In recent years, with the worldwide spread of broadband internet access, it has become increasingly common for site designers to disregard the load time of their websites. Sites have swelled to unwieldy size, and it has become increasingly uncommon for webmasters to pay attention to the load time of their site. But with the advent of mobile web browsing, it is once again important to consider your site’s load time and different methods to reduce how long a site takes to appear on a device, such as a Blackberry or an iPhone. Its worth noting, however that efficiency never became less important; people just paid less attention to it. One of the simplest ways to decrease your sites load time is to optimize your pictures for the web.

It may seem like a simple step, but by reducing the overall quality of the images that likely take up most of the space on your website, you can take a big dent out of load times. This is because most image editors save pictures in the highest quality by default. But there isn’t a large difference between a high quality picture and one that has been reduced in size by reducing the quality. The key is to use an image processor and select the options save for web, or optimize for web. You will then be prompted to set a number of levels. If you are experienced with image manipulation, you can tweak specific settings, but a general user should pay attention to the quality slider. You should not overwrite the original version of the file, but rather save the new file to a different folder. Compare the two, and you will notice that there are subtle differences between the larger file and the smaller one, depending on what level of quality you selected. Higher than 60-70 % is difficult to notice, but below that isn’t advisable.

A fairly substantial amount of an image’s size is related to the level of quality, so your images will now be much smaller and easier to download. By optimizing, your site is going to load faster, especially for users connecting via cell phone networks, DSL, and those still using dialup. There are a number of other improvements you can make for your site’s efficiency, but this is by far one of the easiest.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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When you start expanding your business, it makes sense that your servers will have to handle an increasing load of traffic. Mitigating high traffic levels, especially those caused by traffic spikes from sites like Digg and other social news sites, is important to keeping your business online under all conditions. One of the technologies that makes keeping all of your data online much simpler is called load balancing. Simply put it is a web technology that spreads the contents of your server over multiple, redundant systems, allowing you to run traffic to all of the different servers and keep any one machine from enduring too much traffic. There are numerous ways to implement a load balancing system, but by far the best is to have load balancer software running on one server that forwards users to one of the proper servers, preventing the user ever having to deal with choosing a server. You will notice that your machines are consistently fast after you implement such a system.

The other benefits provided by load balancing include the ability to pull a server down to do maintenance without worrying about downtime, the ability to deal with corrupted data or damaged hardware without downtime, and a great deal of control over your traffic, as you are running all traffic through one machine first, so you can use traffic shaping if you find it necessary. Of course, running one of these systems is only strictly speaking necessary if traffic regularly brings down your server, if you have to regularly do server maintenance, or if you are already using multiple web servers and you would like to bring them together.

There are some down sides to using such a system. Load balancers are newer technology, so make sure you buy one with thorough support, as well as one which is used by sites of a similar size, so you know it can handle your traffic capacity. As well, problems with your load balancer will likely take down your whole site, since all traffic has to go through one central location. But the problems associated with load balancers are a fair trade if one is in a position to need one, as having to process all your traffic with one server quickly becomes impractical as your business grows. Do your research and you will likely find a system that works best for you.

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One of the recent phenomenons to take hold online has been the rise of social networking sites. Perhaps the most unique of all these sites is the exceedingly popular stumbleupon. Stumbleupon offers users the ability to install a toolbar on their browser and browse the web in an entirely new fashion: randomly. It isn’t entirely random, it’s even better than that, it groups sites by category and lets users rate which sites they like. It then uses these ratings to try to send you to sites you will enjoy. The network is large, and a lot of people are using the site, or stumbling, in their terminology. Stumbleupon is not just a great way to find new and interesting websites; it is also a great way to promote your website! By putting your site in their database you can be guaranteed an increase in traffic, but it is important to take certain steps when going about using the service.

Stumbleupon often sends traffic that isn’t looking for whatever you are selling or posting on your site. While a certain percentage of this traffic is simply going to press the button again, if you offer them something compelling users will stick around long enough to convert into a sale or a regular visitor. In order to achieve this, you need to concentrate on only submitting pages with interesting content to the network. If you have a blog, it is always helpful to submit it to stumbleupon, especially when you can easily submit different posts to different categories. You may also want to offer web applications to users, even flash games, which are a popular category within stumbleupon.

You can also improve traffic by improving your own stumbleupon account. The more you use the software the more your recommendations are weighted. You should also encourage users to rate your site and leave feedback comments. These will increase the rate at which users are sent to your site. Remember, the traffic generated is usually coming from individuals who are looking to be entertained. Starting off trying to sell them something is a mistake, and generally the users are savvy enough to realize when a site is trying to market to them. You can avoid losing these users by offering real, quality content they want to see. That is the true key to using stumbleupon wisely.

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KickApps.com is a great way for a site with relatively high traffic to increase visitor retention and enhance the user experience. The site serves up server side applications that you can use to develop a series of robust social networking resources for your site. This is the key to the success they have had, harnessing the visitors you already have by letting them network with each other. By connecting your customers, serving them content, and letting them communicate, you are going to create a community that attracts new visitors, leads current visitors to staying on the site longer, and which collects important information your advertisers want to know.

This is the important benefit of a social network, it allows you to target your advertising without constantly asking your customers to provide you with their information. The other services provided by the software, such as a steaming video player, widgets, and the ability for users to generate content, all provide entertainment for your visitors without requiring you to do anything besides what you are already doing. Once your visitors are communicating you can just sit back and watch your network grow. Obviously, the software’s ability to network with advertisers is its most invaluable selling point, as it provides revenue beyond what you are already getting from your site, all thanks to KickApps!

Their services are an invaluable way for anyone running a website to develop their own social network. You can even start using their software for free, as they have an offering that charges you a portion of the advertising revenue and pays you the rest. That means there’s no reason NOT to try it out.

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