Tag Archives: videos

Performance Testing: Latency, Load, Stress, or Soak?

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Hosting

The post Performance Testing: Latency, Load, Stress, or Soak? appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . How well does your web hosting perform? Are you sending web pages in a timely way to visitors to your site? Is your application correctly handling simultaneous requests? Do you actually know what can be measured – and which measures are relevant to your situation? Web hosting performance testing can give you valuable information that can let you keep visitors longer on your site, make sure you can accept the right number of simultaneous visitors, handle overload situations and detect possible design or programming deficiencies.   Latency or How Long It Takes to Get Back to a Visitor Let’s start with the case of just one visitor (naturally, you’ll probably be aiming for rather more, but we’ll discuss this below.) Normally, you want the response time for that visitor to be as fast as possible. In other words, between the moment when the visitor clicks to send you a request and the moment the visitor sees your response, the least time possible should elapse. This ‘latency’ can however be determined by several different things, including the power of your web hosting platform, the size of your network connection and the power and network speed of your visitor’s computer. You can improve the first two, but the last two are out of your control (although keeping your web pages simple may help.)   Performance Under Load Ideally, you should have an idea of how many visitors are likely to access your web hosting platform at the same time. If this is not feasible, then you should at least know how many average or typical users can actively work with your site simultaneously, and plan ahead for options to increase capacity if you need to. Different solutions, either free or paying, online or in-server, are available for conducting load tests with up to a few million simulated users or more. Whichever solution you choose, make sure your test is representative of both user numbers and types of activity, including number of pages called per hour, number of requests for database information, ‘think time’ and so on.   When It’s All Just Too Much If your web site is significantly more popular than you imagined, your web hosting facility may not be able to cope with all the traffic. Then what happens? Does your site send out a polite apology about lower performance while stopping any new connections, or does it just crash without warning? Stress tests are designed to find out what (really) happens under conditions of excessively high loads. How much this affects you will depend on what kind of website you operate. A web site for a bird spotting association that simply crashes may just be an irritation. A web site selling hot new fashion articles that simply crashes could lose you important revenue and customer loyalty.   A More Technical Test The soak test is done by starting your web site or application and leaving it to run (normally) for an extended period of time to see whether this produces any abnormal conditions either in the application or in the web hosting platform it runs on. One example would be memory leaks, a common enough problem when an application uses some main memory, but fails to return it for general use when it’s finished with it. Testing for these kinds of conditions typically requires technical expertise, for example by the person or team designing the application in the first place.   Finally, Who is the Judge of ‘Good Performance’? Performance, ultimately, is all about making sure customers or end-users are satisfied with what they experience. Your web hosting platform may be supercharged in processor power and memory, yet they may still complain. Or it may be far more modest and still reply adequately to user expectations. Falling traffic and user comments on your blog (or similar) may indicate a problem, but prevention is always better than cure. There’s only one way to find out what users really want, and that’s to ask them. Armed with this information, you can then do the right performance tests and confirm or tweak afterwards, as appropriate.   ***** 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: https://www.flickr.com/photos/video4net/4102797678/in/photolist-7fxUP1-csmoYf-7C3yps-9RCj9C-ahC6R9-zhLTR-65ho4J-65hog3-65d6Gc-65d7Ex-65d7ug-65d7i6-9ME8p3-aWJPyZ-65jBWR-7C3ypb-7C3yoN-7BYKHv-7C3yoY-4Whues-9oXHMe-4So2a5-wEq41-6F8avn-xvcic-dzZjrH-4So2pQ-9kzTZu-ayfSbd-zhMYn-ahCo27-8KtMnD-5NFE6D-9ME8pd-8kQ3b-4So2Zo-4SiPLi-8p1sAC-hYuBDZ-9ME8p9-9ME8ph-deYPPh-ahzkA6-zhMYj-xvcia-enp8Um-ahC7HY-ahCnjS-ahzA8t-ahCns5 web hosting Continue reading →

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Your Business To The Power Of Google

