Hosting Blog
Red, White, and You: Meet Your Presidential Candidates
Sep 05th, 2012
In the last month I've witnessed a politician refuse to be bullied, an iconic actor talking to an imaginary foe, and a presidential GIF go viral.
It must be election season.
Welcome to the 2012 presidential campaign, where an untimely remark can be costly and speeches are peppered with thinly-veiled quips at the opposition. Whether you're boldly blue or relentlessly red, this runoff is sure to be one heck of a show. Let's discuss the players, shall we?
To my left we have former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. His campaign slogan, "America's Comeback Team", underscores his promise to help the country recover from its economic slump and "get America back to work."
In 1984 Romney co-founded Bain Capital, one of the world's leading management and financial services companies. The company proved profitable for Romney and has contributed to his considerable net worth. Opponents of Romney use his financial status and privileged background—including a father in politics and an Ivy League education—as indicators of his inability to relate to the common man.
Romney has refused to release more than two years of his tax returns, prompting many to wonder if he's hiding something. He officially accepted the Republican nomination on August 30 at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL. The broadcast made headlines when supporter and actor Clint Eastwood took the stage with an empty chair and feigned conversation with the president.
Which brings me to my right, where we have current president and Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He argues that, contrary to what Romney states, the economy has actually improved since his term began, with roughly 4.5 million new jobs created. Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward", assures the public that he will continue to restore our country's economy and push it to new heights.
Obama's biggest supporters are blacks, women, and the younger population—not surprising considering his background. Obama was raised by his mother and grandparents. During speeches he emphasizes his tight-knit family structure, despite coming from a single-parent household. In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois Senate and became a US senator in 2005. His progress up the political ladder culminated with his presidential election in 2008, making him the first black person to ever hold the office.
Because of his relatively young age—he was 47 when he became president—Obama does well relating to a younger demographic. He and his family are huge fans of pop star Beyonce; he even invited her to perform at his inauguration ball. Additionally, his campaign makes good use of social media to help promote his platform, including Twitter updates to over 19 million followers. Following Eastwood's performance during the RNC, Obama's reelection team tweeted a picture of Obama seated in his presidential chair with the caption "this seat's taken."
Ouch.
Now you're all caught up. Next time we'll discuss the vice-presidential nominees and what they bring to the table. Until then, I offer you a bit of advice and my personal slogan: Stay Informed.
It must be election season.
Welcome to the 2012 presidential campaign, where an untimely remark can be costly and speeches are peppered with thinly-veiled quips at the opposition. Whether you're boldly blue or relentlessly red, this runoff is sure to be one heck of a show. Let's discuss the players, shall we?
To my left we have former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. His campaign slogan, "America's Comeback Team", underscores his promise to help the country recover from its economic slump and "get America back to work."
In 1984 Romney co-founded Bain Capital, one of the world's leading management and financial services companies. The company proved profitable for Romney and has contributed to his considerable net worth. Opponents of Romney use his financial status and privileged background—including a father in politics and an Ivy League education—as indicators of his inability to relate to the common man.
Romney has refused to release more than two years of his tax returns, prompting many to wonder if he's hiding something. He officially accepted the Republican nomination on August 30 at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL. The broadcast made headlines when supporter and actor Clint Eastwood took the stage with an empty chair and feigned conversation with the president.
Which brings me to my right, where we have current president and Democratic nominee Barack Obama. He argues that, contrary to what Romney states, the economy has actually improved since his term began, with roughly 4.5 million new jobs created. Obama's campaign slogan, "Forward", assures the public that he will continue to restore our country's economy and push it to new heights.
Obama's biggest supporters are blacks, women, and the younger population—not surprising considering his background. Obama was raised by his mother and grandparents. During speeches he emphasizes his tight-knit family structure, despite coming from a single-parent household. In 1996 he was elected to the Illinois Senate and became a US senator in 2005. His progress up the political ladder culminated with his presidential election in 2008, making him the first black person to ever hold the office.
Because of his relatively young age—he was 47 when he became president—Obama does well relating to a younger demographic. He and his family are huge fans of pop star Beyonce; he even invited her to perform at his inauguration ball. Additionally, his campaign makes good use of social media to help promote his platform, including Twitter updates to over 19 million followers. Following Eastwood's performance during the RNC, Obama's reelection team tweeted a picture of Obama seated in his presidential chair with the caption "this seat's taken."
Ouch.
Now you're all caught up. Next time we'll discuss the vice-presidential nominees and what they bring to the table. Until then, I offer you a bit of advice and my personal slogan: Stay Informed.
Power of Pictures
Apr 12th, 2012
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and online that couldn't be more true. Your website can be full of every detail available, but without quality photos it will lack power. Take full advantage of your website hosting account by showing the world your awesome pictures.
