Saturday, 16 June 2012

Tips For Troubleshooting a Slow Loading Website

Is your website loading slowly and you don't know what is causing the problem.  The problem could be your server, website software or something you added to your site. 

This article is a basic guide on how to troubleshoot a Slow Loading Website. 

To know where the problem is, you need to open your site homepage on a browser. Once you click enter, look at the status bar at the bottom or top. If the homepage does not open at all and the status bar permanently reads, connecting or connected, the problem could be the server or your database has a problem. In such a case you will see the message "server cannot be reached". 

If the site opens after a long time the problem is either the site software or something you added e.g plugin or image/video. In such a case look at the browser status bar and see which file is taking a long time to load. Is it an image, ad server or any other plugin.

Tips For Troubleshooting a Slow Loading Website

Have You Added Heavy Images. 
If you upload large size images to your site they will affect the performance of your site. It is always advisable to resize your images before uploading them.

Troubleshooting Plugins and Themes
Poorly coded plugins and themes will slow your site to a crawly. If your site is slow and you have recently added and activated a new plugin or theme, remove it and see how the site behaves. Plugins that serve ads are notoriously known for slowing a site load times.  

Another troubleshooting area is to check if you have changed your site code. If you don't remember the exact changes, return to the default. 

Troubleshooting Your Site Software
Web applications (like WordPress, Joomla, MediaWiki, and the like) are updated on a semi-regular basis, both to improve the application itself, and to block any security issues found in a previous version. For best performance, make sure that your installs are updated on a regular basis.

If your site is loading slowly start by updating your site software and see if the speed will improve.  

Troubleshooting Your Site Database
If your site database is hosted in a server running old version of PHP or MySQL the performance will be wanting. To know the version of software running on your server log in to your cpanel and on the right side bar there will be information on versions of software. If it is not there ask your host.


Wishing your site a speedy recovery.

Friday, 15 June 2012

How To Set Up A Blog Site For Your Cat

If you have an interesting Cat you should set a blog site where you can share it's life with the rest of the world. The cat story can be told in form of written text by you and posting of cat pictures and cat videos.

Securing Domain Name For Your Cat
The first step in setting up a cat blog is purchasing the domain name for your site. Cat.com is not available so your domain name should be something like maruthecat.com. The trick is combining your cat name plus the word cat.

Free Domain Name For Your Cat Blog
Domain names cost from $9.99 - $20. But you can get a free domain name from web hosting companies such as Bluehost and Web Hosting Hub. This companies will give you a free domain name when you purchase blog hosting service from them.

Build Your Cat Blog Using Wordpress
Wordpress is the best software to build and create your cat blog. It is easy to use and you don't need website skills to use it. If you have never used Wordpress, go and get a free blog site at wordpress.com. Registration will take 5 minutes and you can start blogging about, what your cat ate for breakfast, post a video of your cat chasing the neighbourhood cat and pictures of your cat during your summer vacation.

Best Hosting For A Cat Blog
For those who prefer having a self hosted Wordpress blog, you can never go wrong by purchasing hosting from my recommended blog hosting services.
WebHostingHub.com
Web Hosting Hub, is an award-winning hosting company, provides affordable web hosting services with the highest level of technical support and customer satisfaction. Their All-in-One hosting plan starts from only $3.95/mo and includes all the features you'll need to get your cat website or blog online fast.

Bluehost.com 
BlueHost has become well known for providing some excellent features at the low cost. At the same time, great customer service and excellent products is what really sets BlueHost apart from other web hosting companies. Their technical support is ranked as one of the best on the market. If you look around for your cat blog hosting, you might be able to find cheaper web hosting companies but with BlueHost you will get the best value for money.

Popular Cat Blogs That May Inspire Your Cat blog
One way to learn all about cat blogging is by following some of the most popular cat blogs in the web.  


Misha The Cat

Henry The cat


When your cat blog goes viral make sure to contact www.kickerhosting.com so that I may list your cat blog here.

Thursday, 14 June 2012

Why Your Wordpress Blog is Loading Slowly & How To Make It Load Faster

The common reasons why a wordpress blog loads slowly are a poor theme, dubious hosting, extra widgets and plugins and heavy images.