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Hosting

The post Your Business To The Power Of Google appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . What do you do when one of the world’s most innovative companies of all time reaches out to you and your business and says, “We want to help?” Here’s a hint: take their hand and say “thank you” without any hesitation. Some things just make sense… and sometimes saying “no” makes no sense at all. Cue, the mighty Google. What can be said about the company whose name has not only become synonymous with Internet searches but has actually become a verb; an honor reserved for only the most creative and unique individuals and entities in existence. Google has long been a standout for more than what they bring to the table; who they invite to the table with them is of equal importance. And, this time, they are inviting you. Google Apps is a suite of tools, most of which you’re likely already familiar with (Gmail, anyone?) that are designed to streamline your business. HostGator now uses Google Apps internally for our email, document sharing, video conferencing, calendars, and so forth. Google Apps has literally changed the way we function, day to day. Here is a brief snapshot of the things Google wants to do for you, aside from provide you with an excellent suite of fully useable tools: Help ensure your business is HIPPA, PCI, SOX compliant Provide you with their SLA for your internal AND external mail Reduce your required IT costs Improve your communications with conference functions Establish a secure backbone for your internal and external interfacing Maximize your project management efficiency with synced calendars Bolster your branding and SEO efforts Facilitate editing in multiple document formats without purchase of a license   This is a very big deal. In short, these benefits are amazing. Whether for your independent consultancy, your medium sized growing business or if your company has recently gone public, Google Apps for your business is possibly the best and arguably the most important move you can make. The biggest benefit of all? Making your life more simple. Now HostGator can help as well. Not only are we customers of Google ourselves, but we’ve now partnered with Google to offer Google Apps for business directly to you. To learn more about our Google Apps offerings, including full details and how to order, please see our related KnowledgeBase article: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/articles/hosting-guide/lets-get-started/google-apps . web hosting Continue reading →

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The Shell Shock Vulnerability

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Hosting

The post The Shell Shock Vulnerability appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing . The bad guys are unfortunately at it again. Today the Internet lit up with news of a new vulnerability, officially named “CVE-2014-6271,” but more widely-known as “Shell Shock,” a reference to the environment exploited, known as a shell. . The shell in question is called BASH, itself an acronym for B ourne A gain SH ell. Nearly all Linux servers in the world have BASH installed; it is the most common shell in use today. A shell itself is what is used to interact with the operating system via command line. Before we proceed, you should know that all HostGator servers have been patched as of this writing. We identified the issue very early-on and developed the necessary solution for our environment. We are, of course, continuing to monitor the situation and will react appropriately should the need arise. As with any security or vulnerability risk, it is important to reiterate the importance of practicing good security to the extent of your ability as an end user. Always use secure passwords (you know the drill: upper- and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters), always keep any third-party scripts (such as WordPress, Joomla, etc.) up-to-date, and always uses the latest version of any software that you utilize… because the truth is that often software is updated strictly for security patch purposes. Should the need arise, we will update this blog post accordingly. Otherwise, stay safe out there on the Interwebs! Continue reading →

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Twitter Email List Targeting

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Hosting

The post Twitter Email List Targeting appeared first on HostGator Blog | Gator Crossing .   For those of you who have been using social media advertising, you may know that Facebook has allowed for email list targeting for some time now. This feature is great because you can strictly target those users in your email list. Companies can even use their existing client lists to target them on Facebook for customer promotions and increasing customer value. Now, Twitter has entered the game with the option to upload lists to target with ads.   Why Email Targeting? With email targeting, you can direct ads straight to those who you believe are the best for your promotion. For example, you have a list of customers who bought Product A and you’re having a sale on Product B that is a really good complementary item for Product A. Instead of emailing everyone on this list, you can run a campaign on Twitter to let them know about the sale. Or you can have an integrated campaign to email them and promote to them on Twitter.   Is It Just Email Targeting? No. You can create a targeted audience with different types of lists. Email is usually what most businesses have from their clients. Not all request phone numbers. You can create lists with the following information: Email Phone Numbers Twitter User Names Twitter User IDs Mobile Advertising IDs   How To Create A Targeted Audience Creating a targeted audience with Twitter is pretty simple. First you will need to have a list generated from your CRM or email software. Then you will just need to follow these steps.   1. Click Tools on your Twitter Ads navigation bar. Then select Audience Manager .   2. Click “Create Audience” on the upper right side of the UI. Here is a picture of the @HostGator audience manager. These are small lists for a specific purpose.   3. Give your list a name, then choose the type of list you are uploading. Remember that it will need to be a .csv or .txt file.         4. Select the type of audience you’re uploading         5. Upload your file           Things To Consider Read the Twitter Ads Terms of Service . You don’t want your account banned for doing something you shouldn’t be doing.   Update your privacy policy about customer information being used for advertising if it isn’t already in there.   Separate your lists. Perhaps I just like granularity, but I like to see that we have 10k emails and 5k phone numbers that converted targeted Twitter users. It was interesting to see.   On that same note, use multiple lists! Sometimes the email your gives isn’t the one they used for Twitter but the phone number is. You don’t want to miss out on being able to target them. For our lists, cell phone numbers matched up more than home phone numbers.   Don’t expect to launch a campaign immediately after uploading the list. It can take several hours for Twitter to match the contents on the list with users. I tend to upload my list before I go home for the day so that I can start the campaign the next day.   Match rate will be lower than Facebook custom lists. With the same list, Facebook matched 4,400 users and Twitter only matched approximately 1,100.   Audience matches of less than 500 will be listed as too small and you will not be able to advertise to them.   That’s it about Twitter email list and audience targeting. Please feel free to ask any questions or express concerns in the comments below! 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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