The new beta site can be found at http://beta.bbc.co.uk and displays an almost metro’esque sliding panel system with more traditional links in the bottom half of the page.  The whole web needs to move inexorably towards full and complete touch-friendliness in short order.  The amount of people using Tablets to navigate the web is already growing exponentially, and the forthcoming Windows 8 with it’s touch-centric interface will mean that by the end of 2012 touch-screens will be the norm on new PCs and laptops.

I myself am currently revamping my own website to make it completely touch-friendly and will be relaunching the new design within a week or two.  It’s noticeable however that the major players, including Amazon, eBay and YouTube haven’t yet caught on to the fact that traditional drop down menus, text links and crowded lists simply can’t be used effectively with touch.

This does raise interesting questions as to whether website UI components that we’ve come to know and love such as dynamic drop down menus and text lists can survive the transition to touch at all.  Any touch website has to be cross-compatible with every touch device, and many will work in their own unique way.  When it comes to touch on computers a proper standard is yet to emerge, if it ever will, about how swipe and touch gestures are interpreted.

The BBC haven’t got everything right when it comes to touch, but this is still a beta and with a website as utterly enormous as this, with literally terabytes of video, educational and article content sitting underneath it would be extremely difficult to create an interface simple enough and that included everything.

In part this is the biggest challenge that the touch web, and touch-screen apps as well, has to overcome.  For things to be truly finger-friendly you have to limit what is available and make clever use of screen real-estate, this is a challenge I had to content with as I too have ever growing libraries of video and other content on my own website.  For a small site like my own it’s easy to juggle things around, for the BBC and other major corporations however the challenge might simply be too big.

The new design is lovely, I think anyway and a radical departure from the current BBC homepage with it’s customisable and arrangeable tiles (circa Yahoo from some years ago).  The design will no doubt change slightly, indeed I have noticed changes being implemented within the last 24 hours.  It is great though to see this website, deliberately or otherwise being made finger-friendly.  Pressure now needs to be brought on the other major website owners to do the same, and do it quickly.  It is entirely possible however they they won’t even consider this until their visitor numbers begin to drop, and by then it might well be too late for them.

A few website will offer a mobile version for smartphones, but when it comes to tablets you’re out of luck.  Out of luck that is unless the company has invested in an app for your specific device.  If they have you will have a far better experience navigating their site.  The differences between websites and apps can be huge, with the usability offered by device-specific apps far ahead of anything the company’s website can offer.

It’s interesting to note too that in the last couple of years the big players on the Internet have made absolutely no attempt to make their websites touch-friendly.  This is despite tablet computing taking off a big way and even the near-imminent arrival of the super-touch-friendly Windows 8 operating system.  Personally I find this disappointing and that it demonstrates a lack of understanding and vision on the part of these companies.

How many more people could they reach for instance if they made their websites more touch-friendly?  Certainly the disabled and the elderly are an enormous and mostly untapped market for Internet businesses.

So this got me thinking, which do you prefer?  From websites and their corresponding apps such as Facebook and Twitter, to Amazon, eBay and more we’re very interested to hear if you’ve begun to abandon company websites in favour of their much more user-friendly apps.  Alternatively are there companies that have provided apps for other platforms that are yet to accommodate your own platform?

Let us know in the comments as it’s clear this is not only an issue that is frustrating many web users, not just myself, but that is it a problem that is only going to get worse unless and until these companies embrace touch on their website themselves.

However, it does raise additional questions, the most important being do we now need websites at all?  If we are all going to be used to downloading and using apps on our smartphones, tablets and desktop computers through Apple’s app store for OS X and the forthcoming Windows 8 store, why do we still need the websites?  Surely a visit to amazon.com should just present you with a links to their various apps on their various platforms?

Tell us what you think in the comments.

As you can see from the screenshot below they’ve also been given a very prominent position, listed third in the list of sixteen help and support subject areas.  Personally I’m delighted with what Microsoft have done to showcase them.  Microsoft do occasionally showcase help and support content from MVPs but this will be the first video content on the Microsoft help and support site.  I will also in the future be providing more content for the site covering products including Windows 7, Windows 8 and Microsoft Office.

Screenshot only, no playable video in this image

You may also remember that a little while ago Microsoft Press released for free on YouTube a series of videos I had made accompany their Windows 7 and Word 2010 Step by Step books.  The videos are full tutorials to the products and run to more than 10 hours.  I can also announce that discussions are in an advanced stage for Microsoft to also host these videos on their support website.  IN addition to these I also made tutorial video series for PowerPoint 2010 and HTML5.  I can certainly see the latter being popular, while any tutorials that can help teach people how not to bore their co-workers to death with PowerPoint has got to be welcomed  :)

In other news!  I can also now announce that my next eBook will be released by US publisher Fair Trade Digital Exchange (FTDX) in November (if I ever finish writing it!).  Need2Know Office 365 Security for Small Business will look at all aspects of running a safe and secure business environment using Microsoft’s new cloud-based server and productivity package.  As well as looking at Office 365 itself, the book will also look holistically at every aspect of your business computing security from your domain hosting and broadband connection, to your storage solutions, PCs, laptops and smartphones and also your attitudes to mobile working and workers using their own IT hardware.

Finally the big announcement!  As if all this wasn’t enough for one day there is one final announcement, but I can’t officially say anything for another month or so.  All I can officially do is make a statement and show you a picture.  Though it shouldn’t be at all difficult to piece together the clues.

