Posts made in January, 2010
Update your Website’s Software regularly
I am following the Google walkout news from the Chinese market for the past few days. Will others online properties follow suit too?
Essentially the hacking seems to have happened because of a zero-day flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
This just shows how important it is for everyone to patch their computers.
However, there is another patch which most webmasters forget to do and that is to patch their online softwares. Be it CMS’ like Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal or any other software that you use online, it is extremely essential that they are patched to the latest build. From my early days as a developer I have observed how software flaws have been picked up by hackers. They simply run a search on google for websites running a particular software by keying in certain standard URLs that are unique to the software and then hack into the website – defacing the homepage, deleting core files, dropping their own files or even stealing the database.
To add to one’s misery I have also observed that users often install a CMS and don’t backup the entire installation. Reason being the size of the installation is often too large for a backup; this is a major error. Because if your site is hacked, you have to restart building your website from scratch. Trust me, this is really disheartening and time consuming.
As a webmaster these are some of the key points you must adhere to
1. Patch your software
a. You can subscribe to your software’s newsletter that updates you when a new patch is available.
b. You can add a feed from your software’s website to your feed reader warning you when a software update has been posted.
c. Use Fantastico in the first place when you start installing known software. Fantastico will automate updates relieving you of updating your software from time to time.
2. Backup Backup Backup
Seriously! Need I elaborate on how important backing up is? Use your site’s control panel. If you are hosted with WebCynergy, simply head to www.YOURWEBSITE.com/cpanel and run an entire backup of your site. You can download this backup and keep the copy with you for a hay day.
If you would rather concentrate on your business or your website was developed by a few developers and you are no longer in touch with them, simply contact us. We will maintain your website by patching and updating your software from time to time for a small annual maintenance fee. How about that? 
Host safely.
Read MoreGoogle’s Promise to Web Users – Part II
I received few e-mail queries and phone calls for my last blog post on Google’s Promise to Web Users. All of my folks wanted to know more to work with the Google system to achieve higher rankings.
Hence, I thought of explaining the three parts in detail.
Theme – Always consider the difference between truth and the whole truth while selecting the theme for a page. Apply the rule of whole truth to every page on the website and make sure the title is specific and unique throughout the site.
- A modifier that is always true is part of whole truth and is no longer just a modifier.
- The narrowest truth is the whole truth
- Narrow truth is easier to rank for than broad truth.
- Many pages with narrow truth beats fewer pages with broader truths.
In SEO the truth is about balance. When selecting a search phrase always remember,
If a search phrase is:
Too Broad, then
- Too much competition
- Low conversion
- Starts, competing with other inner pages of the website.
Too Narrow, then
- Too many pages to link sensibly
- Lots of duplication in content
- Very low traffic to each page (low ROI)
Reputation – When selecting link text to attach meaning to the page that links point too, always remember:
Don’t confuse Google with
- Navigation links like “Click Here” and “This Page”.
- URL links and company names
Don’t confuse searchers with
- Links that provide partial truth
- Repetitive usage of same anchor text
Confirmation – Now, make no mistake good ranking does start at home with on-page factors and reputation but it just does not end there. We also need confirmation from other sites. In general external links are the least important determinant of overall ranking once you have some but a lack of external links will cost even the best optimized website to have big trouble. The larger the website the less external linking you’ll need but all sites will need some external links because this is one of the techniques Google uses to combat so called low quality websites.
When selecting external links, always remember:
- Select relevant quality links
- Followed links are strongly preferred
- Link to all of your pages not just the homepage
- Get link text as precise as you can get.
Implementing these three systems is the only way to achieve good amount of traffic and keyword rankings.
Read MoreUnlimited Hosting – is it for real?
Is there anything like unlimited in this world? Even the air we breathe is finite! Perhaps the only thing close to unlimited would be space.
Then how do people develop this craze for unlimited hosting? When you search for unlimited hosting in your favourite search engine, you come across a myriad of websites that promise to host unlimited content at the cheapest price possible. Frankly speaking in my early days, when I started Web Designing for a few clients and had to choose a host, I fell for the unlimited bug too. From my experience in web hosting and designing for over 10 years these are a few things I have learnt:
1. There is nothing like unlimited. Even unlimited food is restricted to how much you can eat. Some eat less and others eat more. But no one eats unlimited!
2. Other than a very select number of websites (and I mean really select and reputed ones) all other unlimited hosting plans are possibly pyramid schemes which crash someday.
How does this pyramid crash?
a. There is a master seller who sells a few large capacity servers to resellers.
b. Now these resellers have the option to resell space to someone again or rent the space out to end customers.
c. Somewhere in this reselling chain come a few scrupulous people who just want to make a fast buck! These are generally college kids who need to pay for their daily expenses or other miscreants.
d. From a limited but large space rented out, someone along the chain brings in the concept of unlimited space to both resellers and clients alike. Each sub-reseller then again assigns unlimited space to his clients without knowing who his parent seller is or is there really an unlimited hosting. And so the chain follows.
e. Someday the buck has to stop. Someone pulls the plug somewhere. And then the entire chain collapses.
