Monitoring Guide

Dotcom-Monitor Launches Website Performance Comparison SiteFightSite.com

2011-03-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

Wayzata, Minnesota – March 22, 2011 – Dotcom-Monitor, (www.Dotcom-Monitor.com), today announces the launch of www.SiteFightSite.com, a free website performance game and evaluation tool.

SiteFightSite.com is designed to inject a bit of technical fun into website performance comparisons. SiteFightSite.com displays a live real-time “battle” between two websites. The battle displays two fighting robots and is based on website response times and performance as measured by worldwide monitoring agent locations.

At the conclusion of the battle a winner is declared based on the response time and performance. All players will also receive a very detailed report about the performance of their websites that will players to optimize their website's performance.

“We have been providing serious technology for the IT crowd since 1998. But, we also wanted to create a web performance experience that everyone could relate to and have fun with. Ever wonder if your website's performance beats your competitor’s website performance? You can find out in a fun manner with SiteFightSite.com,” said Vadim Mazo, founder and chief technical officer at Dotcom-Monitor.com.

While designed to be a fun experience, SiteFightSite.com uses the same advanced Dotcom-Monitor.com services designed to monitor websites, networks, online transactions, and web application performance.

Dotcom-Monitor.com ensures that when a problem is detected, an alert is sent via phone, pager, email, or SMS. Additionally, real-time status reports are available via a Live Dashboard interface with detailed analysis of “every step” in the website user experience to help pinpoint where the error condition is occurring.

"Behind the fun of SiteFightSite.com is the powerful Dotcom-Monitor solution for quickly resolving user experience issues that affect uptime performance and online revenues,” noted Mazo.

For detailed information, see www.SiteFightSite.com or contact Brad Canham at 1-888-479-0741, ext. 1, or email at sales (at) dotcom-monitor.com .

Dotcom-Monitor is an advanced external Monitoring solution that ensures the uptime of your organization’s network infrastructure by bringing together Monitoring, Reporting, Notification, Escalation and Analysis in the combination best suited to your needs. To learn more about Dotcom-Monitor services including web application performance, web server performance, user experience monitoring, as well as web load stress testing go to Dotcom-Monitor.com

Dotcom-Monitor Website Performance Free CeBIT 2011 Tool

2011-03-02T04:48:00.000-08:00

Wayzata, Minnesota – February 21, 2011 – Dotcom-Monitor, (www.Dotcom-Monitor.com), today announced the immediate availability of an instant free CeBIT 2011 tool for measuring the performance of Web 2.0 websites, for CeBIT 2011 attendees.

This unique free CeBIT 2011 tool uses UserView Monitoring™, which is a browser-based service that displaying a full-color waterfall chart detailing the performance of a webpage element-by-element (html, .jpg, etc…), including Web 2.0 page elements (such as Ajax, Flash, etc..).

“CeBIT 2011 attendees will have a lot of technology services to look at, but this is a unique tool they can experience at the show that will provides detailed information about their website’s performance,” said Vadim Mazo, founder and chief technical officer of Dotcom-Monitor.

The UserView Monitoring™ service is used to automate the monitoring online transactions and web applications services from a browser-user’s perspective, including: clicking on links, filling out forms, hovering over page elements, and submitting data.

When a problem is detected, an alert is sent via phone, pager, email, or SMS. Additionally, real-time status reports are available via a Live Dashboard interface with detailed analysis of “every step” in the user experience to help pinpoint where the error condition is occurring.

"With the instant test free CeBIT tool attendees can stop by Hall 13, Booth D89 and check on the performance of their webpages while they are away at the show. With the UserView Monitoring™ service users have a powerful and affordable solution for quickly resolving user experience issues that affect uptime performance and online revenues,” noted Mazo.

For detailed information, go to www.dotcom-monitor.com/task_instant_test.aspx or to see this tool in action at CeBIT, Hall 13, Booth D89, Hannover, Germany, Mar. 1-5, or contact Brad Canham at 1-888-479-0741, ext. 1, or email at sales@dotcom-monitor.com .