The statement… “I will definitely NOT be writing a Windows 8 Power Users Guide as a follow on to my similar guide to Windows 7”
And the image…

…have you guessed yet?  ;)

The biggest issue that keeps people from investing in websites is knowledge. How do you determine the worth of a website? Do you only look at the money it earns per month? Or are there other factors that can play a role? Should you hire a broker or do all the evaluating and bidding yourself?

Here are eight tips that can make the difference between making a great investment and buying a site that is not worth a single cent.

1. Start Low

Yes, that $50,000 Dollar website looks tempting. It might be a good investment. But what you need at the very beginning is experience. Look at websites that are sold at a lower price range. So what’s a good starting point? This depends largely on your budget. My suggestion would be to start with a website for less than $1,000 Dollars. You will get valuable experience out of this first deal. You make your first negotiation, understand how payments are made, how websites and domains are transferred to you and how to setup the website on your server or web hosting account.

Delays or downtimes, which may happen during the process, do not hurt you that much as well. Imagine a 24 hour downtime because of an error in the site’s DNS configuration. Would you prefer that to be your 50,000 Dollar site, or your 1,000 Dollar site?

Verdict: Start with a low site or two before you dive head first in your first four, five or six K investment.

2. The Price

A website is worth as much as the buyer is willing to pay for it. It is difficulty to determine the price, especially in the beginning. A good rule of thumb for PPC kind of sites (like Adsense) is to multiple the average monthly earnings of the last six months by the factor twelve. Make sure to adjust extreme values accordingly. Those are usually one-time peaks that should not be part of the calculation.

Adjust the price if you have analyzed the website in question and came to the conclusion that you can make changes to it to earn more than that average. This can be the case if the site uses bad ad placements for instance or if ads are missing on some of the site’s pages.

Verdict: Pay up to twelve times the average earnings of the last six months. Adjust that by the website’s optimization potential.

3. The Traffic

Some webmasters might say that there is no bad traffic. I’d have to disagree with that when it comes to buying websites. There are basically four types of traffic:

• Direct Traffic, that is visitors who enter the site url directly or open the site from their bookmarks.
• Search Engine Traffic, traffic from organic search engine rankings
• Referrals, traffic from third party sites that link to the site in question
• Paid traffic, traffic that has been paid for.

In my experience, it is best if the majority of traffic comes from organic search engine rankings, unless otherwise noted in the sales letter. Some websites use paid traffic to generate revenue. Why are referrals and direct traffic worse from a buyers point of view? Because they can be easily manipulated. Think of a webmaster who owns a high traffic website and the site that you want to buy. The webmaster might have added a link on his high traffic site to the other site to increase the site’s traffic. Chance is, that link will not be there anymore once the site has been sold, unless part of the agreement.

Another aspect to look after are the keywords that the site ranks for. A site that sells TVs via Amazon’s affiliate system will earn less per visitor if the main keywords are not TV related.

Verdict: Go for sites with organic traffic of 60%+, the more the better.

4. The Payment

When in doubt use Escrow or a comparable service. It is always alarming if a seller does not offer Escrow, especially if you are prepared to pay all of the fees (try negotiating to split the fees). What’s Escrow? It is basically a service that acts as a middle-men for both parties. You send the money to Escrow who park it until you have received the services or goods that you ordered from the other party, in this case the domain name, website and all other assets that are part of the agreement.

Verdict: Use Escrow to make sure you get the website and data after making the payment.

5. The Revenue

As with traffic, there are good and bad revenue streams in terms of verification. Good revenue streams are not easily faked, like Adsense or Affiliate earnings. Bad revenue streams are private ad sales or one-time deals. Would you buy a website for $1,000 Dollars because the seller claimed to have received $100 per month for the last twelve months for placing a link on the website?

Another aspect that gets often overlooked is the availability of the services used. Amazon for instance blocks people from several US states from becoming an affiliate. It would be pretty bad if the website you bought made use of Amazon affiliate links.

Unless you already have an account, you should check the requirements for opening an account prior to bidding for a website.

Verdict: PPC or affiliate based offers are the most reliable revenue types. Do not bid for sites with shady or unprovable revenue streams.

6. Verification

The first thing that web investors need to do when they spot a potential investment is to verify the claims of the seller. How is that done? Start with a simple whois to see the website owner and administrative contacts. It is a good sign if they match the seller’s profile. Some website selling business sites like Flippa run their own verification system to verify a seller’s phone number and other data including Google Analytics data.

You can also look up the seller on the Internet, or use a reverse IP lookup script like ewhois to find out more about the seller’s other businesses.

Two key areas are left for you to verify: Revenue and Traffic. Traffic can be easily verified if Google Analytics is used. Ask the seller to add you to the account to get a first hand look at the site’s traffic. For revenue, it is not nearly as easy. Screenshots are fine but they are easily faked. Ask for video proof or a screencast session to see the earnings in realtime.

Verdict: Verification is very important and one of the first steps in validating a seller’s claims.

7. Niches

The best website niche is one that you have expertise in. While it is nice to sell high tech TVs on an affiliate website, it may be better to operate a site that you are familiar with. Why? Because you may get comments or questions by potential buyers. Should I get an LCD or Plasma TV, or a 3D TV? You may end up losing credibility if you cannot communicate with your buyers. Even worse, they may buy somewhere else and leave comments about your mediocre service on the Internet.

It is not really a necessity to buy a website in a niche that you are proficient in, but it can help you in the long run. Being proficient is also interesting when you add new content to the site you have just bought. New TVs coming out? Pick the best and add them to your store or site.