If you notice your wordpress blog homepage takes a long time to load, you need to get to the bottom of the issue and act. Google these days is taking into consideration a site load speed when evaluating websites. Expect low rankings if your wordpress blog load times is long.

Why Your Wordpress Blog is Loading Slowly and How To Make It Load Faster

In this article I will share with you how to detect the problem and fix it.

Problem With Your Theme
A theme can break or make your site. The beauty of Wordpress is a pool of thousands of free themes. but the downside of that is there are a few poorly coded themes. Always visit your blog homepage after you install a new theme. If you notice the blog is loading slowly compared to before, know the theme has a problem.

Problem with your plugins. 
Plugins that serve ads are notoriously responsible for slowing a site down. Visit your site homepage after installing any new plugin. If you notice your wordpress blog is loading slowly compared to before, know the plugin has a problem. 

If you blog is running so many plugins it will impact on load times. The way to speed up the blog is remove unnecessary plugins or duplicate plugins.

Your Hosting Servers Slowing Your blog.
Hosting plays an important role in your blog’s loading speed. Many new bloggers ignore this, but adjusting hosting can have a big impact on increasing your blog speed. Majority of freelance bloggers use shared hosting which is cheap but shared hosting can slow down load times when the demands on the shared server are high. 

Images Slowing a Wordpress Blog
Many bloggers don’t focus on optimizing blog images, but it’s a very effective way to increase your blog’s loading speed. There are many, many plugins that can help you to optimize blog images, but  recommend you always resize your images using Wordpress uploader. 

Use W3 Total Cache Plugin

W3 Total Cache is a must-have plugin for any WordPress user. W3 Total Cache is plugin created to speed up a Wordpress blog load times. It generates HTML files that are served directly by Apache, without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. It’s compatible with most servers and server configurations, and gives you the choice of creating the cache on your own server.

Full List Of People & Companies That Applied For New Top Level Domains

“The Internet is about to change forever,” said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of Icann. When announcing full list of People and Companies that applied for new top level domain names.

The domains are the letters that follow the dot in Internet addresses, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as Icann, published a full list of the new requests.

The total request was 1930. There are 280 ccTLDs but only 22 “generics” in the domain name system right now, but that is all about to change.

Google and Amazon Lead in Applications.


Google proved to be one of the more ambitious applicants. It spent almost $18.7 million applying for more than 100 top-level domains, some expected, some not. Not surprisingly, the search giant wants .google, .youtube, .goog and .plus. It was the only applicant vying for .fly, .new and .eat. But it is going to have to fight Johnson & Johnson for .baby, Microsoft for .docs and .live, and Amazon for 17 top-level domains: .wow, .search, .shop, .drive, .free, .game, .mail, .map, .movie, .music, .play, .shop, .show, .spot, .store, .talk and .you.

Amazon also went after .tunes, .got, .author, .smile, .song, .joy, .bot, .like and .call. It does not appear that Facebook applied for any domain. Apple applied for .apple.

The most sought-after extension is .app, with 13 applicants though not Apple, which popularized the mobile application.

Another highly sought after extension was .blog, with 9 applicants. 

Some of the most interesting applications were, .boo, .ceo, .dot, .bot, .esq.



Icann is expected to approve hundreds of these extensions, the first of which should be in use by next year.

To read the full list of domain applicants go to ICANN Domain Listings.

Wednesday, 13 June 2012

Example of Affiliate Landing Page That Converts

If you are selling an affiliate product you need to make sure your landing pages are well designed and the copy is persuasive.A good landing page will ensure you convert visitors into buyers.

Example of Affiliate Landing Page That Converts

Bluehost recently redesigned their landing page for web hosting and affiliates are reporting the new landing page has increased sales by 2.3%

Compare these two Templates of Bluehost affiliate landing page
An Affiliate landing page should be super targeted

The new page is obviously targeted for those looking to start a WordPress blog, prominently displaying text like:
  • “Welcome, WordPress Fans!”
  • “Free 1-Click Installation of WordPress”
  • “Hosting over 850,000 WordPress blogs”
  • “WordPress.org Recommended Host Since 2005″
  • “Not Just the Best Blogging Software”
The old landing page focused on web hosting and technology, as opposed to what the users were going to create with it – a blog.