About Dotcom-Monitor
Dotcom-Monitor is an advanced external Monitoring solution that ensures the uptime of your organization’s network infrastructure by bringing together Monitoring, Reporting, Notification, Escalation and Analysis. To learn more about UserView Monitoring™, and the free CeBIT 2011 tool, user experience, web application performance, mail server, web server performance monitoring services go to Dotcom-Monitor.com

Interactive Agencies: CDN Monitoring to enhance 'Client Experience'

2010-12-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

Many interactive agencies seek to improve their “client experience” by constantly improving the “user’s experience” of their clients’ websites. One way that interactive agencies increasingly do this is to use Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for faster delivery of the online content they have developed for clients. The use of CDNs allows interactive agencies to position online media, such that client website and web applications load faster for a better user experience, and improved website “results” , such as – impressions, conversions, and online sales.

However, use of CDNs is not without risk for both interactive agencies and their clients. By using a CDN, the interactive agency is also losing some insight into the performance of/and direct control over the online content. In fact, several issues can develop within a CDN that adversely affects online content and the websites that interactive agency’s produce for clients. As a result of these issues, the interactive agency’s relationship with its clients can suffer. However, when external monitoring is in place the interactive agency maintains insights into performance issues that occur to online content positioned on a CDN network and therefore can better serve its clients.

Issues facing Interactive Agencies using CDNs

When using or moving to a CDN on behalf of a client, interactive agencies are addressing several client-related factors as well as technology-related factors. Specifically, when an interactive agency recommends the use of a CDN for client content the interactive agency needs to both test the speed of CDN multimedia content when the CDN is set-up as well as monitor the delivery of the clients CDN content on an ongoing basis. For while a CDN may claim certain performance metrics for their network, without a third-party monitoring service it is difficult to prove the cause of issues that affect CDN-based or enforce Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with CDNs. Notably, as an interactive agency starts using a CDN to deliver content several performance metrics need to be addressed as the process moves along from initial evaluation and testing of the CDN to deliver client content, as well as ongoing use of a CDN, specifically:

Starting with a CDN: Monitoring CDN-based content from multiple points of presence can provide metrics that serve as “proof of concept” for moving the client’s content to a CDN network. Using multi-point monitoring will provide clear data on the increased speed of CDN-based content delivery and improved website user experience. In turn, this will allow the interactive agency to quantify the value of using a CDN-based content delivery system for its clients.

Comparing CDNs: In fact, multi-point external monitoring helps an interactive agency compare competing CDNs cost/performance to determine which CDN is able to best serve a client’s specific circumstances.

Enforcing CDN SLAs: A CDN includes many geographically spread CDN nodes (content hosting servers). Some CDNs have node redundancy built in, others do not. External monitoring can detect if a specific CDN node is having problems. External monitoring will help determine if an “issue” is related to the CDN node itself or to broader network issues (such as, latency). This information is important to have from an external perspective in order to enforce Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Managing CDN content: Is the content being served from the CDN to the webpage correct? Many interactive agencies have huge amounts of CDN-based content. External monitoring can determine if the multimedia content originating from the CDN is correct, or if the CDN-based content has gotten out of synch with the destination webpage.

Real-time CDN performance and CDN-based content performance: What is the performance of the content being served from CDN nodes as reported from multiple monitoring points-of-presence? Monitoring data is used to quantify the user experience of end users located in different areas. Specifically, each monitoring location can provide data points, such as: CDN node response time, content load time, and pinpoint error conditions associated with content served from the CDN (such as “Image not found, Not able to Connect etc…).

CDN Monitoring in Action

Successful performance monitoring of a webpage using CDN-based content means employing a comprehensive approach, specifically: monitoring the webpage from across multiple networks (such as, Global Crossing, Sprint, Level 3 etc…), monitoring for Domain Name Server (DNS) resolution, network connectivity, and content availability.

1. DNS Resolution: This resolution (translation of a domain name to an IP address) occurs when an end-user tries to access content from a CDN node, and the name of the CDN has not been previously cached.