Verdict: Pick a niche that you are proficient in if possible.

8. Time

Would you rather buy a website for $900 that earns you $80 per month but requires you to spend one hour working per day, or a site for $500 that earns you $40 that runs on its own. The first site may look like the better deal, as it earns more per Dollar that you invest. But it also takes away 7 hours per week or 28 hours per month. And that makes it a very bad deal. First, your time is limited. If you only buy websites that require your attention, you will end up with a handful at most.

So called passive websites require almost no attention. It usually pays of to monitor the earnings and traffic, and to publish new contents a few times a month, but that’s done in less than an hour per week. That leaves ample room for many more websites.

Verdict: The less time it takes to maintain a website the better, unless you can outsource.

Anything that I left out that needs to be mentioned? Let me know in the comments.

Over the years, I developed a technique on how to best move a website to a new server. I’m using it ever since and it has resulted in 0 downtime or difficulties when moving a site to a new host.

Here is the list of data and information that you need to get started:

• Old and new ftp server logins.
• CPanel or web hosting logins from both the old and new web host.
• MySQL logins, MySQL user and database information.
• Website admin interface logins.
• Logins for the old and new web hosting company.

This is the step by step guide on how to move the site to a new server:

Download all data

My first step is always a full backup of all site data. This includes the web files and databases. I often connect to the ftp server and download the web files to my local computer, and use Cpanel or a comparable hosting panel to create the database backup. This step can take some time. But we can prepare the new hosting account in the meantime.

Setup the new hosting account

I start to configure the new hosting account while the data is downloading. This includes basic setup of the account, quotas, ftp login, MySQL database and user among other things. I do that to have the data at hand to proceed to the next step immediately after the data backup completes.

Upload the data

Once the downloads are finished I begin to upload the data to the new host. I use the same ftp client to upload the data to the new host, and Cpanel or phpMyAdmin to import the MySQL database.

I also modify the data if needed. This may include the new MySQL database information or paths in configuration files.

Hosts File Changes, Testing

I edit the Hosts file on my system to point to the new server IP address. This is done for testing purposes. Remember that you cannot access the domain name on the new host at this point in time, since the nameservers are still pointing to the old hoster. Check out Work On Websites Before DNS Propagation for a detailed guide on how to change the Hosts file for that purpose.

Once the Hosts file has been changed, it is possible to access the site with its domain name on the new server. Just enter the domain name in your web browser to do that. I test the new site extensively, check that everything is displayed correctly and that no error messages show up. I also test the admin interface if available to make sure that it works as well. If you are unsure, ask a friend to take a look at the site to see if you have overlooked anything.

Switch Nameservers

If the website passes all tests I open the domain hosting panel at the domain registrar and switch the nameservers so that they now point to the new web server instead of the old one. The propagation may take up to 48 hours to complete. I suggest you test the connection with proxies or virtual private networks for testing purposes.

I keep the data on the old domain name for at least a week or two. I also backup the downloaded data to have it at hand if I should need it.

It pays to monitor the traffic and web servers during the propagation phase to make sure that the process is fluent and without service interruption.

Have you ever moved a domain name to a new web hosting account? If so, tell us about your experience.

It is relatively easy to check for whois information, which may give you information about the domain’s registrar, and more importantly, the name of the registrant, administrative and technical contacts. It is a good sign if those match.

But what about finding out where a website is hosted? You could look up the IP of the website and look at the company who owns that IP range, but that is rather complicated and not as speedy as the following option.

The website Who Is Hosting This offers an online service that will give you information about the company that is hosting a website. Why would you want those information? If you are like me, you’d like to verify the seller’s claims. But you could also use it if you are a webmaster and stumble upon a super fast loading site, or if you want to contact the hosting company, for instance if the website in question is infringing on copyright.

All you need to do to find out where a website is hosted, is to enter the website’s url into the form on the service’s frontpage. A click on Search displays the results after a short scan on the next page.

The screen displays a thumbnail image of the website and the hosting company prominently. The latter with a link to its web page, if available.

Listed on the page are furthermore the website’s IP address, name servers and links to futher details. This includes Whois lookup, DMCA Takedown and the BuiltWith website.

The whois links directly to the registrar’s whois page, DMCA Takedown to a service that sets you back $99 for filing a DMCA notice, monitoring the site for removal, filing a DMCA with major search engines and preservation of the evidence trail.

Built With finally displays technical information about a website. This includes server information, advertising, analytics and tracking or frameworks used.

Who Is Hosting This is a nice to have service. It works really well for most domain lookups. I have tested it with US-based and German domains. The links to the company websites are not working all the time, especially if a parent company is listed and not the hosting company. Users can add webhost urls in this case to fix that issue, provided that they know the host. If they do not they still need to research the company on a search engine like Bing and Google for that information.

A third possibility would be to purchase a matching domain name, which can be very beneficial if the original owner wants to sell and the domain is in good standing with the search engines.

Back to finding a free domain name. Most domain brokers have a search form on their website that you can use to check a name with many different extensions. Godaddy will for instance check the most common extensions automatically.

Panabee improves that process further. It is an independent service that offers interesting suggestions for finding the right domain name. You enter one or multiple words in the search form on top. The service will then check the phrase with a .com extension directly as well as alternate domain extensions like .net, .org or .ca. All available domain names are shown with a gree laughing smiley, unavailable domain names with a sad red smiley. This alone is similar to what many domain brokers offer on their pages.