The lesson here is make sure the landing does not talk about general stuff but be specific. Zero in on the actual product.

Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Tips For Setting A Website To Sell Avon Products Online

If you are an Avon sales person and you still sell Avon products the old fashioned way (door to door), you are missing a big opportunity to sell your products online to millions of web users.

Be On The Right Side Of Business
Data from forest research shows online sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales. In Western Europe, Forrester expects a slightly faster 11 percent growth rate for online retail sales, going from $93 billion (68 billion Euros) in 2009 to $156 billion (114.5 billion Euros) in 2014.

As you can see, consumers are increasingly shifting to online shopping. To sell to this online buyers you need to set up a website to sell your Avon products. You can build a website to sell Avon cosmetics, Avon perfume, Avon Toys and Avon clothing. 

Things You Need to Know When Setting Up an Avon online store.

You Can Set Up Your Avon Website For Free
You don't need to hire an expensive web designer to design you website. Make use of free website design softwares such as Wordpress and Joomla. My recommendation is go with Wordpress. Apart from being free is is the easiest web design software for a beginner to use.

Wordpress Theme For An Avon Website
Wordpress has thousands of templates, some are free while others you will need to purchase. Free Wordpress themes for an online store are limited and I recommend you purchase themes/templates from places like Theme Forest and  Templatic.com

Make Sure Your Avon Online Store is Google friendly
The best place to find potential buyers of your Avon products is Google. Millions of people use Google search engine to search for products. You goal should be to make sure your Avon website comes top when people search for a particular product. The way to achieve top ranking on Google search results is to make sure your online Avon store is Search Engine Optimized (SEO)

Basics of Search Engine Optimization
Include the Keywords of your products in the titles. Have a persuasive introduction of your product description. When people skim through a Google search results they are more likely to click to the website which is most persuasive. Include benefits in the introduction. The description should not be more than 160 characters. 

Write Great Content Daily
Write detailed articles about your products. Good articles should not be less than 450 words. In the early days you should write at least one new article a day.

Get Back Links To Your Avon Website
Google ranking is mainly based on number of sites linking to a websites. Your website ranking will depend on the number of sites with links pointing to your site. If you request other website owners to link to your website they will most likely turn you down.

To get other websites to link to your site, visit other websites and leave comments. Leaving comments on other websites has a low level benefit. This kind of link building strategy is better than nothing. The linking that really matters is when a website links to your Avon site in it's article/post. To get high level benefit, write guest post for popular blogs. The guest post should include a link pointing back to your website.

To Your Success!

Get Free Domain Name Registration From Web Hosting Hub

Web hosting hub, a web hosting company, gives away a FREE DOMAIN NAME registration to every one who purchases a new hosting account. If you plan to purchase hosting for your website or blog, take advantage of this deal from web hosting hub and get a free domain name. 

Web Hosting Hub, an award-winning hosting company. The Virginia-based company, founded in 2001, has a special drive for providing quality tech support, as well as a comprehensive and cheap web hosting atmosphere. 

Web Hosting Hub’s monthly web hosting plans begin at $3.95, one of the most competitive pricing schemes available of any shared hosting network. 

Web hosting hub provides affordable web hosting services with the highest level of technical support and customer satisfaction. Their All-in-One hosting plan includes all the features you'll need to get your website or blog online fast. However, reliability is what makes Web Hosting Hub stand out from the crowd as their team is made up of some of the best professionals in the hosting industry. 

Features of Web Hosting Hub Shared Hosting. 
  • Premium Web Builder and 1-click WordPress Install
  • Free Domain Name Registration
  • Unlimited Websites, Web Space, Bandwidth, Email, and more
  • Reliable Hosting with 99.9% Uptime Guarantee
  • 90-Day FULL Money Back Guarantee
  • Top-notch US-based 24/7 Technical Support. 

Purchasing hosting from web hosting hub gets you a free domain name which will save you anywhere from $10 - $15 in the first year, which is the price of a domain name.

Free Domain Registration With Web Hosting Hub

The free domain that they give you is registered in your name and not in the name of web hosting hub. 

Web Hosting Hub Customer Support.

Offering United States based technical support that’s available 24/7 over the Internet and by telephone, Web Hosting Hub offers one of the best support networks currently available of any shared hosting provider.