The NBA.COM website serves as a good example. NBA.com references a number of CDN-based images from the CDN http://cdn.eyewonder.com/, A DNS Trace in reveals a relatively long and complex DNS structure. This type of DNS structure ensures good load balancing and performance. However, all of the DNS servers noted in the traceroute must also be online for the CDN content to be served to the webpage in a timely fashion.

A properly constructed CDN monitoring service provides key data points regarding the amount of time it takes for DNS resolution. Also, proper CDN monitoring never caches DNS names, because by not caching DNS names the monitoring service ensures that a DNS resolution is performed with each test. Finally, executing CDN monitoring from multiple points located over a variety of worldwide internet backbone networks and geographically distributed monitoring locations ensures that there are no delays due to DNS outages.

2. Connectivity is very important in CDNs. Connectivity ensures that a end-user requesting an image in Australia is not sent to a CDN node host in the USA. This kind of re-routing would defeat the purpose of CDN (improved load times and user experience). A CDN monitoring service will ensure that there is a minimal amount of network latency (delay) from an end-user’s geographic location to a specific node in a CDN. A CDN monitoring service utilizes a worldwide network of monitoring locations to perform network traceroutes to CDN nodes from multiple locations, in order to ensure the fastest routing and minimum network latency. The monitoring service will also measure latency between the monitoring location and the CDN node and provide alerts when latency exceeds a threshold.

3. Content Availability is important, especially in Web 2.0 websites that use CDN as distribution media. A website may have dozen or more providers and pull content from multiple sources. To ensure a positive end-user browser experience, it is necessary to ensure that all the content is present, not missing and delivered in timely fashion. As webpages increasingly rely on browser-generated content and user-experience becomes key, a monitoring service must load the page in the browser and provide a breakdown by webpage elements, to make sure that no elements are missing and everything loads properly. For example: a delay in loading a java script file, may result in the delayed loading of a video or of a company logo. A CDN monitoring service provides a breakdown by individual webpage element (.gifs, .css, Ajax etc…). The resulting waterfall chart pinpoints where problems causing increased webpage load times.

CDN Monitoring Services: The type of monitoring service used to conduct CDN-monitoring can vary based on the type of website, type of content, data points needed, “level’ of monitoring needed, and budget.

There are several levels of Dotcom-Monitor services available for conducting varying levels of CDN testing and ongoing monitoring to address a variety of client types and client needs during different stages of the CDN process. For example, an interactive agency could use standard HTTP/S monitoring to do an initial comparison of CDNs during evaluation, and then utilize UserView Monitoring™ to conduct ongoing website monitoring of a client’s complex Web 2.0 content being served by a CDN.

The Results of CDN Monitoring

CDNs, like other networks, experience change and adjustments that can affect client content. By using a Dotcom-Monitor CDN monitoring solution an interactive agency will be able to accomplish several objections that help to improve the client relationship, client retention, and performance of client websites. Specifically an interactive agency will be able to:

Quantify the value proposition of CDNs for its clients.

Compare competing CDN service providers on behalf of its clients

Respond quickly be alerted to and identify CDN and CDN-based content issues (often before a client is ever aware of the issue)

Solve CDN and CDN content issues

Maintain a focus on its core business mission of providing services to its client

Provide answers to its clients when CDN-based content issues occur by using the data points gathered, error codes generated, and coordinating with Dotcom-Monitor Support.

Enforce Service Level Agreement parameters on behalf of their clients with the CDN using the performance report SLA report data gathered by Dotcom-Monitor.

About Dotcom-Monitor

The Dotcom-Monitor is an advanced external monitoring solution that ensures the uptime of your organization’s network infrastructure by bringing together Monitoring, Reporting, Notification and Analysis. You can learn more about website monitoring, network monitoring, web server performance monitoring and mail server monitoring services at dotcom-monitor.com

Dealing With Google Site Speed Factor

2010-06-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

No one is exactly sure about how Google’s site speed factor will exactly affect a specific website’s search rankings, nor is anyone sure about how Google’s site speed factoring will change in the future. There is some speculation that Google’s recent move is part of bigger plan to “warm-up” website owners to further prioritize faster site speeds. It’s difficult to speculate as currently Google will even recommend getting rid of its own Google Analytics to improve site speed on a page!