If you have a blog website about food, and you describe every quality of a meal in the utmost detail, you will still leave the reader disappointed if you do not include some captivating pictures of the food itself. A great picture will allow your website visitor to connect your words with the picture, almost as if they are sitting at the table with you, enjoying your fantastic meal.
There are many websites out there that revolve around family, and the stories you tell on your website are probably very enjoyable. But let's be honest, grandparents really just want to see pictures of their grandchildren! By taking fun pictures and including them in your stories, you allow family from around the world to feel as if they are there in the backyard enjoying the day with you, or on a fantastic family vacation in the passenger seat.
Have you ever been to an e-commerce website to find only a description of the product being sold, but no picture? That would be very awkward, and difficult to trust. If you plan to sell items on a website, you better believe you need pictures of your products! Taking high definition photos from different angles and allowing your visitors to virtually hold the product in their hands is a key method of building trust in customers who purchase products online.
You will definitely want to take some great photos, and use a photo editing program to compress and touch up your photos, and then get them online on your website! A picture really tells a thousand words, so let your pictures tell your story online now.
If you have a blog website about food, and you describe every quality of a meal in the utmost detail, you will still leave the reader disappointed if you do not include some captivating pictures of the food itself. A great picture will allow your website visitor to connect your words with the picture, almost as if they are sitting at the table with you, enjoying your fantastic meal.
There are many websites out there that revolve around family, and the stories you tell on your website are probably very enjoyable. But let's be honest, grandparents really just want to see pictures of their grandchildren! By taking fun pictures and including them in your stories, you allow family from around the world to feel as if they are there in the backyard enjoying the day with you, or on a fantastic family vacation in the passenger seat.
Have you ever been to an e-commerce website to find only a description of the product being sold, but no picture? That would be very awkward, and difficult to trust. If you plan to sell items on a website, you better believe you need pictures of your products! Taking high definition photos from different angles and allowing your visitors to virtually hold the product in their hands is a key method of building trust in customers who purchase products online.
You will definitely want to take some great photos, and use a photo editing program to compress and touch up your photos, and then get them online on your website! A picture really tells a thousand words, so let your pictures tell your story online now.
Love is Online
Feb 16th, 2012
Love is in the air, and the internet is full of romance. This time of year used to be filled with candy hearts, flowers, and fancy jewelry. Not anymore though, as more and more people are turning to the internet to find love, offer gifts, and fan the flames of romance.
There are plenty of ways to use your website hosting account to succeed in love, and perhaps have even more success online than in real life? More and more people are finding it easier to pronounce their love and feelings virtually without the awkwardness of eye to eye contact.
One of the most successful examples of using the internet for love is the creation, and success, of the many dating websites that are now flourishing all over the world. The two big dating sites, match.com and eharmony.com, both had to start somewhere. A person with a dream of creating a website that will allow lonely singles to meet people who they could connect with on more levels than just what you see at the bar started out with just a simple website.
Perhaps you consider yourself to be an expert on love, so you start your own advice website. Writing a blog about love and what it takes to succeed could quickly land you on the Oprah or Dr. Phil show! Allowing guests to discuss what is working and what isn't working on your website could be a recipe for a successful online love experience.
Setting up a WordPress blog, or a Joomla social networking website, is your first step to facilitating love on the internet. Everyone had to start somewhere, so take your passion and your idea online, and launch the next big romance website now!
There are plenty of ways to use your website hosting account to succeed in love, and perhaps have even more success online than in real life? More and more people are finding it easier to pronounce their love and feelings virtually without the awkwardness of eye to eye contact.
One of the most successful examples of using the internet for love is the creation, and success, of the many dating websites that are now flourishing all over the world. The two big dating sites, match.com and eharmony.com, both had to start somewhere. A person with a dream of creating a website that will allow lonely singles to meet people who they could connect with on more levels than just what you see at the bar started out with just a simple website.
Perhaps you consider yourself to be an expert on love, so you start your own advice website. Writing a blog about love and what it takes to succeed could quickly land you on the Oprah or Dr. Phil show! Allowing guests to discuss what is working and what isn't working on your website could be a recipe for a successful online love experience.
Setting up a WordPress blog, or a Joomla social networking website, is your first step to facilitating love on the internet. Everyone had to start somewhere, so take your passion and your idea online, and launch the next big romance website now!
Politics and the Internet
Jan 10th, 2012
As we approach another presidential election, it is interesting to look back on how the internet has evolved through the last fifteen years of politics. An early moment in the modern technical era of politics was the creation of a GOP Internet forum in 1997 at freerepublic.com. In 1998, the website moveon.org was created for progressives as a political community formed in response to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Over the years, the internet has been used in many different ways to help and hinder political campaigns. Today, there are thousands of websites that relate to politics.
