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WordPress 2.8 Released
Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | Blogging, News, Site Information, Software Update | No Comments
The folks over at Automattic just released the stable 2.8 version of popular blogging platform WordPress. This site, along with a large percentage of blogs out there, runs on the WordPress platform and I can’t say enough about all the features and SEO-friendly options that it has built-in to the base version (not to mention all the free plugins and themes available on their site).
Over 790 bugs were fixed from the previous 2.7.1 version not to mention they claim it’s supposed to be a lot faster (that has yet to be seen). Some of the new features can be found under the Appearance section of the backend, from a re-designed widgets section to the addition of convenient “Activate, Preview and Delete” quick-links underneath each theme. If you’re trying to decide between a few themes or just like to keep a lot available, this will undoubtably save you a lot of time.
Some highlights of the updated features are:
- New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
- Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
- Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
- Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
- Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
- Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
- Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
- Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation
So if you haven’t logged into the back-end of your own WordPress blog lately, now’s the time to do it and use their automatic upgrade feature! That or you can find the download page (as well as instructions for how to install or upgrade) here. You can also view the complete list of updates and bug fixes on their development site.
Happy New Years – Google Updated Their Toolbar PageRank
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | News, Site Information, Software Update, google | No Comments
I know that I’m a few hours early for most of you but I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Years! Apparently Google wanted to get in on the celebration as they’ve just recently (sometime in the past 24 hours) updated the Google Toolbar PageRank. Don’t get too excited now kids, this isn’t that big of a news announcement….the Toolbar PageRank is considered by most to be outdated pretty much the moment that it updates. Bummed out? You shouldn’t be, it’s only one of hundreds of factors that Google takes into account in their ranking algorithm.
The entire crew over here at AddTo10.com would like to wish you and your loved ones a safe and happy NYE….. Happy New Year!
The Addicted To 1s and 0s team will be on vacation/haitus until January 10th but we hope you’ll come and visit us once we get back from a much needed vacation….cheers!
Free Website-Blog Analytics – What should you use? Google Analytics vs. Clicky
Monday, August 25th, 2008 | Marketing, SEM, Site Information, Tools, Utilities, google | 1 Comment
Website analytics are key to any successful website. If you are trying to increase traffic to your blog or website then you’re probably using some form of tracking software. Now in the free/cheap market there are a lot of choices. Over the years I’ve used a variety of different services and/or software to track visitors to my websites however I always tend to gravitate back to two specific programs – Google Analytics and Clicky.
Every now and then I get an email asking me what analytics service is “better” or which I’d recommend for their website. This post should answer those questions as I try to compare key features of the two services in a head-to-head matchup. Let’s get it on!
Google Analytics vs. Clicky:
(Disclaimer: I’ve only reported on features that make the two services unique from each other, each service has a lot of shared functionality)
Google Analytics
Cost: FREE
Users: Unlimited
Websites: Unlimited
Traffic Limitations: 5 Million Pageviews/Month (Removed if you’re an active AdWords customer)
Works without Javascript? NO
Affiliate Program: No
Reports: PDF, XML, CSV, TSV
Latency (How often is it updated): 1-24 hours
Goal/Conversion Reporting – The ability to setup goals/conversions to record specific visitor actions (i.e. filling out a form). You can then segment your conversion goals based on any number of variables including Geography (i.e. how many people from Pasadena filled out the form).
Adwords Integration – Yes. You can link-up your AdWords account to any website for automated integration. The non-adwords PPC tracking is great although sometimes it can be unreliable.
Email Reports: Custom reports that will trigger at specific time/days (i.e once a month).
Visitor Data - You can see the connection speeds of your visitors, this can help you determine what type of content you can display without increasing load-times for your users.
Clicky Web Analytics
Cost ($ is per month): FREE (3 sites/1k daily pageviews), $4 (3 sites/10k daily pageviews), $9.99 (10 sites/30k daily pageviews), $16.99 (20 sites/50k daily pageviews)
Users: Unlimited (by enabling “Public Access”)
Websites: Depends on plan, see above
Traffic Limitations: Depends on plan, see above
Reports: CSV, XML and JSON
Latency (How often is it updated): Real-time
Email Reports: Yes. Sent at a user-defined action (date/time, # of visits, etc..)
Works without Javascript: YES
Affiliate Program: Yes
Custom User Tracking – Yes. Clicky lets you give your users custom names, tracking their every visit to your website in an easy to review “User” page.
Real-Time Statistics – Yes. Spy lets you view real-time statistics of visitors currently on your website.
Traffic Sources - Segments out social media and email sources – View all visitors who came from a social media website (twitter, Stumbledupon, Facebook, etc..) or from a link found in an email.