Dotcom-Monitor.com was quoted in a Dec. 4, 2009 article on CBSnews.com that in some instances especially large e-tailers may find themselves punished if Google added site speed to the search result algorithm. That remains to be seen, however, what is clear is that e-tailers and everyone else involved in maintaining search relevance is paying more attention to site speed relative to search rankings and monitoring for site speed.

Even with the unclear effects of Google's site speed factor, there are things you can do to learn more about your site's performance and to keep one step ahead of the Google site speed issue.

Step 1: Looking Under the Hood of Your Site

It may seem a daunting task to quantify how fast your site performs or to uncover what's slowing down your web site. It's certainly a deep topic – however there are many great tools to help get you started. Two tools we've used at Dotcom-Monitor assist in developing our own web presence are Yahoo's YSlow and Google's Page Speed. Each gives you a good breakdown of what comprises your page and tips for changing page composition to make the overall download faster. Google's own Webmaster Central listed other tools in addition to these two when they announced the speed factor.

Step 2: Site Speed Monitoring

Once you've prepared your site to run at a speed that works for you and your customers, how do you make sure it stays that way?

Virtually every large e-tailer is already conducting active, externally-based site speed monitoring. For these large e-tailers adding site speed to the discussion around Google search rankings is merely another data point in a wider discussion about uptime, performance, -- and now search rankings. However, for some mid-market and smaller online stores adding active external monitoring to ensure performance and uptime is a new area. The fact that a factor in SEO now relates to site speed adds uncertainty about how to utilize active, external monitoring to ensure website uptime, performance, search rankings – and a good online reputation and revenues.

Specific and Comprehensive Site Speed Monitoring Solutions

The following active, external monitoring services at www.Dotcom-Monitor.com all address the need to maintain a 24/7 monitoring of the functionality and performance of websites which takes into account site speed. When site speed affects performance and a user’s experience in a way that impact revenues www.Dotcom-Monitor.com automatically sends alerts and initiates diagnostic processes. Owners of the monitored website can ensure they maintain a website that users will use and address any site speed issues quickly, so that slow downs have minimal affects on their online reputation, revenues – and now search rankings.

Dotcom-Monitor Tracks Site Performance

Dotcom-Monitor offers services that can help you keep lookout on your site's performance: http://dotcom-monitor.com.

via http://blog.dotcom-monitor.com

Dotcom-Monitor Launches On-Demand User Experience Monitoring for Web Applications and Transactions

2010-06-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

Wayzata, Minnesota – June 2, 2010 – Dotcom-Monitor, a leading provider of external active monitoring and analysis solutions, today announced the immediate availability of the most cost-effective, advanced web application monitoring tool on the market today for monitoring user experience, UserView Monitoring™.

UserView Monitoring™ is a proactive, regular browser-based web application performance monitoring tool, providing real-time monitoring, alerts, and reports on a user’s experience of web application performance and component connectivity. This regular browser-based monitoring tool for web applications/online transaction deployments continues Dotcom-Monitor’s focus on providing cost-effective, external monitoring solutions to administrators for online retailers, interactive agencies, and other industries focused on providing the highest quality of user experience.

Dotcom-Monitor browser-based UserView Monitoring™ solution utilizes a proprietary EveryStep™ Macro Recorder technology. EveryStep™ is a no-hassle macro recorder application, which automatically records “every step” in a user’s experience of a web application. UserView Monitoring™ is used to monitor the user’s experience of online shopping carts, login processes, etc…essentially every step in a user’s experience of a website or web application.

“As more organizations rely on interactive systems, it is important for user experience monitoring to proactively mimic the external end-user’s perspective, rather than only relying on passive internal statistical systems,” said Vadim Mazo, founder and chief technical officer of Dotcom-Monitor. “Moreover, much of the marketplace for “user experience” monitoring has been asking for an advanced, but cost-effective alternative. Vendors currently offering browser-based monitoring have a high price point, complicated evaluation/sales requirements, pre-payment pricing, and demand long-term contracts. UserView Monitoring™ offers a simplified, on-demand, and cost-effective approach.”