But Panabee displays suggestions that are not offered on most broker websites. It begins with a list of variations, like adding, removing or editing characters.

Every domain name suggestion is again checked and displayed as available or unavailable for registration.

Below that related terms are displayed for every phrase that you have entered into the search form. This provides inspiration to try a different search, for instance by replacing one of the terms or by searching directly for one of the suggested words (PCHardware may be taken but what about ComputerHardware?) . A click on a related term performs a search for that word or phrase.

Panabee displays word and phrase translations on the very same page as well, which may sometimes reveal additional options or domain possibilities.

That still is not the end of it. The service furthermore displays mashup results from Twitter, Facebook, Google Search and Wikipedia which might also provide additional suggestions.

A click on an available domain name redirects to the Godaddy website where it can be purchased. It does not seem as if information are submitted in the process between the two sites, which means that you will have to enter the desired domain name again on the Godaddy website before you can make the purchase.

What I like about Panabee is the wealth of suggestions that are displayed on the page, even though some feel a bit out of line. Still, it is worth a shot especially if you are out of other options or ideas.

This showed me however that I need to diversify my Internet portfolio even further to limit the damage such a drop can cause. Ghacks is back in full strength after the recovery and I have all intentions to keep it that way.

What are my plans for the next year?

I want the site to grow organically, and add more “permanent” content like the Windows Update or Firefox article which are five to ten times the usual size of articles here at Ghacks.

I plan to continue working on Ghacks and publish my 3-5 articles every day. That along with continued support from writers such as Jack or Mike will keep the content fresh and you, my dear readers, happy.

But it is not only what I want, it is also about what you want. I would like to know what your expectations are for the coming year.

What would you like to see? Should we cover a topic that we have not so far? Drop a topic? Add more articles about in a specific niche? Add or remove static contents? Add new features, functions or widgets to the site? Let me know everything that comes to your mind, even if it sounds silly.

I’d like to know what you have in mind so that I can collect and think about it. There are of course a few things that I cannot change. The ads for instance or some page elements that are important for SEO. I could however create a donators account for instance which would remove ads from the site for donators.

Let me know what you think, and thanks in advance for your input.

Simures however offers a different approach than those third party programs. The online service can display any web page that is available online in any resolution available.

Users can either enter a web page and a desired resolution on the Simures website, or modify the url of the service to automatically display a website in a specific resolution.

Even better is the fact that the resolution can be adjusted in realtime on the page, so that the website is displayed in the new resolution immediately.

Urls use a naming convention, so that the service can be used directly without having to open its web page first. Just use the following syntax to display a website in a desired resolution:

http://www.simures.com/800×600/ghacks.net

The 800×600 part can be modified to any resolution, from 0×0 to 8000×6000 and more. The url can display any website, not just root domains. Just append the whole url without the http:// and the trailing / and it will be displayed by the service.

The best feature of Simures is the fact that it changes the resolution directly, which can save web developers some work. It would be nice if the developers of Simures would add presets to the page to load a specified web page in popular resolutions.

Update: Web developers can bookmark the web addresses to open them again whenever needed. This can be useful if they are working on a project for a long time and need to verify how it displays in a certain resolution regularly.

Tools have been created to test the page loading time of a website, for instance Yslow or Google Page Speed which both show in detail the loading time and the elements that are responsible for it.

These tools are also used by webmasters to test the loading speed of related website. Those times give the webmaster a good indication if more optimization needs to be done. If a web page loads at least as fast as the fastest competing website then it is usually not necessary to optimize further, if it is slower there might be still room for improvement.

Which Loads Faster is an online service that compares the page load time of two websites by racing them against each other.

which loads faster

The website offers a few preset speed comparisons and the option to create a custom comparison.

To race two pages, a user needs to add two page urls into the form at the top and click the go button. Which Loads Faster will instantly start loading and displaying the websites in two columns on the same page.

Page loading times of both websites are displayed in milliseconds, and the faster one is indicated with an arrow and a percentage value that indicates how much faster it is than the other web page.

The Race link at the top navigation offers another interesting variant. Here it is possible to add up multiple urls to each side to see which loads faster than the other. This could be an interesting option to compare the homepage and several subpages of websites with each other.

The settings contain an option to switch the page loading mode from parallel to serial, helpful if the two sides may interfere with each other.

Which Loads Faster is a free online service that can be very beneficial to webmasters. Additional information about the page loading times would be helpful, for instance a display of the page elements and their loading times or the hardware and software that is powering the different sites. (via To The PC)

Tools aid the webmaster in securing and testing the website. The programs available depend largely on the type of website but there are several general tools that can be used.

Websecurify is one of those tools. It is an open source program that is available for Windows, Linux and Macs.

Webmasters who run it can test a website against a fixed set of known security vulnerabilities and issues that the program will display in a report if found.

The program is extensible which means that it is possible to extend the functionality with add-ons. The project website contains documentation for that feature.

Webmasters who want to use the program right away need to click on the launch test link in the main interface. This opens a configuration window where a website url has to be entered into the target form.

A report window is shown with all issues that have been found. A short explanation is displayed in the report window but it is generally required to research the issues found further.

Websecurify comes with tools like a basic web browser or error console that can be helpful in the analysis and research of issues.

It takes some time until the program finishes a website security test completely. The window sometimes was not responding to user input during that time but recovered from that eventually.

Websecurify can be downloaded from the software’s Google Code page.

