading time resulted in a 6% conversion decrease, and 12% decrease in page views and a 15% decrease in customer satisfaction. As you might already know Google uses website speed as a ranking factor.

So, having a slow loading website will negatively impact the following:

Brand image and perception in the mind of your visitors
Traffic & page views
Conversions
Sales

Before you start optimizing your website to load faster, there are two things you should consider:

First, go and check your current website load-time via Pingdom or Google PageSpeed Insights. This helps you to compare the speed increases once you have tweaked your site.

Secondly, make sure to back-up your site as some of the methods require tweaking/editing files that can mess up your site. Here’s how to back up WordPress website and here’s how to backup any other…

Here are the tweaks, in no particular order. Just pick ones that you think can be easily performed first.

1) Remove Unnecessary Plugins & Add-ons

Unnecessary plugins and add-ons can reduce your website speed by A LOT, and it’s especially important to pay attention to them if you use blogging CMSs like WordPress or Drupal.

For reference, you might be able to increase your page load times for 4 second to 1.5 seconds.

It’s very important to note that it’s not just about the number of plugins you have installed on your website but about the quality as well. A website with 50 plugins can load much faster than a website with 10 plugins if the website with fewer plugins have crappy plugins. Generally, you want to avoid plugins that load a lot of scripts and styles, plugins that perform lots of remote requests and plugins that add extra database queries to every page on your website.

Indeed, plugins help enhance your website’s functionality but it is also important to only use a plugin if you’re convinced that it is absolutely necessary.

If you’re a WordPress user, you might want to install the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler);

This plugin will scan all of your WordPress plugins to find the bottlenecks, and give you a report so that you can see how each plugin affects your website performance.

2) Significantly Limit (or Remove) Social Sharing Buttons on Your Website

If you believe that you need to have 100 social sharing buttons on your website, think again. It’s hard to pinpoint research that establishes a massive boost in website traffic due to having social sharing buttons (if anything, too many social sharing buttons will confuse your readers), but research shows that a slow website does reduce traffic.

Most social sharing buttons use JavaScript, and this can be very troublesome when it comes to performance; social media site, outages significantly impacts the website speed of people who have installed their share buttons.

The solution is to either limit/remove social sharing buttons, or to configure them to load asynchronously so that an outage of a particular social media site won’t slow down your website.

3) Enable “Expires” Headers

There are several factors that influence how fast a website is, but the server response time contributes a great deal to site speed; the more requests are being made to your server, the slower it’ll take your website to load.

Expires Headers tell your visitor’s browser when to request certain files from your server vs. from their browser cache; if an Expires Headers is configured so that your visitor’s browser only request a file once in a month, and that file has been stored in their cache from a recent visit, then their browser won’t request that file again until a month is over. This is like a double-edged sword for boosting site speed because it limits the number of HTTP requests on your server and at the same time reduces load on your server since the same file won’t be requested repeatedly.

If you want to implement Expires Headers on your website, this GTmetrix tutorial shows you how.

4) Enable HTTP Keep-Alive

Usually, when a visitor’s web browser tries to request a file from your web server, it will grab each file individually; in other words, a connection closes when a file has been grabbed, and then reopens to request a new file. This uses more processor, network and memory and eventually leads to a slower website if there’s a lot of load on your server. Enabling HTTP keep-alive ensures that all file requests to your server will be made via a single open connection, leading to a much faster website for your users by limiting the number of connections to your server.

You can enable keep-alive by copying and pasting the code below into your .htaccess file:

Header set Connection keep-alive

Alternatively, you can follow the instructions here or here depending on your server.

The Biggest Common Mistakes Made with purchasing Facebook (mobile) ads

4GHadmin | 22 August 2016

Mobile advertisements are the new big market arena and will likely stay that way for a long time. That is, perhaps until we become telepathic? Mobile ad spending will account for more than 60% percent of the industry by 2017.

Smartphones, tablets,even watches are already what today’s shopper uses to discover products and services across the internet. Perpetually siphoning in endless content and digital social venues. Shopkeepers and service providers have already smelled the blood.

Nowhere is this shift to mobile more noticeable than with Facebook. Facebook interaction is also mostly happening over mobile devices; more than a billion daily active users/losers. Over 80% percent of ad revenue on Facebook revenue is mobile.

If you are hoping to rope in conversions/customers from FB advertising, the double your mobile.

First, beware of the common FB advertising money-pit-falls.