Rather than a large upfront investment in a monitoring system, many organizations user experience monitoring and uptime needs are best addressed by a true on-demand monitoring system with a free-to-try, pay-as-you-go, affordable service, and an automatic scripting process, like the EveryStep™ Macro Recorder. No other advanced browser-based monitoring service offers this combination of services.

Dotcom-Monitor UserView Monitoring™ keeps an eye on the ability of online web applications infrastructure components to establish and maintain user experience from an external perspective. Dotcom-Monitor monitors online transactions and web applications services using a regular Internet Explorer browser acting like a visitor to the website, including: clicking on links, filling out forms, hovering over page elements, and submitting data.

When a problem is detected, the Dotcom-Monitor notification feature sends an alert via phone, pager, email, or SMS. Additionally, real-time connectivity status reports are available via an intuitive online Dashboard interface with detailed analysis of “every step” in the user experience to help pinpoint where the error condition is occurring. This reporting functionality also includes detailed historical reports and charts for service management purposes, including Service Level Agreement (SLA) issues.

With monitoring customers around the world, business success for Dotcom-Monitor is synonymous with network uptime. "Dotcom-Monitor’s UserView Monitoring™ tool provides customers a unique, no-hassle, targeted solution for quickly identifying and resolving user experience issues that affect uptime performance and ultimately revenues,” noted Mazo. Dotcom-Monitor UserView Monitoring™ is available immediately at www.Dotcom-Monitor.com. For more information, please call 1-888-479-0741, ext. 1, or email at sales@dotcom-monitor.com

About Dotcom-Monitor

The Dotcom-Monitor suite, is an advanced external Monitoring solution that ensures the uptime of your organization’s network infrastructure by bringing together Monitoring, Reporting, Notification, Escalation and Analysis in the combination best suited to your needs. You can learn more about UserView Monitoring, website monitoring, network monitoring, and mail server monitoring services, as well as web load stress tests at www.dotcom-monitor.com

Mail Server Monitoring

2009-02-11T04:13:00.000-08:00

Almost all of webmasters are good at mail servers installing. But every day these systems become more and more complex and reliability requirements are growing too. Mail server process hundreds and thousand messages per minute. Logs haven’t already provided all information about mail server performance. So we have to use special tools to monitor mail server activity. There are a lot of different ways to monitor your servers like special applications (for example Mailgraph). But they have a lot of disadvantages. The best solution is using of special mail server monitoring services. They provide complete end-to-end monitoring. Usually they test the SMTP server by sending an e-mail to a designated e-mail address. Then after this message is sent mail monitoring service provider attempts to retrieve an e-mail that it send from a POP3 server. If the SMTP or POP3 processes fail or mail is not found within a specified time-out period you will receive a notification. They can also provide you full statistics of all processed messages.

Web Monitoring Reliability

2008-06-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

Monitoring Web server uptime once every 60 minutes is not a particularly reliable method of determining server uptime. Sure, it will catch the servers that out for long periods of time, but will not often catch Web servers that intermittently have downtime for shorter periods of time. There is a balance. The price is the balance! If tests are frequent the monitoring is much more exact, but the price is significantly higher.

The more accurate method is to check every minute or so - but for most individuals and organizations, this is just a bit too much for their budgets. Some companies even like to use server 'uptime' as a marketing gimmick - 'Hey, look everyone, 100% uptime' - which of course is not accurate - even load-balanced servers can experience a little downtime.

Who Uses Web Server Monitoring Services?

2008-06-04T06:29:00.001-07:00

Most Web hosting companies state they offer '99% or 99.9% server uptime'. That's pretty much a standard claim these days but the difference between these 2 regular statements is 80 hours of downtime each year. Do you know that 99% uptime means the server is unavailable 87 hours a year? Almost 4 days a year the server is off. Using a Web monitoring service gives you the ability to keep an eye on the downtime which is especially important when your Web site is a money-making venture - where downtime can cost your business a lot of money.