We here at Ghacks are currently running nine WordPress plugins. That’s not a lot when compared to most other websites. Our sister site Windows 7 News for instance is using 17 plugins which is almost twice the number installed on Ghacks.

You will find some plugins that most WordPress webmasters have installed and some that only a few are using. Here we go

Akismet

WordPress blogs need an antispam plugin to protect the blog from spam comments, trackbacks and pingbacks. Akismet is shipped with every WordPress installation and it feels only natural to use this plugin. We are not very fond of it on the other hand but the lack of a solid alternative is what makes us use it.

All In One SEO

One of the SEO plugins that are available for WordPress. Another highly popular plugin that optimizes some aspects of the blog to increase its search engine visibility. There are other plugins like SEO ultimate out there that we are testing on some of our other websites but we stick to All In One SEO here at Ghacks.[link]

Contact Form ][

One of the many contact form plugins that are available. It was very easy to setup (by simply integrating the command on a page or post) and has been reliable all those years.[link]

Google XML Sitemaps

It is not only compatible with Google but also with Yahoo and Bing. It creates a sitemap regularly and pings the search engines to notify them about the updates sitemap.[link]

Internal Link Building

This is the first plugin in this list that not many WordPress webmasters are using. It makes use of a similar concept that can be seen at Wikipedia: Internal Linking. It allows the webmaster to define keywords and urls they point to. Blog posts are then automatically scanned for those keywords and if they exist they are made to link to the url defined in the plugin’s options. The main purpose of this is to improve the internal linking to push relevant keywords but it can also be used for other purposes like advertising.[link]

Subscribe To Comments

Provides the option to subscribe to the comments of a post so that a notification is received whenever a new comment is posted. It is an alternative to comment RSS feeds that are automatically enabled on the blog.[link]

W3 Total Cache

A few caching plugins fight for dominance. We have been using WP Super Cache for quite some time until we discovered W3 Total Cache. Back then we had to use other plugins like one for compressing CSS files to optimize the loading times of the blog. W3 Total Cache combines not only caching but also minifying of scripts (JavaScript and CSS) eliminating the need for the CSS Compress plugin. It also supports CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) and is more complete than the other caching plugins. Takes a bit longer to configure but is well worth the troubles.[link]

WP-PageNavi

This is the only plugin next to Akismet that we have been using since the creation of this blog. It allows the webmaster to display numbers at the end of each index page instead of the Next Last navigational elements. [link]

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

This one supports caching and displays related posts beneath each article and also in the RSS feed if desired. We had some troubles with it because of the large number of tags but once we disabled tags from being included in the calculation it worked fine. [link]

The huge amount of traffic that we get every day has forced us to optimize the blog and get rid of some plugins that we would be using otherwise. We have for instance removed social bookmarking icon plugins which reduced the page loading time and did not prove to be as effective as we hoped they would be (meaning that not many visitors clicked on them).

Are you running similar plugins on your website? Let us hear about them in the comments.

The most important rule for search engine optimization is to use the page title in the url. Everything else is optional and up to the user’s liking.

WordPress generates an .htaccess file when the permalinks are changed that contains the rewrite directives. It sometimes happens that the file cannot be created or written which would then mean that the user would need to create and edit the htaccess file manually.

The WordPress code that is used is not optimized. It does not prevent for instance unnecessary file and directory checks. JP Morgan over at the Webmaster World forum created a better rewrite directive that “fixes several performance-affecting problems”.

This is a total replacement for the code supplied with WP as bounded by the “Begin WP” and “End WP” comments, and fixes several performance-affecting problems. Notably, the unnecessary and potentially-problematic container is completely removed, and code is added and re-structured to both prevent completely-unnecessary file- and directory- exists checks and to reduce the number of necessary -exists checks to one-half the original count (due to the way mod_rewrite behaves recursively in .htaccess context).

According to JP the modified code speeds up the .htaccess code by at least a factor of two by “avoiding the second-pass exists checks on index.php itself, and avoiding exists-checks on resources such as image files which obviously don’t need to be handled by WP.”

Replace the old WordPress rewrite code in the .htaccess file with the following new code. You might need to edit the file types (gif|jpg|php|ico|css|js). These should contain the files that are requested the most. It might make sense to include png for instance in the list.

# BEGIN WordPress
#
RewriteEngine on
#
# Unless you have set a different RewriteBase preceding this point,
# you may delete or comment-out the following RewriteBase directive
# RewriteBase /
#
# if this request is for "/" or has already been rewritten to WP
RewriteCond $1 ^(index\.php)?$ [OR]
# or if request is for image, css, or js file
RewriteCond $1 \.(gif|jpg|php|ico|css|js)$ [NC,OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing file
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
# or if URL resolves to existing directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
# then skip the rewrite to WP
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ - [S=1]
# else rewrite the request to WP
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
#
# END wordpress

This change seems to speed up the WordPress loading time considerably. Let us know how you think it affected the page loading time if you have implemented it in your blog or noticed a difference here at Ghacks.

Visit the thread over at the Webmaster World forum for additional information.

The first section will display information about the blog’s responses. This includes checking the web server’s IP, RSS feed, robots.txt file, web caching and search engine indexation in Google and Bing. The second section will display technical details about the blog which are mostly interesting to the webmaster of the website.

The technical details will display page generation and fetch times, transfer speeds, information about compression as well as the version of the blog software and the theme used.

The site links to three additional services that can be used to check out a website or blog. This includes HTML verification at W3c, feed validation at Feedvalidator and HTTP header checks at redbot.com.Is My Blog Working is a great way to quickly check various technical details of a blog. A bookmarklet is provided that can might also come in handy.