How does this hurt you as a client?
1. Simple. You loose your money! Worse still, you would have paid a low rate for unlimited space for a 5 year contract. And you loose it all!
2. More than your money, you loose your files. Perhaps you do not have a backup too!
3. You loose access to your emails and your clients think you just went kaput as they are unable to access your website for a few days till you don’t move to another host.
At WebCynergy we do not encourage false marketing. We charge you what we think is the right price to run the business efficiently and support you. We charge you in different slabs depending on the space you need. We believe this approach is more ethical than marketing something that does not exist. If you believe that we are your right partners, we would encourage you to try out WebCynergy’s hosting – please click here to check our plans. Happy hosting with WebCynergy!
Google’s Promise to Web Users – Part I
As I promised in my last post, I’ll try and talk on what user’s are looking for and what does Google promise.
Every one of Google’s users is looking for truth and Google promises to deliver. This is nothing but result relevance, result precision and user efficiency. These are the same standards that Google uses to evaluate results and improve their algorithm. When you learn to obey the rules to what they want they’ll reward you with higher rankings.
To do this learn to work the system, there are just really three simple parts.
- Theme: It is the machine interpretation of web pages. This embodies the on-page factors in search jargon.
- Reputation: It is the use of anchor text to attach meaning to the pages that links point too. This is an off-page factor.
- Affirmation / Confirmation: It is a collage of filters and reputation effects from external sources that validates and confirms what a site says about itself. Primary purpose of this part of Google’s process is to shield the above two aspects from abuse.
Getting these three parts integrated is what leads to improvement in rankings. Every page should rank for one core search phrase. Be more specific as competition is far more intense and while talking about competition, don’t compete with yourself. Every page on the website should rank for a different core search phrase. Thus the page will rank for one core keyword in addition to long-tail keywords which happens because of supporting words in the body copy.
Read MoreUse Joomla for easy Web Designing
If you are a newbie to the entire website and hosting phenomenon, then you need to try out Joomla. Wow, now what is that? I have heard of html, perhaps things like css and php and already pretty confused. Now what’s Joomla?
When you setup a website you have to get yourself a few basic things
1. A domain name – the very address that people will type to reach your website
2. A host who will hold all your online content and
3. Your content itself.
Personally speaking, I think purchasing your domain name and host is a very easy thing to do if you just require a few pages online. What is difficult is to choose a good host from among a myriad of options online. WebCynergy happens to be one more in the multitude – and yes proudly a good one 
You can do both, registering your domain name and choosing your web hosting package here at WebCynergy itself – head to our homepage and get going!
Once the first 2 steps are done, how do you setup your own website? The most hassle free option is to use one of the two most popular software available online,
a. Joomla – if you are desigining a full fledged website, and
b. Wordpress – if you just need to blog.
Joomla is a point and click application. In fact you can automate most of its installation process too.
1. Simply head to Fantastico – which you will find inside your control panel when you host with WebCynergy (http://www.YOURWEBSITENAME.com/cpanel)
2. Head down and find ‘Fantastico De Luxe’ under software / services
3. Choose Joomla 1.5 which is the latest version and
4. Click install.
5. Your Joomla software will be installed and running.
Joomla has two ends – the frontend – which the world sees and so do you, and a backend which is accessed only by you.
It may look overwhelming at first sight. Now what are you supposed to do from here?
You are close – to get your website up and running you have to do just a few things
a. In Joomla before you post some content, you need to place that content in some category. If this category is not a sub-category by itself, then you also have to create a section name with the same category name. Finally post the content and assign the right section and category names to it.
b. Once done, you have to publish the content. It could be your front-page content or a content in one of the internal pages.
c. You may also most likely need to create menus if you have two or more pages to display online.
d. In that case simply head to the “main menu” option and create your menu structure. As you create each menu item, simply assign that menu item to an appropriate content.
That’s it! Your website is ready!
Joomla is as easy as I just typed. It has a lot more potential that you can harness. Head on to http://www.joomla.org/ and read more about Joomla. Check out their tutorials and find out what more can this software do for you. Three of Joomla’s advantages over any other software available online are
1. Ease of use
2. A large community of developers providing open source extensions and
3. Free templates available online.
Now if you are creating your own professional website, you may want to give the free templates a skip – as many sites would use the same. You may also want to use more of the functionalities Joomla brings to the table. If you wish to create a professional website with your own customised and unique template design matching your business and want to leverage Joomla to its full potential to deliver what you need, drop us an email and we will be glad to help you! WebCynergy is here to be your one stop shop for you entire online marketing experience!
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