Web Site Uptime Monitoring: What is It

2008-06-04T06:15:00.001-07:00

A Web site uptime monitoring service allows monitoring Webpages, sites, servers or ports by sending requests to the user’s server and check the availability. A service can test the server to see if the Web server is running well, and can notify when Web server is experiencing downtime.
The Web site uptime monitoring service can check HTTP pages, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS, Telnet, SSL, TCP and a range of other ports with great variety of check intervals from every 4 hours to every one minute.
Web server monitoring services are used by individuals, ecommerce companies, small businesses, ISPs and Web hosting providers to effectively monitor server uptime from outside thier own network.
Web site uptime monitoring services usually have a number of servers around the globe - USA, Europe, Asia, Australia and other locations. By having multiple servers in different geographic locations, monitoring service can determine if a Web server is available across different Networks worldwide. The more locations the better picture on your website availability.
When you check uptime from a single computer using a single internet connection it's possible that your network is down, or that you cannot reach your website because of your ISP. You should make sure that the monitoring service uses multiple servers in different locations!
To monitor a Web page on a server (such as your homepage), the service sends out simple requests from worldwide locations to check if your services like HTTP or SMTP are accessible. By checking for a valid response code for HTTP/HTTPS, they are able to determine the accessibility of your pages. They can ping the server, router by name or by IP address. Sometimes when the service pings the server it may return ok result but default Apache page may be displayed instead of your website. That's why there is also a Webpage monitoring. Webpages are usually checked for particular keyword making sure it is your website which is currently displayed.
If a request to the server failed by one of the locations, monitoring service will try again from another location in a row. If the second attempt fails as well and your server still does not respond, the Web site monitoring service notifies you of a problem.
The ways of problem notifications varies between services, with options including: Email, SMS, phone, ICQ, MSN, Pager, etc. but in fact Email and SMS notifications are usually sufficient. For Web hosting companies, this can be particularly useful to catch any server downtime issues quickly - before customers let them know of their downtime.

Network Monitoring: Professional Approach

2008-04-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

Network monitoring service is intended for monitoring all possible protocol’s servers such as FTP, SMTP, POP3, etc. Remote agent logs on using a user name and password you provide. It checks server performance and contents. Besides, professional services provide SMTP/POP3 monitoring service. This feature gives opportunity to carry out end-to-end mail server monitoring. Network monitoring service also includes such opportunities as domain name servers (DNS) monitoring, port monitoring, SOAP/HTTP monitoring, UDP monitoring and ping/ICMP monitoring service which is very useful for checking of integrity of router, firewall and other specific devices. There are also some very specific features as script monitoring service and server temperature monitoring service which is available only for third generation hardware. Such list is exhaustive and includes all necessary tools to provide the best quality of network monitoring service

Website test

2008-04-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

If your website is no longer simple static page, but dynamic tool which provides some services for your customers, you have to think about testing, before placing it on your server. When your system becomes more complicated the importance of such procedure grows. At present day website are full function portals – shops, forums, email services and etc. All of these on-line services interact with users and other servers. If website is a part of your business, you have to realize that fact that testing can show you how your site performs during loading, interaction with users and etc. So let’s talk about it. There are a lot of different types of website testing and server testing.

Usability test helps you to get knowledge about serviceability. Such type of testing is one of the most expensive, because you can get information only from real users.

Links testing. Such testing is actual both for inner links and external. Besides, it has to be used periodically.

Security test is one of the most important, because business, user’s trust and information depend on website and server security. The main difference from another types of testing in that it have to be carried periodically. Usually testing program simulates real users which try to use all known method of attack your server.

Load-testing ( Stress-test or Performance test ) emulates some thousands of users which interact with your site. Such kind of testing helps you to test not only your website but interaction of all parts of the system – server, webserver, engine and etc.

HTML code testing. There are a lot of different software intended for this purpose. are often included to HTML editors and browsers.

Free Web Hosting With PHP, MySQL and cPanel

2008-03-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

www.000webhost.com

I have found this service occasionally. And I was surprised they really provide rather quality hosting on Linux platform with 250 Mb of free space, 5 MySQL databases, PHP v5.2.5 and PERL support. Besides, they provide cPanel v11 with cPAddon Scripts v0.7.1. The only thing they need is one link to there front page. Domain name looks like specified.890m.com. Such web hosting service is really good choice for beginners or for personal websites.

