Whether you love them or hate them, sliders are still a popular feature of many free and premium themes. It’s not too difficult to see why: they’re eye-catching and draw attention to key information on your site. Despite the pros, there are many cons to using sliders. Here’s our verdict on whether you should use sliders or not.
Source: So Your Client Wants a WordPress Slider? Before You Cringe, Here’s What You Need to Know
We love a slider so we don’t think they’re going to disappear so soon.
Recently a site hosted by 2020Media.com was given a mention on Stephen Fry’s Twitter account.
Commonly known as the “Stephen Fry Effect”, this can seriously test a hosting platform. His team had warned our client that this can result in up to 5000 hits per second.
They go on to say:
When Stephen tweets a URL to a given website, up to 10000 people will attempt to visit that website within half an hour. Very few websites can manage that intense traffic as the majority of it is within the first few minutes. Your website must be able to capable of taking 5000 hits per second in order to be able to stay live once Stephen’s tweeted. Many website providers, particularly those that utilise shared servers, will simply say “Yes it is fine”. You must double check with you technician that this is the case.
Well 2020Media is not one of the many, and we came up with a solution that we felt confident would be able to handle the traffic.
2020Media provided a Varnish cache server for client Creative Future recently to make sure their site was “Stephen Fry Proof”.
As you can see from the stats screengrab below, their site had a big increase in traffic on the day of the tweet, but no problems were seen at all.
The site registered a 370% increase in visitor traffic, and more importantly, a big increase in the number of submissions to the Creative Future Literary Awards.
From a social media perspective, the tweet itself was favourably received by followers and influencers on Twitter and provoked a quick discussion by followers around the Twitter account name of the Creative Future Literary Awards!
This could have been enhanced with a photograph, as this is proven to boost engagement. The tweet gained an average amount of retweets and favourites for a post of this type.
2020media is regularly deploying cache servers. Typically there are two types:
In all cases we take full ownership and set up everything for the client. Performance is closely monitored throughout and any problems responded to by fully trained engineers within minutes.
To enquire about our services, please see www.2020media.com, or call us on 0370 321 2020.
A special guest post this time, from 2020Media customer John Allen.
This is his take on SEO, after a Business Gateway Scotland course and of course real experience.
Over to you John:
1. Review your online competitors and create your website/e-business plan
Who are your top-5 online competitors – using the techniques learned on the workshop what terms have they optimised their websites for?
How are they positioning their content and their overarching offers?
2. Do your search term research
Trying to identify what your potential customers may be searching for is an important early part in the process of deciding what web content to write and how to structure it. There are quite a few tools out there but the ‘search term’ tool we discussed in the workshop was the Google Keyword Planner. If you don’t already have a Google account then you’ll need to create one to get access – once signed up and logged in go to Keywords Planner . Please be careful not to start a paid advertising (PPC- pay per click) campaign by accident !
Other free tools include things like Google Trends & Insights. There are others like wordtracker.com that usually offer some form of free trial. I use a few other tools but they aren’t free.
3. Start planning (or improving) your website content
Ultimately it is about writing unique, interesting and compelling content that people in your target market will want to read (and are searching for). Yes, plan your content so it is SEO (search engine optimisation) friendly but as important is to make sure it reads well and is targeted for the human site visitor.
4. … Take on-site action and optimise your web presence
It’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of info that you’ve absorbed in the workshops but, in my experience, there are usually a few simple fixes that can be made fairly quickly to existing websites. Get those changes made and once you start seeing the improvements you’ll want to do some of the more advanced stuff.
Start by using some of the initial on-page techniques we covered – for example set appropriate title and description meta tags and make sure they fit closely with the visible content and headers (H1s etc) on each page.
Then think about things like xml sitemaps (make sure it is setup and working properly), Google webmaster accounts (there are versions for other search engines) and creating accounts to improve your effectiveness in ‘local search’ results, e.g. Google MyBusiness (maps etc), Bing maps etc.
And a special reminder to watch out for breaching the rules relating to the Google algorithm changes (as we discussed in a bit more detail at the workshop). If something feels suspicious then it probably is (or it will be seen as suspicious by Google at some point in the future).
If you get through all this then ask for a more advanced course.
5. Prepare your overall digital marketing plan
There may be multiple streams in your digital marketing plan depending on your online objectives and aspirations. Take stock and check that your plan is feasible/sensible and that you understand the resources (time and/or money) that you’re going to be putting into it. It might be worthwhile seeking impartial advice to ensure you’re on the right lines.
6. Optimise by starting your link building campaign
Building ‘ethical’/‘quality’ links is still important so at least get your research started – as discussed it is all about building your internet footprint and done well will improve your search engine rankings and bring more ‘referrer traffic’ to your website.
**Quick Tip** – if you’d like to see who is linking to your competitors then you can get a partial (fairly sketchy to be honest) snapshot by going to Google and typing in “link:” (i.e. ‘link’ then a colon) followed by the web address of the competitor you’re trying to assess. Bear in mind that Google only shows a selection of the links it knows about using this method. When I have time in the workshops I also show how to monitor your own backlinks using google webmaster tools.
Note. There are various other tools out there but the ones I use are paid versions.
6a) Get your business listed on the online business directory of the relevant local council, professional body, association etc (and get a link to your website if they allow it)
As discussed in the workshop.
7. Optimise by being social and encouraging social signals
Decide which social media channels might be suitable for your business. Then build your social media footprint and start encouraging social signals.
8. Email marketing
If you’ve found this email useful enough to get this far down… then remember that email marketing can also be a great source of web traffic both for new customer acquisition and for customer retention.
9. Monitor regularly, continue making improvements and be patient.
Most aspects of digital marketing (including SEO) take time and effort, so keep the faith and do keep going with it.
We’re recommending this great free resource – https://firstsiteguide.com/ – find in-depth online guides with downloadable PDF’s, video tutorials and other web development resources. There are also how to’s on creating great content.
With increasing amounts of data and server-side processing, caching systems are as important as ever. There are so many varieties of these systems out there, it can be confusing if you don’t understanding the different nuances. Worse yet, if you pick the wrong caching system for your needs or fail to optimize it correctly, the results could be disastrous. There are two broad types of cache when it comes to web sites and web applications. Client side, and server side.
Source: Web Cache: APC vs Memecached vs Varnish | Neon Rain Interactive
The creators of open-source CRM software CiviCRM have released details of the new features coming in the next release of the free software.
2020Media is a leading UK web hosting provider of CiviCRM – details about our hosting service can be found at http://www.2020media.com/shared-hosting/civcrm-hosting
CiviCRM 4.7 Planned Features
The target date for a stable release is Early October 2015.
