Tag Archives: comedy

Keep It Simple

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Hosting

The post Keep It Simple appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . Recent studies have shown that the average reading level for the general population of the United States ranges somewhere between a fourth and a sixth grade reading level; studies from several years ago put most individuals graduating high school as reading at no better than a fifth grade reading level. Do you feel that the content being presented to you has been dumbed down in recent years? Are you surprised at the latest arguments regarding whether or not it is socially acceptable for adults to read young adult novels? There’s a reason. The average reading level has decreased drastically throughout the years. When I was in intermediate school, (6th grade), I tested at reading at college level, the highest the test would go; most of my classmates capped out at the same rate, with only a few of them hitting eleventh or twelfth grade reading levels, nothing any lower. In today’s day and age, those who are graduating aren’t even close, nor do they really seem to care.   Why This Matters and How it Affects You It matters for a lot of reasons, but this is neither the time nor the place for a soap box rant regarding the quality of education that students are receiving today. This matters because the majority of content presented on the Internet comes in one of three forms: lolcat, graphic representations, or text. That’s right; most of the information on the internet involves reading. How then can we expect the material that we find relevant, the topics that we find interesting, or the manner in which we convey information to be able to maintain interest, much less be comprehended by the new target markets and audiences that are coming into their best years of buying power? There’s only one thing to do….   How to Deal with It You’ve got to Keep it simple. Don’t go for the thesaurus, don’t try to make your sentences sound more intelligent, and, much as I hate to say it – try to stay away from those compound sentences. Make your content as easy to understand as possible. Make it so that a sleep-deprived and un-caffeinated version of you would have no issue understanding what you are attempting to convey. It’s frustrating, it’s obnoxious, but unless you’re catering to a very specific crowd, like those who subscribe to Shakespeare Quarterly or only those who have received their Master’s degrees (and yes, this is an over exaggeration, but you get the idea), keep it basic. Remember, everything else aside, your goal is to market and sell your product; to do that effectively the average consumer must be able to understand what you are selling.   Image source: https://jumpcloud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/simplicity.jpg web hosting Continue reading →

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New Funding Methods For A New Age In Business

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Hosting

The post New Funding Methods For A New Age In Business appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . Starting a Small Business So you’ve decided you want to start a small business of your own; you’re ready to stop working for others and start working for yourself. This is great! Yes, you get to set your own hours, and yes, you get to do what you would like to do; however, when starting up a business of your own, you need to have the available capital to do so, and the time it takes to get it done. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day!   Ways to Accomplish This You’ve decided to start your business online. There are lower associated startup costs, and you don’t have to wear pants to go to work, both of which are decided bonuses! The problem is that it still costs money. You need a hosting plan , and you need up front capital to be able to get your inventory started, regardless of whether you are making something yourself or whether you are selling pre-made, manufactured products. How would you go about doing this if you don’t have the money saved up yourself? Well, there are several ways. You could find an angel investor, a set of investors, get a loan from the bank, or you could turn to the latest in funding – investment sites like Kickstarter.   Kickstarter Kickstarter is a site that people may go to in order to present their ideas to the general population. Individuals read through the proposals, some of which include bonuses to those who donate x amount to their cause, and then donate. Yes, that’s right, people just give you money because they like your idea and want to see it come into existence. Now keep in mind that your idea must be a good one, as defined by the population at large, and that not all Kickstarters work. If the proposal is not written well, the likelihood of gaining funding decreases dramatically. Included below is a link to a very helpful article that discusses the progress of one small business; how they took their idea from just an idea and turned it into a successful business using funding gained through Kickstarter. That’s right, someone is being helpful just for the sake of being helpful. This increasing amount of transparency in companies serves to benefit you in that it teaches you one possible path to walk, providing you with the information necessary for your business to potentially succeed in the same manner.   Getting Going While not all Kickstarters are a success, as we have mentioned, there are those that have the potential to become quite successful (such as Amanda Palmer’s ground-breaking Kickstarter campaign). While it is true that you must obtain the knowledge yourself instead of building on top of the knowledge of others, you are able to take information, such as this, and use it as a means of working to increase your knowledge base, providing you with insight on how to succeed, and the different pitfalls to avoid. So, what are you waiting for? Get going! Start your own business, and start reaping the success of your own hard work. For more information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/angeliatrinidad/passion-planner-the-one-place-for-all-your-thought/posts/1067424   Image Source: Kickstarter.com. (2014). Start your project — Kickstarter. Retrieved 26 December 2014, from https://www.kickstarter.com/learn?ref=hero web hosting Continue reading →

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SSL Certificates And Visitors Confidence