Don’t Ignore call conversions

As people are naturally staring at their phone in hand whenever noticing an interesting digital advertisement, they usually prefer to call rather than type.

The number of mobile advertisement call conversion to businesses is expected again to triple over 35 billion inquiries by 2019.

Call conversions are not something most digital marketers have given much attention to – yet click-to-call and ‘whatsapp’-type free-voip functionality is heavily re-landscaping the marketplace.

Today’s supercomputer phones are still phones. Even better, click-to-call is therefore the easiest conversion path for consumers considering a purchase. Motto of this paragraph is to make sure to optimize your FB ad campaigns for call conversions.

· Include an easily-readable phone number or call button on every ad or banner on your website.
· Test your ad’s “call now” button; your ad’s main call to action.
· Do your best to accurately measure “cost per lead” to prove and/or improve ROI, return on your “advertisement”

The Movement For Decentralizing the Internet

4GHadmin | 15 August 2016

Tim Berners-Lee is a famous name on the internet. Back in the early 1900’s Tim was the programmer, at the right place at the right time, who first successfully served a webpage from a web server to a client computer through the newly invented “http” (“Hyerptrext Transport Protocol”).

The web was initially dreamed to be a decentralized democracy, enabling free speech forum of all networked computers around the world. However, in recent years, the attraction to big brand services, such as Google, Youtube, Facebook, Yahoo, you name it – has caused a ‘centralization of the internet” – making it ever more easy for those corporations, and America’s “NSA” to spy on the bulk of your online activity.

Now Tim is again wishing to help restore the web to a decentrailized, more open, more free, more private internet. He is spearheading a project named “Solid”. The goal of it is to let you solely “own” your personal data. Digital Trends recently reported this in detail.

With “Solid”, you store your data in “pods” (personal online data stores) that are hosted wherever you would like. But Solid isn’t just a storage system: It lets other applications ask for data. If Solid authenticates the apps and — important — if you’ve given permission for them to access that data, Solid delivers it.

The paragraphs below offer a quick summarization:

Solid’s name is derived from the phrase “social linked data” and it stores your data in personal online data stores, or pods.

You can then choose which applications have access to your data and how much of it they can see.

According to the website for Solid, the system is “modular and extensible”; and relies as much as possible on existing W3C standards & protocols.

Development of the project is taking place at MIT and the Qatar Computing Research Institute.

Solid has similarities to ”Diaspora”, a social network that was built on a decentralized architecture, but which failed to become the “Facebook killer” data ownership and privacy advocates were hoping for.

Thank you for reading the weekly 4GoodHosting.com blog.

On Choosing the Best CMS for Your Particular Needs

4GHadmin | 08 August 2016

You may have heard of the 3 more popular content management applications: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla – but you are not sure which one is best for your needs. Perhaps you remain curious; so we will focus the the two ‘other’ choices besides WordPress: Drupal & Joomla.

Each particular CMS will provide the basic functions of: adding, deleting, and publishing various types of content. Each program has different strong points (and weaknesses) which should be considered whole-cloth, prior to making your ultimate decision.

First write down your business’ objectives and goals. This should be is the first step in selecting the best CMS application suited for your particular business needs. Ultimately, optimally serving your business’ unique target audience.

Choosing the right CMS (by the way, easily confused with CNS (Central Nervous System)), is the backbone for your project it will save you a great deal of headaches later. A reliable web host, with super customer support, also saves you from initial and future headaches. With 4GoodHosting.ca you can get both ultra-reliable hosting and the CMS of your choice for free: Joomla, Drupal, or of course; WordPress – or any of the 200+ free scripts we offer you with any of our hosting package.

Drupal:

In 2016, there is an estimated 1 million+ websites built atop the Drupal CMS. Drupal is common to government offices, universities and colleges, Non-government Organization, Canadian & otherwise global enterprises. America’s White House website is taking advantage of Drupal’s strong website security features. Drupal is a comprehensive, expandable, powerful content management framework suitable to be the foundation of virtually any type of website.

Drupal’s Advantages:

* Tested Enterprise-level security; advanced control over URL structure
* Lots of functionality – including advanced menu management, graphics modification utilities, poll management, and administration/users management
* Built for high performance; pages load fast because of its defaulting caching features
* Ability to handle large amounts of content & data
* Extensive selection of themes, modules & extensions
* Ideal for community platform sites (requiring multiple users – admin, editors, logged in users requiring customized content, private groups, etc.)
* Large robust community generally responsive to inquiries and concerns.
* Good SEO configurability
* Clean/professional looking designs/themes.