How does my website monitoring service work? Remote Agents.

2008-03-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

It is well known that website monitoring services providers monitor your website performance and availability. But sometimes your website is available from one point or country and does not available from other one. The reason of such situations can be different, for example such problem can be caused by incorrect server’s installation-specific settings. To be sure that your web site and web server works correctly the most advanced website monitoring providers have a lot of remote agents that placed around the Earth. Such agents work like usual Internet browser. The agents monitor your web site to insure the web site is accessible, has proper content, and is maintaining good performance. If any of these things fall outside specified parameters, the notification process starts.

Future of Google AdSense.

2008-03-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

Peter Forret tried to forecast evolution of Google AdSense.

Google AdSense in newspapers: Google reserves advertising space in every circulation. This space is used depending on context.

Google AdSense and Wi-Fi: Google will cover the globe with free POPs. Google will know your exact location and this fact will be very useful for context ads.

Google AdSense and mobile phone: Google redeems cellular communication operator and provides services for free, In return you have to hear short advertising ads before you can speak. These ads are also selected according to context.

Google AdSense on roads: LCD screens are placed on roofs of taxies, on sides of buses and etc. Such screens also have connections with Wi-Fi POPs and ads are different depending on the place, current time and so on.

Such forecast seems to be too much pessimistic and unsophisticated. It is possible that Peter Forret is some kind of paranoiac and is afraid that someday Google will transmit its ads directly to his brains. But who knows!

Types of Web Hosting

2008-02-29T04:10:00.000-08:00

Virtual Web Hosting (Shared Hosting)

There are two kinds of virtual hosting: name-based and IP-based. But the difference between them is minimal and doesn’t have a great influence at present time. In the case when you have chosen such kind of hosting, you share server recourses with a number of other web hosting customers. So, one of your “neighbors” can start script which uses 100% recourses of server and your website doesn’t work correctly. Usually such problems are solved by web hosting provider in a short space of time, but even one hour downtime can cause waste. Another defect is that fact all domains placed on one server has equal IP. The absence of necessity to mange *NIX and WinNT with the exception of price is the single advantage of such kind of hosting.

VPS/VDS Hosting (Virtual Private Server/ Virtual Dedicated Server)

Such kind of web hosting is logical evolution of shared hosting. The deference is next: you account performance is rather more independent from other accounts. To achieve that they use OS virtualization technology, in other words you get your own copy of OS with assured limit of memory and CPU.

Cluster Hosting

Hosting clusters consist of a lot of different computers which work at the same time. Besides, they use external RAID for data storage. Such thing provide high reliability, even when one of servers goes down, your website continues to work correctly.

Dedicated/Collocation Hosting

Such kind of hosting means that your rent your own server or you have your own with. Server recourses is completely your. You have no necessity to share it with other customers. Server and website performance depends only on you, but not owner’s whim. But such type of hosting is reasonable for big and complex websites but for your personal page with photos and blog :)

HD DVD: Toshiba Lost

2008-02-25T09:29:00.000-08:00

Japanese corporation Toshiba is going to stop further development, production and selling of HD DVD players and recorders. It is said in official press realize that this decision was approved after serious market changes. Nevertheless Toshiba continues full support of all HD DVD products.

Toshiba will keep its technological leadership and will take part in further high definition development. This participation will be revealed in NAND chip, HDD, CPU development.

HD DVD supply will be decreased gradually until March of 2008. Nevertheless, Toshiba is going to continue cooperation with participant of HD DVD alliance such as Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.

Web Hosting: Data Safety

2008-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

For data safety hosters use two different technologies RAID and Back-up (reserve copies on single server or hard drive).

RAID is a group of hard drives which work in such way that system continues to work in cases of fail of one of them. In case of breakage of one oh hard disk web hosting provider changes a hard disk. So, you can not lose your data.