1. Comment moderation and spam

Comment moderation and spam are two of the most time consuming aspects of a webmaster’s workday. A high profile blog can get thousands of spam comments a day which are then queued up in a spam folder somewhere. Even the best antispam tools do not offer a 100% protection against spam. Another trade-off is that false positives tend to increase with every new antispam plugin and script installed which can frustrate visitors so that they either stop posting comments or leave the site to never come back.

2. Email Support

Most websites have a contact form or other means of contacting the webmaster or a person responsible by email. These emails can contain tech support topics, requests (either for new articles, help, guest blogging or advertising), comments, spam or rude remarks. Tech support questions are usually the most time consuming to answer especially if it is not possible to test the problem locally. Webmasters obviously do not have to answer emails but it is good behavior if they do in a timely manner (except for spam and the rude remark emails). It is still a time consuming process especially on high traffic websites.

3. Updates and Security

It is of uttermost importance to run the latest version of scripts and software on a website. Old versions can contain security or memory holes, incompatibilities or missing features. Many hackers wait for security releases and start searching for websites that still run an older version on the day the new releases get announced. Updates on the other hand are only one part of the security concept. Scripts on the server side can improve security by preventing brute force attacks or notifying tech support. Webmasters do not necessarily have access to these features especially on shared hosting but some security add-ons and features can be installed by them as well. This includes setting the right access rights for directories, making sure to use non-standard usernames, directories and database prefixes or installing scripts and plugins that increase a website’s security.

4. Features and Plugins

Webmasters have to keep an eye on the development of new plugins and features. WordPress webmasters for example have thousands of plugins at their disposal that get constantly updated. Additions are posted in the dozens daily and it can be quite hard to keep up with them. There is however always the possibility to find a plugin or script that adds a new interesting feature to a website or is able to replace an existing script by providing an increase in performance or functionality. One of the main reasons why many webmasters stick with one content management system is that it is easier to keep an overview of the advancements (and other things including security) that are made.

5. Design

Not all webmasters have to be design-aces. It is perfectly possible to download templates and themes for many different types of content management systems or websites and use these with little modification. Another option is to order a custom theme from a designer. Small changes on the other hand are usually performed by the webmaster. This includes changing a logo, adding a graphic or other elements.

6. Performance

A slow loading website does not necessarily mean that the server the website is hosted is not capable of delivering the performance the website needs. Other things can play a role here including scripts and plugins installed. External scripts, like advertisement or third party widgets, can slow down a website tremendously. Even more so if the domain the data is loaded from is experiencing technical problems as well. A webmaster needs to make sure that the website can be loaded as fast as possible. While third party scripts are usually in the top list of elements that slow down a website the problems can also be caused by large multimedia contents like unoptimized images, broken scripts, not optimized loading sequences or not making use of compression techniques or image concatenation.

Many tools can help in the analysis including the XHTML Validator over at W3C, Firebug or YSLOW.

7. Testing and Compatibility

A website has to be tested with various web browsers to ensure that the user experience is similar in all cases and that it is possible to connect to the website with all popular web browsers. Webmasters also do a lot of testing that include testing advertisement, plugins, scripts or element positions on their website. A classical example is to test various advertisement positions on a website to find the one that is yielding the highest earnings for the webmaster. Other possibilities include testing various positions for content to increase pageviews or decrease the number of visitors who leave a website on the first page without visiting a second one.

8. Advertising

Not all websites and blogs run advertisements. Webmasters who do place ads on their websites open a new can of worms. Statistics have to be checked regularly to make sure that the ads perform well. Ads need to be tested (if possible) in various ways including different positions, color schemes and even different advertisers. Monitoring various webmaster forums and blogs for new advertising opportunities and tips is a must do.

9. Hosting, Domain and Billing

Webmasters using free webhosts do not have to worry about these. But webmasters with their own domain name and web hosting account need to keep an eye on a few things including expiration dates and paying subscriptions in time. This is usually not a big issue and not that time consuming unless hundreds or thousands of domains are hosted at dozens of different web hosters or web servers.

10. Networking

Networking is probably the most important aspect of being a webmaster. You tend to get the best tips from a network of webmasters who work in the same niche. I consider the day I met Everton from Connected Internet one of my luckiest days in my life. Not only have we exchanged information that helped us get rich (haha) and improve our websites; No, we also decided to run a joint project which turned out to be very profitable.

Not everything is about being profitable of course. Some tips are only passed around in close circles because many webmasters do not post their findings and experiences on forums or websites. This can be a better way of placing ads on a blog, a new plugin or script that a website benefits from or general tips.

Verdict:

I’m not sure if this article covered all the aspects. There are probably more including tax reports, law suites and the like. Please post a comment if you have something to add or would like to voice your opinion on the subject. Being a webmaster is more than meets the eye.

It is still possible to create shortcuts by dragging and dropping the favicon to an empty space on the computer desktop or one of the folders on the computer. A more versatile option is the Deskcut add-on for the Firefox web browser which adds a right-click option to the browser that allows a user to create a shortcut on the computer that points to the selected website.

Deskcut comes exactly with the set of features that one would expect from an add-on like this. It adds the option to create a website shortcut to the right-click menu which will create a shortcut of the website in the active tab. The user can either manually select the name and location that shortcut should be saved in or edit the options once to set a permanent location and name for the shortcuts.

