Got Speed? The Problem with Slow Loading Blogs

January 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Does your blog load slowly?  C’mon.  Be honest…we’re all friends here.

If you are not the tech savvy type, I’d be willing to bet your site loads slower than it should.  Most amateur bloggers (and some professional ones) are not very good developers.  Here’s where I would normally make the case for hiring a firm like BlogCraving to handle these things for you, but this time I will spare you.

Let’s just jump right to the point and find out if your site is a load hog.

The speed test

Head on over to tools.pingdom.com.  This site will tell you definitively how fast your site loads.  All you have to do is put in your website’s URL and run the test.  It will show you the load time for every single element on your site.

Pingdom Tools 480x142 Got Speed? The Problem with Slow Loading Blogs

Then, just scroll down to the very bottom of the report to see the total load time for your site.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: How to..., Layout, Strategy, Technology, Wordpress Tagged With: ,

Chartbeat.com Realtime Stats

July 20, 2009 By 1 Comment

You may have heard about the cool, new (relatively) service by Betaworks called Chartbeat.com.  It is a real-time web analytics service on steroids.

Chartbeat’s dashboard if fully animated, and updates before your very eyes in real time.  It is all part of the growing trend of tracking the “now-web.”  You simply load your realtime dashboard and watch as every visitor enters and leaves your site in real time.

chartbeat dash 540x358 Chartbeat.com Realtime Stats

To the right, you can see what are the most popular sections/pages of your site at that very moment, plus how many people are on that page at the moment.  The size of the square denotes how many people are on that page.

The service also as a cool “heatmap” function that shows you how far down the average reader scrolls down on your page.

As if that weren’t cool enough, it also has a built in uptime monitoring service.  You’ll get an email alert if there’s any problem or lag on your server.  You can then go back and chart any of those outages to trace the potential causes.

You’d expect to pay a good chunk of change for a service like this, but you won’t.  For less than $10/month you can have your own Chartbeat account that tracks multiple sites.  Oh and there’s a free 30 day trial.

CrunchBase Information
Betaworks
Information provided by CrunchBase
Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: ,

Solve Your Technical or Content Needs

May 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

guru 540x260 Solve Your Technical or Content Needs

Have you ever run into a situation on your site where you need a quick technical fix but don’t know how to do it?  Do you have a great idea for a new site design or web app?

It can be a pretty daunting task to get that kind of thing done.  Some people are lucky enough that they happen to know someone with some tech skills.  So you toss them $50 bucks and have them solve the issue for you.

For the rest of us, what do you do?

Luckily, there are freelance sites out there that can solve these problems for you, safely and securely.

If you’re the adventurous type, you could go to Craig’slist and post a gig.  You’ll surely get a flood of interested freelancers.  But there’s always that “what if” factor.  What if the person screws up your site and walks away?  What if they take your money without finishing the job?  What if?

So using a site like that can be a little risky.  Personally, I’ve used Craiglist for small technical gigs, and they’ve worked out fine.  However, I have heard dozens of nightmare stories.

There are better alternatives though.  Sites like Guru.com and RentACoder.com specialize in this type of work.  It’s almost like eBay for tech geeks.

Basically, you post the “job” or task you have on the site, then the freelancers get to bid on your job.  While they are bidding, you can see that user’s profile, job history, and rating.  So right away, you already know a lot more about the person’s reputation than you would with Craigslist.

Once you negotiate and select a freelancer, the Guru or RentACoder holds your money in escrow for you.  That way, if the freelancer were to drop of the face of the planet or not deliver on what was promised, you won’t lose your money.

They have customer service reps that arbitrate these disagreements on behalf of both parties.

From the freelancer’s perspective, they know if they do the job as promised, they will get paid.  They don’t have to worry about getting stiffed.

All of your conversation with the freelancer happens through the website so there is a detailed log of your conversation history.  That way there’s no finger pointing.  Everything is out in the open for the arbitrator to see and evaluate.

So if you have a small or large technical job, you should check one of those sites out.  Could save you a lot of headache and money!

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: , , ,

Why WordPress is the Best Blogging Platform

May 22, 2009 By 1 Comment

When you first start blogging choosing the best platform for your blog is critcal. This and your marketing efforts are the keys to your blogging success.

Many people get online to start blogs, but don’t know what platform to use. This is why you need to know why WordPress is the best blogging platform.

Here are the reasons why WordPress is the best blogging platform you can use to start your blog.

One: The blogging platform is very easy for anyone to use. It is designed to be simple for even beginners to use. When you make a post, you will write the post in the WYSIWYG editor, which allows you to save drafts and publish at your convenience.

Two: With WordPress, you have a full support team to help you when you need it. They provide you with a lot of plugins, free templates, add-ons and modifications for your blog.

Three: It is very simple for anyone to change the way your blog looks with just a click of a button. You can easily change the look of your blog very ith so many different templates available. This is very important because you want to have a site that is unique to you, so you can even get a custom WordPress blog made if you want to. In other words, you have total control over how your blog looks.

Four: When you are blogging, it is important that you are able to create permalinks. With just the click of a button, you can easily do this in WordPress .

Five: One of the main reasons why WordPress is the best blogging platform is because it is free to use. All you have to do is to download it and then upload it to your web hosting. What could be simpler than that?

Six: With a WordPress blog, there is automatic pinging to the main blog ping services each time you make a new post.

These are just a few of the reasons why WordPress is the best blogging platform. There are many other reasons that you can learn about with some research. So, if you are serious about blogging, you definitely want to use the WordPress platform.

You will never find one that is as easy to use, even for beginners. Start your blog today and before you know it you will be hooked on WordPress blogs.

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