Back-up is a copy of your data. Web hosting provider copies all your data at regular intervals and it can restore information on you request. As a rule this process is carried out every weak, usually hosters keep two or three last back-up copies and you can not restore you website in that condition in which it was two weeks ago. So there is an advice, keep back-up copies on your home computer.

Website and Network Monitoring

2008-02-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

The market changes rapidly. It brings new conditions and new reality. Due to the process of growing of importance of such sphere as IT a lot of new services appear, become essential.

Website Monitoring

One of such new but necessary services is website monitoring. To guarantee, that your customers and users have constant access to your resources, you should guarantee availability of your server 24 hours per day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year. Website monitoring service helps you to be sure the web site is accessible, has proper content, and is maintaining good performance. That means your web sites and applications keep running, and are more profitable.

Network Monitoring

Corporate networks play a leading part in the process of business-process maintenance. Even little failure may cause the break of functioning of whole organization.

The process of maintenance of local networks is complex and expensive problem. It requires the big staff of skilled specialists which duties include the maintenance of accessibility of network services, network optimization, adjustment and renovation network hardware and software, finding and removal appearing incidents and other functions.

But there is another way. You can use special service which function is management and monitoring of your network. Such thing gives you an opportunity to monitor your network for bottlenecks, faultinesses. It also gives an opportunity to notify network administrator about all cases of failure.

Monitoring includes a great number of facilities which help IT professionals to manage servers and networks. Thus website monitoring, network monitoring and server monitoring are special features that help us to distinguish user from professional.

Some Search Engines Predilections

2008-02-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Search engines rate highly website which has high-quality content. So you have to be anxious about increasing of text information on your website. 500-3000 words seem to be the most optimal (2000-20000 symbols)
Search engines don’t index pages which are more than 100-200 KB.
Unique content. Search engines rate highly new information, so try to use only your own materials.
Interesting content is secret of users attracting.
Keywords should be used for 3-4 times on the page.
It is recommended that keyword which is placed in the text was somewhere near the header.
It also recommended to use keywords in your headers.

How to Optimize Your Website

2008-02-14T06:50:00.000-08:00

Some Advices.

You have to chose pages for future promotion, you haven’t chose a lot it is enough to take some primary
Key words. The set of keywords should be known, because the stage of keyword selection is one of the first in the process of website construction. There are some services for keywords checking www.wordtracker.com and www.inventory.overture.com
Use keyword’s convertible terms.
You should to realize the level of competition and to choose some search phrases which have acceptable level of competition.
You have to optimize your frontpage (domain, index.html) for most important search phrases.
You have to optimize every page for its own search phrase.

Choosing Web Hosting

2008-02-13T10:57:00.000-08:00

Choosing web hosting service for our future website we often forget about the fact that website grows. The process of changing of hosting is rather difficult and troublesome. From the other side it is unpleasant to bay Oracle sever for one price list. Where is “golden middle”? First of all you have to realize the aim of your site. Then try to imagine you future website and its functions.Frankly speaking the list of important parameters is rather short: free space, traffic, physical server location, software and hardware. Such features as uptime and system restore are not taken into consideration.

Disk space. This parameter seems to bу not very important, especially when site has been just started. But you have to consider first: that logs tend to growth, second: probably you will need disk space for users file exchange or smth else, third: forums especially popular also require a lot of disk space.

Traffic is also important parameter. First of all you should to count the mean value of traffic of your future website. But you have to take into account that your traffic can increase suddenly and to choose hoster which will not block your site in such case.

Physical server location. You have to direct your attention to user’s location. It is obviously that when the server is located not far from users the chances of faults are lower the in other case.

Software plays the greatest role. Very important features are operating system of the server, the kind of the server, additional modules, supported programming languages, databases, allowed scripts and so on. Scripts support is integral part of every serious project. Database support is necessary for dynamic websites.

Introduction

2008-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

I`m beginner webmaster. I`m starting my education and going to dedicate this blog to those moments which are important for me. I will publish articles about Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting, SEO, Website Monitoring, Network Monitoring and so on. I hope that this blog will be not only history of my professional growth but also guide for other beginners.