Drupal’s Disadvantages:

* High/technical learning curve; not user-friendly
* Developer skills needed to install and apply upgrades requiring experienced knowledge of PHP and HTML languages as well as CSS
* More expensive: premium themes and plugins (modules) are prices considerably higher than say WordPress (and Joomla)
* Big name Brands who are Using Joomla:
* The Weather Channel
* NBC.com
* Twitter
* Oxford University
* Verizon Wireless
* The White House
* The Economist Magazine
* Forbes Magazine

Joomla:

Another good option for small to mid-sized websites or e-commerce stores (or for building a community or a social network with a membership features, forums, newsroom, articles, and a writing staff). However, if you need something more powerful for larger/enterprise projects where scalability, stability, & high versatility are essential, then learning and using Drupal would be more appropriate.

Joomla is becoming an increasingly popular CMS platform. Trailing WordPress, it is the 2nd most accepted CMS. Joomla is currently housing over 3 million websites.

Joomla level of complexity is somewhere between WordPress (simplest) in most advanced and enterprise-class Drupal.

Joomla has the extensibility of being extended in order to produce even new functionality. Joomla has won the Packt Open Source Awards now several years in a row.

Joomla entails a slight learning curve, particularly for novices, yet webmasters usually wind up happy with Joomla’s built in features.

Joomla’s Advantages:

* Installation is simple (developer knowledge of CSS, PHP, or HTML is not required) updates installs are easily done through web browser
* E-commerce made easy
* Thousands of free extensions available (for increased functionality of your site)
* Advanced administration panel offers many functions for complete optimization
* Manage users simply and easily
* Joomla’s application framework makes it possible for developers to create powerful add-ons
* URLs generated are SEO friendly
* Active community support (programmer tools and tutorials for users )

Joomla’s Disadvantages:

* Some learning curve to ride – but not as much as Drupal.
* About half of the plugins/extensions & modules are for purchase
* Limited configurability options (particularly for advanced users); Limited “access control list” (ACL) support
* Occasional compatibility issues with some of the plugins, which requires some PHP skill to iron-out the functions to work properly

Big name Brands who are Using Joomla:

* IKEA
* IHOP
* Harvard University (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences )

If you have some experience with content management systems and you’re not wanting WordPress for any reason, and if diving into Drupal seems quite daunting, then Joomla might be your best option. Thank you for choosing 4GoodHosting.com as your 5.0 Google rated, A+ BBB Canadian Web Host.

“Irish”(Similarly Canadian) Search Warrant Found Invalid – Microsoft Currently Victorious in Fight for User Privacy

4GHadmin | 03 August 2016

(US & Canadian News) Microsoft actually championed a huge victory in regards to user privacy {which certainly has affect on Canadians using Microsoft products and services: Email, Cloud Storage, Skype, etc.) on July 28^th. An appeals court has ruled that a federal warrant to seize email from a Microsoft server in “Ireland” is invalid.

Federal investigators received a spy warrant (for email contents) as part of a criminal investigation in December 2013, which touched off a debate between the tech-industry and law enforcement about jurisdiction & data storage.

The timing of this coincides with Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) – where the company’s president and chief legal officer Brad Smith promoted a vision for the internet that “respects people’s rights” and is “governed by good law.”

Microsoft said: “We obviously welcome today’s decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The decision is important for three reasons: it ensures that people’s privacy rights are protected by the laws of their own countries; it helps ensure that the legal protections of the physical world apply in the digital domain; and it paves the way for better solutions to address both privacy and law enforcement needs.”

Privacy protections for information stored on paper should persist as data moves to the cloud. This decision helps ensure this result.

— Brad Smith (@BradSmi) July 14, 2016

Microsoft has publicly acknowledged a need for cloud providers, particularly those based in the U.S., to win back over consumer trust.

Representatives for like-minded lobby groups include: the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), i2Coalition, plus big tech companies such as: Rackspace, Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and Verizon – and notably in this case Ireland’s Parliament – and each submitted briefs in support of Microsoft’s initial statements and position.

“We conclude that Congress did not intend the SCA’s warrant provisions to apply extraterritorially,” the judges said in the ruling (PDF). “The focus of those provisions is protection of a user’s privacy interests. Accordingly, the SCA does not authorize a US court to issue and enforce an SCA warrant against a United States‐based service provider for the contents of a customer’s electronic communications stored on servers located outside the United States.”

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Monthly Archives: August 2016