Visitor Information – Clicky can automatically convert visitor IP’s into hostnames (e.g. comcast.net) and Organizations (e.g. Microsoft Corp).
Whitelabel: YES (You can setup your own white-label version of the tracking software to sell to clients)
Developer API: Yes. You can pull just about any data/statistics from your account via their API.
Extras: Clicky sponsored widgets (for your own tracking and for public bragging rights), official WordPress plugin, integrated with FeedBurner RSS stats and the ability to get any statistics via a customized RSS feed.
Things both Google Analytics and Clicky share:
Which should I choose for my website or blog?
- Small blog with no affiliate or PPC marketing: Clicky
The free version of Clicky is a lot easier to use for small website publishers. If you don’t have a need for advanced user or source segmentation, then there’s no real need to use Google Analytics. You can also use the SPY feature to view real-time visitors on your site.
- Medium-Large website or blog with PPC or other marketing campaigns (visitor generating): Google Analytics
Until Clicky implements campaign tracking, Google Analytics will win if you’re trying to track multiple PPC campaigns.
- Medium size website or blog with affiliate or other 3rd party advertising (revenue generating): Clicky
This was a tough choice. They both are great in tracking the path that users take on your website, which is useful in seeing at what point in the visit are they clicking on your advertising/affiliate links. While Google may give you the ability to track specific actions as Goals, it only allows for 5 and because of its reporting latency, makes it not a viable source for account purposes. Clicky won because of its ability to track and tag visitors. You can take the users who clicked on your advertising and put them in a custom group, giving you detailed analytics on their demographic.
- Large website or blog (regardless of whether or not it has advertising): Google Analytics
Clicky’s Professional service can be expanded to work on websites that get up to 300,000 daily page views, however by then you’re paying enough to go with a more detailed reporting service like WebTrends, ClickTracks or Urchin 6 (There’s also Omniture, who makes a variety of different tools but is also very expensive!). Google Analytics also offer a more robust campaign segmentation compared to Clicky.
To note: Both of these programs use either Javascript and/or image tracking to report website traffic. There are a lot of free log analyzers available that can give you a different view on your website visitors. It’s always a good idea to use both a back-end log analyzer, like Awstats or Webalizer, in conjunction with one of these services. A log analyzer won’t give you as much information as products like Google Analytics or Clicky can, but it will report on ALL the visitors to your site, regardless of whether or not they have javascript enabled.
Domain, IP, and Hosting Tools – Find Out If Your Webhost Is Just A Reseller
Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | Site Information, Tools, Utilities, tests | No Comments
Here’s a collection of tools that come in handy when researching domains, hosting providers, or even just checking up on the rank of your own website:
Who Is Hosting This? -
Find out who is hosting your hosting provider! It’s a great tool to see if you’re getting ripped off by going through a re-seller. Why use a middle-man when you can go straight to the source?
MyIPNeighbors.com – Find out what other domains are hosted on your IP. Perfect for seeing who else is on the same shared-hosting server that your account uses.
BustaName.com – Fast domain searching, including the ability to check a bulk list of domains to see what is available!
Popuri.us – A great tool that with one click can tell you the link popularity of any domain based on its ranking (Google Page Rank, Technorati, Alexa, etc..)
BuiltWith.com – Website and SEO analysis. Find out what technology/software a website is using, even what type of server and advertising programs it has in place!
Find out who your neighbors are! You can use the above tools for a variety of purposes, including checking up on your competition as well as making sure your webhost isn’t just a re-seller. Instead go to the source for cheaper rates!
Get your tech/web fix here…….
Friday, February 22nd, 2008 | New Beginnings, Site Information | No Comments
So after a long time of running Everything’s Better With Brentter, an advertising blog that I would post campaigns/news that I found to be interesting, I have decided to begin a new blogging venture. Recently, I realized that my daily intake of information/links had been headed in a more interactive direction, to the point where, similar to nerds in High School cafeterias across the nation, I found myself not feeling welcomed even in my own playground. That’s where this site comes in. Here you will find anything that doesn’t feel at home on brentter.com, but that I feel should be shared (and or re-shared, depending on my sources).
So if it’s web/tech related, it’ll go here, if it’s advertising related, it will still be posted on www.brentter.com…. Eventually I might even startup a third weblog on brentterrazas.com to house my personal ramblings, but for now I think these two sites will keep me busy enough.
So that’s the plan, now all that’s left is to see how long this experiment will last… comments, suggestions are always welcome… Seeing how this is completely new, I will be playing around with various features until this site fits my needs…. so stay tuned!
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image courtesy of Terence Chang – who’s currently working hard like an entrepreneur but still playing hard like a billionaire. Checkout his blog and maybe he’ll show you how.
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