The add-on can generate the filename of the shortcut from the page title, page url or prompt the user to enter a name. It is furthermore possible to add data or time to the filename and strip, encode or replace invalid characters from the shortcut name. A path can be set once so that all shortcuts are automatically saved in that location.

The main advantage of using the Deskcut add-on over the manual drag and drop solution is that the add-on works in fullscreen mode as well. It is more comfortable to create the shortcut from the right-click menu than to resize the Firefox window to be able to drag and drop the favicon to the computer desktop. It would even be more complicate if the shortcut should be saved in another folder on the computer’s hard drive.

Warrick is a Perl script that tries to restore websites from various Internet sources including Archive.org and the three popular search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing. Installation is a bit more complex than running an executable but still doable even for inexperienced users. The computer program is provided as a version for the Windows and Linux / Unix operating system. Windows users need to install a Perl interpreter such as Active Perl before they can run the script from the command line.

The developers have created a step by step guide for Windows users on how to install and use the script on the operating system. The Warrick website contains examples on how to use the script to restore single pages and entire web projects.

The command “warrick.pl -r -wr ia -c http://yourwebsite.com/” will reconstruct all pages of the website that are stored in at least one of the online sources used in the recovery process.

More recently, shared hosting has evolved into what is called “virtual dedicated hosting.” This treats every sector of the server as if it was an entire, standalone piece of hardware, so that if one site crashes, the others are unaffected.

For those sites that do need an entire server, dedicated hosting is available. This means that an entire server is devoted to one website and all its sub domains. If you are just starting out with your website, even if you plan to have e-commerce features, shared hosting, or virtual dedicated hosting will probably be your best bet, mainly because true dedicated hosting is more expensive. The average web site does just fine with 1 to 3 GB disk space, which is well within the capabilities of shared hosting setups.

The main reason a site might need more is because it offers downloading services of audio or video, or if a site regularly receives over 5,000 visitors per day. Those situations require plenty of disk space and bandwidth. Otherwise, a typical shared hosting package will almost certainly be sufficient and cost effective for you.

You need to know what type of server operating system will work with your site. Don’t panic. You don’t need to know how to program the servers. There are people who do that for you. What you need to know is what kinds of software you will be using, and if that software has to be run on Windows or on Linux, or if it will work on either. The operating system you use for your own personal computer has little to do with whether your site will require Linux or Windows hosting. All you have to be able to do is use your web publishing software.

Linux is widely considered to be the best operating system for web servers. It is reliable, efficient, and stable. If your website is hosted on a Linux system, it will likely have very high uptime, which is crucial for any e-commerce sites.

If you plan to use Microsoft proprietary software such as FrontPage, Windows Streaming Media, or MSSQL, then you will probably require a Windows based host. Most anything else will work with either Windows or Linux platforms. Unless you will be using features that require either Linux or Windows servers, you can most likely worry about other things, like making sure you find a good hosting service with the technical support you need.

Most hosting packages come with email addresses on your own domain in the format you@yourdomain.com. A “catch-all” email, such as mail@yourdomain.com, is a good thing to have, as are a generous number of other email accounts for your employees. Often, hosting providers throw in things like auto responders for when you’re out of pocket, and the ability to access your mail over the Internet, so that you or your employees can check it when they’re away from the office. These are fairly standard features these days, and with the web hosting industry as competitive as it is, you should have no trouble getting decent email service as part of your hosting package.

Uptime and downtime are two words you hope you don’t ever have to use when talking about your business website. Hosting providers have a number of contingency plans up their sleeves to eliminate downtime or at least keep it as brief as possible. They have the ability to distribute the traffic to your site over more than one server if it should reach a level where it’s overwhelming the hardware. If one piece of equipment has a problem, they can begin using a backup server almost immediately. The good web hosting providers can offer you at least 99.8% uptime, and you should accept no less. If they back that with a guarantee, so much the better.

You can check out what others are saying about a hosting company by simply typing the name of the company into a search engine. You sometimes find a treasure trove of information that you couldn’t get otherwise about the company. One word of caution, though: every hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have a few bad reviews. Sometimes it’s the fault of the company, and sometimes it’s the fault of the client for expecting something different from what was negotiated. The point is, don’t let one or two scathing rants cause you to cross a company off your list. What you should look for is a pattern of complaints over time. Also, if you see nothing but glowing reviews, perhaps you should be a little suspicious. No web hosting service is perfect, and less than scrupulous companies have been known to overload customer feedback sites with planted positive reviews. Most companies are more honest than that, however.

Of course, price is a major consideration. If you’re starting a new business, you definitely don’t want to waste money, either for substandard service or for fancy features you’ll never use. A rule of thumb is to weed out the hosting companies that are very high priced and the ones that are very low priced (or free), and work with the ones that don’t seem too extreme pricewise. Cheap or free hosting isn’t always a good choice for a business site (though they can work fine for personal or hobby sites), and expensive hosting doesn’t always mean you get the best of everything. It may just mean that you’re buying a lot of stuff you don’t need.

Finally, perhaps the most important consideration when choosing a web hosting company is their level of customer and technical support. You should expect real 24/7/365 support from a hosting company that has experience hosting e-commerce sites. This doesn’t mean that they have a voice mail tree that you have to navigate through before having any hope of talking to an actual person. It also doesn’t mean that messages are taken during non-business hours, but addressed during business hours. If you’re the owner of a business website, there are no such things as “business hours.”
The kind of support you should expect is from a real human who is either physically at the server farm or who can hook you up with someone who is. And it shouldn’t matter if you’re calling on a weekend or a holiday: somewhere on the planet, a person may be trying to get on your site and having difficulty, and that needs to be fixed no matter where they are and no matter what time it is. Downtime is money out of your pocket, and you need to work with your hosting provider to eliminate or nearly eliminate it.

