Why is My Website Loading Slowly

As a website owner, you likely already know the importance of ensuring your site loads quickly. You know that even mere seconds can make all the difference between your visitors sticking around and going elsewhere to your competitors. You also know that if they do jump to a different site, there’s a strong likelihood that they’ll never return to yours.

Yet if you’re reading this article, what you probably don’t know is what’s currently slowing down your site and driving them away in the first place.

Indeed, it’s all well and good knowing that your website is currently performing slower than it should, but let’s be honest, it’s nigh on impossible to do anything about it until you’ve discovered where the issue lies.

To help you get to the bottom of your site speed issues, here’s a look at some of the more common reasons why your website could be loading slowly.

It could just be your connection 

We don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but it’s often the most obvious issues that we tend to overlook. Before we go any further, it’s worth double checking that it’s not your own internet connection that’s causing the problem.

You could use a tool like Speedtest to check if your connection is performing as it should. Alternatively, for a more practical solution, check out a few different sites and see if they’re loading as quick as you’d expect. If you can, try loading your site using a different internet connection.

If it’s still slow, and if those other sites load much faster than yours, it’s time to explore other possibilities.

Problems with your hosting 

These days, most web hosting or website builders promise unlimited bandwidth for your site, but it’s worth pointing out that unlimited in this case usually comes with a fair use policy. If you’re regularly exceeding your bandwidth, that could be causing the problem, in which case it might be time to upgrade

That said, it could be another issue entirely with your hosting account. It’s certainly helpful to check your hosting company’s status updates to see if they’re aware of any short term problems.

If not, you may be left with two options. First, contact your hosting provider to see if they can identify what’s causing the issue and if there’s anything they can do to help. Alternatively, you might be left with the last resort option of packing up your site and moving to a better host with a reputation for faster loading speeds.

Large image sizes 

Those huge images you uploaded to your site may look awesome, but if they haven’t been properly optimized for the web first, they can have a big detrimental impact on your loading times as the larger the image file size, the longer it takes to load those images. If you’re using Wordpress or another Content Management System, there’s a range of plugins out there that can help you to optimize your images for faster loading speeds.

If that still doesn’t solve the problem, you might want to explore replacing those images with other, smaller ones to see if that does the trick.

Your website code 

As a browser gets to work on loading your site, it needs to trawl through all that complicated back-end code to present your site the way it was intended. As you can imagine, that takes time, and again, the longer it takes, the slower your load speed.

For CMS users, this is where caching plugins come in real handy. Install one on your site, and they’ll get to work on creating static html pages that serve up your pages much quicker.

Who Makes The Most Reliable Hard Disk Drives?

The most daunting question for any PC maker and owners is as to who is best hard drives maker? This story is being constantly followed by the unlimited online backup company called as the Backblaze. The company has released some new data for year 2015 and it has been able to shed some incredible light of these manufacturers.

From the perspective of Backblaze, they are looking into these information as even they want to ensure that they buying the best hard drives available in the market. The company at present has around 410002% of these drives. It is hard to imagine that every time a hard drive fails, it takes time and effort to pull another drive, insert in the slot, and rebuild the entire RAID.

So which hard drive manufacturer is the most trustable? 

The data released by Backblaze has divided into two parts; search can be made either by means of specific drive or by means of the name of the manufacturer. The reports suggest that the company that as of December 2014, the company had 22,902 drives of Hitachi, 47 drives of Toshiba, 1,174 drives of Western Digital and 15,528 drives of Seagate.

Although these drives have been bought by the company in different years, the company installed thousands of new 4TB and 6TB models in the last few years. Here if we notice the company considers reliability a second important factor and considers the drives efficiency as the main factor. They buy the most competitive drives, which offer dollar-per-gigabyte ratio.

According to the data, Hitachi seems to have the most reliable product in the market. Backblaze’s Hitachi drives have the failure rate of only. When we compare the HGST drives, the failure rates have been recorded at only 1.4%. After operating for three year the drives from Western Digital, might be impressive as nearly 92.4 per cent of their drives are still in operation and they are functioning well.

In comparison to this, the 3TB drives from Seagate are disastrous, as their 40% drives have failed throughout 2014. Even though the company recorded the failure rate at 9.6%, their introduction of 4TB drives have increased their performance. These drives have failure rate of 2.6%, which is by far better than the 3TB drives.

Which is the best and worst single hard drive? 

4TB models will be the best in terms of reliability and value and these are being offered by Seagate and Hitachi. However, if you are looking for longevity, users will have a long list of options. The Hitachi GST Deskstar 5K3000 3TB, HGST will guarantee that you drive doesn’t die until 3 years. In terms of 4TB, Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000 is one of the best options. People need to be aware of 3TB 7200.14 model from Seagate which has been rated very poor in this report.

Considering the fact that Backblaze does not many drives installed from Toshiba and Samsung, it is hard to derive meaningful numbers. While Toshiba and Fujitsu might be a reasonable choice, Seagate acquisition of the hard drive division of Samsung raises questions on the reliability. We might have to wait for another report on this in the future.

Editing Your Corporate Video: What You Need to Know for a Satisfactory Result

So you already have your corporate video for your company - and whether your company is based in London or another area, you know how important it is to add credibility to what you have to offer. After months of hard work and planning, you now have something to show for all your efforts, and can honestly say that you have done your best to make a brilliant video. But, it doesn’t end there – you still have to consider the editing of your video in order to make it as perfect as can be.

But even if you rely on a professional video editing company for corporate video production in London, when it comes to editing your corporate video, it still pays to have a basic idea of how editing works and how it can be used to your advantage. If you know what you want, then you can more easily impart this to the editing company, and everyone will be more-than-satisfied in the end.