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Hosting

The post SSL Certificates And Visitors Confidence appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . Confidence is so important on the Internet. Any site that acquires a reputation for unreliability, insecurity or dishonesty can expect to see traffic dwindle to zero. On the other hand, a site that can prove it takes security seriously can attract more visitors. And that can be good, whether your hosted web site is for a community, a membership service, or e-commerce. Surfers and online shoppers also increasingly recognize the on-screen presence of a small padlock icon or a website address that begins with “https://…” as signs that they can trust the site they’re connecting to. That’s SSL or ‘secure sockets layer’ in action. So how does SSL help you gain visitors’ trust?   Protecting Information As It’s Transmitted SSL operates between a visitor’s browser and your site or application. It’s an industry-standard mechanism that ensures the encryption of data being passed backwards and forwards, so that no unauthorized person can spy on the information and hack it. It also prevents cyber criminals from diverting visitor traffic to their own site using their own encryption, and gaining access to your data that way. All major web browsers have SSL capability built in. But for a website to have SSL capability means acquiring a specific SSL certificate.   How Do You Get an SSL Certificate? You have to apply to an authorized issuer of SSL certificates and be vetted. Such an authorized entity is known as a Certificate Authority (CA). Browser companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple and so on trust the CA to only issue CCL certificates to other trustworthy companies. The CA has its own Root Certificate (so there aren’t many of these in the world!), which it uses to generate individual SSL certificates. It also checks that you have the right to use the domain name under which your website operates and may also make checks on your company identity (depending on the ‘strength’ of the SSL certificate you want.). SSL certificates are then installed on the web servers concerned as data files.   What Does SSL Do For You? Lots of things! It makes your site or system look more professional. SSL certificates have to be earned. It helps clinch a decision by a visitor to sign up as a member or to make payment through your site. If you sell online and you use a reputable online payment partner, that partner will have SSL implemented. However, there are additional reasons for having your own SSL, such as protecting visitors’ personal details – and also protecting any confidential information that you may send back to them (access to a private server, administrator privileges, cash voucher numbers, etc.)   What Does SSL NOT Do For You? Again – lots of things, because SSL is designed to exclusively protect the integrity of data while it’s in transit between one system and another. If the information happens to contain a virus, SSL will faithfully transmit that virus. If it contains an attempt to gain illicit access to your web site or database files, SSL will transmit that as well. In other words, while SSL is excellent for protecting data on the move in a network link, both browser users and web site owners must still take all required precautions to prevent any malware from circulating or any undesirable actions within the systems themselves. So add good system security (or find a web hosting provider who can guarantee it) to SSL and you’ll be a step ahead all round in enhancing your website experience and visitors’ confidence.   ***** Author Bio: Natalie Lehrer is a senior contributor for CloudWedge . In her spare time, Natalie enjoys exploring all things cloud and is a music enthusiast. Follow Natalie’s daily posts on Google Plus , Twitter @Cloudwedge , or on Facebook . Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/90/Welcome_multilingual_Guernsey_tourism.jpg web hosting Continue reading →

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Happy 12th Birthday, Snappy!

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Hosting

The post Happy 12th Birthday, Snappy! appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . It seems like only yesterday that our beloved blue gator was crawling around the swamp, still in diapers. Oh, how time flies! Twelve years ago today, the HostGator.com domain was registered and thus Snappy was born. We like to mark this occasion each year with a something special. This year we’re extremely happy to officially announce our new Texas datacenter! All new hosting accounts are now being provisioned right here in Houston, Texas, at CyrusOne! CyrusOne features redundant power and cooling, along with state-of-the-art security and virtually everything one could ask for in a new datacenter. We’re very proud to be back home in Texas with CyrusOne! Not only are we in a brand new data center, but Snappy is offering special discounts in celebration of his birthday! All new hosting plans with 6-month billing cycles are 65% off. All new hosting plans with billing cycles of other than 6-months are 45% off. There’s even more great birthday news! Existing customers are welcome to take advantage of these discounts as well, please see this FAQ for full information. To sign up, simply visit http://www.hostgator.com ! This sale ends at 11:59p CST tonight (Wednesday, October 22, 2014). Happy birthday, Snappy! web hosting Continue reading →

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Google Authorship Dead In 2014?

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Hosting

The post Google Authorship Dead In 2014? appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . If you’ve searched for anything on Google in the last month or so (who hasn’t?), you may have noticed slight changes in the results. First, the author pictures next to the results conspicuously disappeared. Then, videos started to vanish for most results (except those of YouTube and other sources where video is a primary source of content). Now, author names have disappeared. According to John Mueller from Google’s Webmaster Analytics team, Authorship has indeed been removed from your search results . A few months ago, the same search would have displayed the associated Google+ profile picture and related information, as shown in the image below from our prior Authorship blog post :   Now the posts are stripped down to provide you the content that you’re looking for without the fluff.   Why Was Authorship Removed? If you ever set up authorship, then you know it was not the easiest process to start with. There were several steps involved, including an update your site’s code to add the markup. If you were using a CMS like WordPress, the markup wasn’t too hard, but HTML sites were a little harder to modify. Since the entire ordeal wasn’t an easy 1-2 step process, it had a low adoption rate. As stated in Mueller’s post, and speculated by many, Authorship simply did not have any direct impact to an increase in clicks or rankings. A direct quote from the post: “If you’re curious — in our tests, removing authorship generally does not seem to reduce traffic to sites. Nor does it increase clicks on ads. We make these kinds of changes to improve our users’ experience.”   Is Authorship Completely Dead? From search results, it appears to be mostly (though not entirely) gone. As explained by Mueller, search queries will still show relevant posts from your Google+ connections with their information. So if you were connected with an author and searched for information pertaining to them, then you may see something like this: Keep in mind, the rel=author markup didn’t just affect search; social media displays this information as well. With Pinterest, you can stand out with rich pins . As you see in the picture below, you will still see the author markup:   You can also see it on Twitter with Twitter cards as shown below. If you’re able to edit the author Twitter handle, you’ll also get another spot in the author section. Do You Want To Advertise On Facebook But Don’t Want Your Followers To See Those Ads? Check Out Dark Posts http://t.co/P1b9NNheYX #Marketing — HostGator (@HostGator) August 16, 2014   Conclusion Although authorship has been mostly removed from Google search, it still does serve a purpose and cannot be entirely considered dead.. perhaps undead… zombie(?). You don’t necessarily need to go through the process adding the authorship through Google+ to include the rel=author tag, but who wouldn’t want a good branded back link on a Google product? What do you think? Is authorship just dead and should never be touched again or will you still be including it on your blog? Let us know in the comments! web hosting Continue reading →

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