One popular use of the internet by politicians has been online fundraising. In 2000, Sen. John McCain managed to raise more than $500,000 over the internet in less than 24 hours after he won the New Hampshire primary. This was a significant amount of money at that time, and was a significant moment for online fundraising. In 2007, Ron Paul raised $4.3 million in 24 hours on November 5 largely through online donations, then again on December 16 his campaign brought in $6 million in 24 hours.
Also in 2000, the use of online ads became quite popular. In that campaign year, Republicans ran more than 20 unique banners on 35 websites, while the Democrats ran a single banner ad on Yahoo. The use of online ads evolved over the years and culminated in Democrat Scott Murphy's successful 2009 congressional district election which was supported by the new Google Blast Advertising Campaign, which blanketed sites running Google AdSense with Murphy ads targeted to people in his district.
In 2002, blog sites were not as common as they are today. Markos Moulitsas burst onto the scene with his blog site dailykos.com, and two years later he was among the first bloggers given press credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Over the years, well written blogs have garnered the attention of potential voters, so blog sites have become instrumental in all campaigns.
In addition to blog sites, social media has become a widespread online campaign method. Just like selling products, selling a candidate via social networking has become an art form. In 2006, Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston was one of the first to utilize social media by posting a video of what his campaign called Mailtube on YouTube, an attempt to reach out to constituents through the use of online video.
In 2007, President Barack Obama took social networking to a new level with my.barackobama.com, which helped organize volunteers and supporters online. Facebook and Twitter also gave rise to an enormous amount of political activity in 2008. Facebook Connect was also launched which was a set of APIs from Facebook that enabled Facebook members to log onto third-party websites. This led to the integration of political websites and social networking websites, allowing a campaign to send out messages to the online community including Facebook and Twitter.
With elections fast approaching, how can you take advantage of your website hosting account to participate in the coming elections? If you have a blog that garners enough visitors, you could be selling political campaign ads, or even get yourself media credentials for campaign events. In the end, the freedom to voice your opinion via your website is powerful, so don't keep quite...speak up now!
Over the years, the internet has been used in many different ways to help and hinder political campaigns. Today, there are thousands of websites that relate to politics.
One popular use of the internet by politicians has been online fundraising. In 2000, Sen. John McCain managed to raise more than $500,000 over the internet in less than 24 hours after he won the New Hampshire primary. This was a significant amount of money at that time, and was a significant moment for online fundraising. In 2007, Ron Paul raised $4.3 million in 24 hours on November 5 largely through online donations, then again on December 16 his campaign brought in $6 million in 24 hours.
Also in 2000, the use of online ads became quite popular. In that campaign year, Republicans ran more than 20 unique banners on 35 websites, while the Democrats ran a single banner ad on Yahoo. The use of online ads evolved over the years and culminated in Democrat Scott Murphy's successful 2009 congressional district election which was supported by the new Google Blast Advertising Campaign, which blanketed sites running Google AdSense with Murphy ads targeted to people in his district.
In 2002, blog sites were not as common as they are today. Markos Moulitsas burst onto the scene with his blog site dailykos.com, and two years later he was among the first bloggers given press credentials to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Over the years, well written blogs have garnered the attention of potential voters, so blog sites have become instrumental in all campaigns.
In addition to blog sites, social media has become a widespread online campaign method. Just like selling products, selling a candidate via social networking has become an art form. In 2006, Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston was one of the first to utilize social media by posting a video of what his campaign called Mailtube on YouTube, an attempt to reach out to constituents through the use of online video.
In 2007, President Barack Obama took social networking to a new level with my.barackobama.com, which helped organize volunteers and supporters online. Facebook and Twitter also gave rise to an enormous amount of political activity in 2008. Facebook Connect was also launched which was a set of APIs from Facebook that enabled Facebook members to log onto third-party websites. This led to the integration of political websites and social networking websites, allowing a campaign to send out messages to the online community including Facebook and Twitter.
With elections fast approaching, how can you take advantage of your website hosting account to participate in the coming elections? If you have a blog that garners enough visitors, you could be selling political campaign ads, or even get yourself media credentials for campaign events. In the end, the freedom to voice your opinion via your website is powerful, so don't keep quite...speak up now!
Web Stats - What Does It Mean?
Jan 03rd, 2012
Now that you have a website up, you want to know how popular your website really is! You can enable stats in the Account Manager for all of your website hosting accounts, then visit your custom stats page to see what is going on when people head to your website.