The different styles of video editing

There are basically two different styles of video editing: non-linear and linear. Non-linear, also referred to as ‘film style’ video editing, is more appropriate for short video projects which are also more structured. With non-linear video editing, you can expect the different segments of the video to be organised into various clips, so that all the shots can be easily accessed and then edited (lengthened or shortened, moved, or even removed according to your specifications). In addition, non-linear video editing allows the editor to easily cut and paste any changes to the actual audio or video.

More on the non-linear video editing method 

For non-linear video editing, the editor(s) will apply several phases. They will first make use of rough editing, where the original video material is edited by choosing some of the best footage or clips. In this phase, no audio mixes or transitions will be added, as the structure is still in the process of assembly to make sure the story is clear.
The second phase of non-linear video editing is the tight edit, where transitions and music during and in-between scenes are added and the sound is cleaned up as well. This is also where titles and credits are added. The third and final phase of video editing is the final mastering, where the entire programme is played and then recorded onto your preferred medium, be it a hard drive, a DVD, or Blu-Ray, among others.

More on the linear video editing method

The second style of video editing is the linear method, also known as traditional video editing. With this, the editing process involves copying the video and the audio from one tape to another. Keep in mind that with linear video editing, changes cannot easily be undone once the editing is finished. Linear video editing is admittedly more complex and time-consuming than non-linear video editing, as the editor has to go through metres of tape just to find a particular shot, and the editor needs to have a very clear concept of the order of the various shots in order to minimise editing time. However, linear video editing is more ideal for longer video projects (30 minutes or more).

Corporate video production experts such as Raw Productions are also quick to point out the importance of labelling during the editing process, which will then be included in the final printed media for future information and use. These labels include titles, sub-titles, the list of producers, and the length of the final video.

Having a good idea of what video editing is all about – and what to expect from it – will help you determine exactly what you want for your finished product – and in the end, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you have a brilliant corporate video in your hands.

Project Composer

Credit:techcrunch

In the past few years, there has been a tremendous growth in the use of cloud file sharing services. From what it looks like from the rumours in the market, Dropbox seems to be looking forward to bring back the HackPad.

Dropbox has acquired HackPad, which is a collaborative documents service company a year back. This Y Combinator-backed start-up grew up to be the most preferred choice of the people and the most important tool for taking down notes at any event, conference apart from the classroom.

The main reason for the immense popularity of this tool was attributed the simple design, easily usable, and had the nature of being real-time. Now out of nowhere we have the new entrant with the similar feature as well as the remarkable resemblance to the HackPad has appeared in the market and this is called the Composer.

The project composer: 

One of the users of the product Hunt spotted out this project. This is the websites which highlights the best products available in the market based on the voting of the users from the community itself.

As of Today, Adam Waxman, from the SeatGeek product posted out a link to the composer however most of the users replied that they are unable to get access to this link. Even though the app is currently available on the domain of Dropbox.com, looks like the name has been taken from an internal ongoing project.

This project will first request for authentication from the users to access their files and folders of the Dropbox account. Even though most of the people are able to clear the initial rounds of authentication for the composer, they end up getting the error message indicating that they are not allowed to use the service as if now.

Just incase the user finds that they have received this message in error, they can send email to the company at feedback@dropbox.com. However one of the users was able to get access to the composer and stated that it looks much like Evernote as it allows collaborative note taking. She further added that the composer users will be able to Dropbox files, and tables with their notes, add tasks.

At the end what it looks like is the transformation of HackPad and its integration with the Dropbox. Even though Composer might not be as popular as Evernote but it can still become a cause of concerns for other companies as the users of the Dropbox cloud storage facility will be relying on the composer. Even though the Dropbox Company has denied giving information about the Project composer, they have stated that additional information will soon be released.

Compose has been able to keep the essence of HackPad but the company is working on it to make it future ready. Companies can certainly expect tough competition in the market but they have the advantage of minimal features and ease of understanding. The project has currently received mixed response in the market, but Dropbox is working on the improvisation of the project.

Selecting an Online Marketing Company

There is a tremendous amount of competition in the online business world. In order to get ahead of your competition, you need to be able to market your products and services better than the companies you are competing against. This can be much easier said than done. There are many ways to go about online marketing. Some of these methods have proven to be much more effective than others. The trick is to use the right methods in the right locations for the specific products you are trying to sell. To do this, you need to hire professional online marketing consultants to help you. There are literally thousands of companies to choose from that provide this service. Here is how to go about selecting an online marketing company.

1. Get some quality recommendations

If you are looking for a dentist, you would ask people you trust to recommend a good dentist to you. Recommendations are how were are able to find out about many excellent professional services. The same idea applies to online marketing. Ask people you trust within the online business community to give you the names of marketing companies that they trust and respect. Find out which companies your colleagues have hired before. Hopefully, you will be able to compile a good list of names by doing this.

2. Read online reviews

The list of websites that provide online reviews is practically endless. Therefore, it should not be difficult for you to find some reviews of online marketing companies. Reading reviews that have been written by actual customers will be helpful to you because it will allow you to know what to expect. This information will give you the ability to make a more educated decision when it comes to hiring an online marketing company.

3. Find out the services that are offered

Once you have finished compiling your list of online marketing companies you are thinking of using, you can begin to narrow down your list by taking a look at the various services that are offered by each company. While you may think that the vast majority of online marketing companies will offer exactly the same services, you may be surprised how much they differ. You need to determine exactly what methods of marketing you believe will be most effective for your particular product or business. You then need to find a company that specializes in that method of marketing.

4. Compare prices

The prices that are charged by online marketing companies will tend to vary just as much as the services they offer. Therefore, it is in your best interests to compare as many companies as possible in an effort to get the lowest price.