Don’t be intimidated at the thought of choosing an Internet hosting provider. They all want your business, so you’re in a relative position of power. Just be aware of those that promise what sounds like too much (such as “unlimited” bandwidth), and steer clear of sites that have histories of poor service or support. That’s the great thing about the Internet: if enough people have trouble with any company, whether it’s a car rental company or an Internet hosting provider, they will talk and put the information out there, hopefully saving you some trouble, too.

Once you have a written business plan, it’s time to do some research on which hosting firm is most suitable for your website. You will need to know, obviously, if you plan to sell products from your site, or if it will be strictly promotional. Do you plan to have video? Elaborate graphics? Or just text? Will your chosen host provider help you set up your web site? How many email accounts will you need?

There are a number of things you need to know about the hosting companies you choose among. Perhaps the main thing is how reliable their service is. If you have a business website, you can’t afford for it to have downtime. After all, it’s always normal business hours somewhere. Closely tied to the need for reliability is the need for technical support. Many hosting services say that they have so-called 24/7/365 tech support, but their definition of what that comprises may be different from yours. You don’t want to find out the hard way that calling tech support late at night or on a holiday only gets you to an answering machine and that you’ll have to wait for regular business to resume before getting any actual help.

Of course you should ask your candidate hosting companies directly about these things, but you should do something else too. There are forums all over the Internet where people will meet online to talk about such issues. Read these discussion threads. Ask questions. You should be able to get a more objective assessment of an Internet hosting provider than you would from the company itself.
There are, however, two things you should be aware of. The first thing is that every web hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have some negative feedback. One or two rants about a certain hosting company shouldn’t put you off. It is possible that the user was the one with the problem, and it is also possible that the company has fixed the problem.

The other thing you should know when reading forums is that sometimes hosting companies plant people on them to say good things about them. The rule of thumb should be: discount the overly positive posts on a company, and discount the overly negative, too. Any post filled with capital letters and exclamation marks is suspect. Take your information from the saner posts you come across, and if you’re allowed to join a forum, don’t hesitate to ask questions, particularly about free web hosting companies.

The reason these companies are able to offer free hosting is that they will run ads on your site. These might be unobtrusive ad links, or they may be pop-ups, or they may be the really annoying ads that follow the reader as he or she scrolls down the page. You have to decide if you can live with the annoyance, and if you think your customers will stick around long enough to buy something.
The obvious advantage of free web hosting services is price. You won’t have to register a domain name or pay for hosting. A free web page can serve as a training site for you as you learn how you want your site to look, or test out new promotions. There are free services like sitemeter.com that will gather basic statistics on your site that can give you valuable information on your visitors. You can find out where most of your visitors come from, what time of day they visit, and how many page views they amass.

You could, if you had the time and motivation, use multiple free hosting providers to set up your site, and then monitor all of them to see if one outperforms the rest. You will likely see differences in the different hosts, and quickly learn which ones are the easiest to work with. You may find that one hosting company gets your site indexed by search engines sooner, and therefore drives more traffic to your site.

Or you may decide that free web hosting just isn’t going to be good enough. All you will have lost is time.

The biggest disadvantage to free web hosting is the ads cluttering up the site. Many visitors are turned off by pop-ups that suddenly materialize as they try to enter or leave your site. And a few will click on those ads and leave your site without looking at anything at all.

Even if you eventually choose paid web hosting for the control it gives you over your site, the free websites you set up may still work to your advantage. You never know where your web traffic will come from. Some of it might come through an old free site you set up when you were just starting out. So, while free website hosting may serve you well as you learn how to be a webmaster, if you have any kind of e-commerce function, you’ll almost certainly want to switch to paid hosting at some point.

But if you’re broke and just starting out, or just learning the basics of having your own web site, then free hosting providers may be exactly the right thing for you.

Not everyone wants to pay to monitor websites though. The free portable software program SiteMonitor provides a local solution for the Windows operating system. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 and can be configured to monitor selected websites and notify the user if they become unreachable. It is a good alternative as long as it is run on a computer system that is online 24/7.

New urls can be added easily to SiteMonitor. All that it takes is to add a descriptive name, an url and HTML to match which is simply content that should appear on the website. The website monitoring software will check every 30 minutes by default; To much for important websites. The interval can be changed in the options. The options are also the place where the notification preferences can be edited. The website monitor provides two different types of reactions to website connection problems:

• Run a script or executable, e.g. a script that will restart a server or service
• Send email to notify a user about the connection problem

The amount of failures before either one of the reactions will be initiated can be configured in the same menu as well.

Below is the small php script that we use to check if the database is up and running on Ghacks:

<?php
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbuser = 'username';
$dbpass = 'password';

$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die ('Error');

$dbname = 'databasename';
mysql_select_db($dbname);

if ($conn) {echo "ok";}
else {echo "error";}

?>

replace username with the database username, password with the password of the username and databasename with the name of the database. Save it as database.php, upload it to your website and load the new file. It should display ok if the database is up and error if it is down. The url that points to the script can then be added to the website monitoring software to check if it returns ok. If it does the website is up, if it does not it is down.

Alternatives are the Website Monitor and Downloader Wysigot, Montastic or the Server Monitor Observu.