We use Webalizer stats tracker to output the details of your website activity, and the stats page is generally updated every morning for the previous day. When you visit your stats page, you will see an overview of each months statistics. If you click an individual month, you will get more detailed information about that specific month.
Within the monthly view, there are many stats recorded and displayed, some of which may be confusing. Here, we will break down the individual stats displayed so you can better understand what they mean.
The first stat is HITS which is any request made to the server that is logged. These requests can be for anything, including html pages, graphics images, audio files, CGI scripts, etc. Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.
The second stat listed is the FILES stat. Some requests made to the server require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as an html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.
The next stat listed is the PAGES stat. Generally, any html or php document, or anything that generates an html document, would be considered a page. This does not include the other items that go into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc. This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the other features that are in the page. This stat is sometimes referred to as 'Pageviews' in other stats reporters.
Each request made to the server comes from a unique SITE, which can be referenced by a name or IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This does not mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs.
Whenever a request is made to the server from a gien IP address, or website, the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated. If the time difference is greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value, or has never made a request before, it is considered a 'new visit' and the VISITS stat total is incremented both for the site, and the IP address.
The KBytes, or kilobytes, value shows the amount of data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the log file and is a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had.
The Top Entry and Exit tables give a rough estimate of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of some limitations, this number should be considered a rough estimate, and will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your website.
The REFERRERS stat is much harder to analyze than a typical URL. What is contained in the referrer field of your log files varies depending on many factors, such as what site did the referral, what type of system it comes from, and how the actual referral was generated. This is a reflection of how a user got to your website, which may have been from a bookmark in their browser, they may simply type your websites URL into their browser, they could have clicked on a link on some remote web page, or they may have found your website from one of the many search engines and site indexes found on the web.
The SEARCH STRING stat is a good indication of what users were searching for when they found your website. The Webalizer will do a minimal analysis on referrer strings that it finds, looking for well known search string patterns.
Being able to read and understand the stats reported about your website will help you to know what is working, and what needs help.
We use Webalizer stats tracker to output the details of your website activity, and the stats page is generally updated every morning for the previous day. When you visit your stats page, you will see an overview of each months statistics. If you click an individual month, you will get more detailed information about that specific month.
Within the monthly view, there are many stats recorded and displayed, some of which may be confusing. Here, we will break down the individual stats displayed so you can better understand what they mean.
The first stat is HITS which is any request made to the server that is logged. These requests can be for anything, including html pages, graphics images, audio files, CGI scripts, etc. Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.
The second stat listed is the FILES stat. Some requests made to the server require that the server then send something back to the requesting client, such as an html page or graphic image. When this happens, it is considered a 'file' and the files total is incremented. The relationship between 'hits' and 'files' can be thought of as 'incoming requests' and 'outgoing responses'.
The next stat listed is the PAGES stat. Generally, any html or php document, or anything that generates an html document, would be considered a page. This does not include the other items that go into a document, such as graphic images, audio clips, etc. This number represents the number of 'pages' requested only, and does not include the other features that are in the page. This stat is sometimes referred to as 'Pageviews' in other stats reporters.
Each request made to the server comes from a unique SITE, which can be referenced by a name or IP address. The 'sites' number shows how many unique IP addresses made requests to the server during the reporting time period. This does not mean the number of unique individual users (real people) that visited, which is impossible to determine using just logs.
Whenever a request is made to the server from a gien IP address, or website, the amount of time since a previous request by the address is calculated. If the time difference is greater than a pre-configured 'visit timeout' value, or has never made a request before, it is considered a 'new visit' and the VISITS stat total is incremented both for the site, and the IP address.
The KBytes, or kilobytes, value shows the amount of data, in KB, that was sent out by the server during the specified reporting period. This value is generated directly from the log file and is a fairly accurate representation of the amount of outgoing traffic the server had.
The Top Entry and Exit tables give a rough estimate of what URL's are used to enter your site, and what the last pages viewed are. Because of some limitations, this number should be considered a rough estimate, and will give a good indication of the overall trend in where users come into, and exit, your website.
The REFERRERS stat is much harder to analyze than a typical URL. What is contained in the referrer field of your log files varies depending on many factors, such as what site did the referral, what type of system it comes from, and how the actual referral was generated. This is a reflection of how a user got to your website, which may have been from a bookmark in their browser, they may simply type your websites URL into their browser, they could have clicked on a link on some remote web page, or they may have found your website from one of the many search engines and site indexes found on the web.
The SEARCH STRING stat is a good indication of what users were searching for when they found your website. The Webalizer will do a minimal analysis on referrer strings that it finds, looking for well known search string patterns.
Being able to read and understand the stats reported about your website will help you to know what is working, and what needs help.