Month: October 2020

How to make my website fast as a rocket?

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A constant worry for every owner of a website is to manage it properly. Optimizing, it is vital not to be left behind competitors. Remember, if a website doesn’t appear at the top of Google’s results, it is like it doesn’t exist for potential clients. 

There are 3 main criteria to rank: 

  • Offer quality content on your website. Include stuff that provides significant value to your specific audience.
  • Fast loading! Yes, a fast website will be better ranked by Google, so better positioned in the search results of your clients. And of course, it is necessary for giving the user a satisfying experience.
  • Mobile optimization. Check that the content of your website look good when consumed by users from their mobiles. 

Keeping this in mind, here you have some effective recommendations that really will make your website, fast as a rocket!

So, how to make your website faster? 

Get a good web hosting

Choosing web hosting is not easy, but it is very important. There are many providers and plans. Sometimes it’s hard to get the difference among them, beyond the price. As a starting point: 

Look for modern servers, with SSD and a variety of resources included (basic and more advanced for the growing of your business). Always check the server’s location and prices. Get stick to the real needs of your business! It is the best way not to get so lost.

Prefer a light theme

It’s common when developing a website to think “spectacular”. Ok, but to load all the spectacular stuff could take so much time. Such a website is pointless if visitors won’t wait to see it fully. And Google will rank it in the least seen search results. 

So light and mobile-friendly theme is the best choice.

Optimizing images

Large images take longer to be loaded. Prefer compressed formats like .JPG and be careful with the resolution. Keep it down. There’s no sense in using 20Mpx images when you can have 1MPx ones that are good enough for posting and really fast for loading.

Shrink those pics! Make your huge images smaller and experience the difference. For both compressing and resizing, there are free choices online.

Caching your website

Caching means to save unchanging elements of your website for later use. Every time a user requests your website, the last cached version of it will be displayed without delay. Just in case of recent changes, it will take a bit of time to load the website, and again, the last version will be cached.

Caching really reduces the server’s load, the needed bandwidth, and the time that users have to wait when visiting your site. 

No matter what CMS are you using, there are cache plugins that can significantly boost the speed of your website.

Suggested article: Anycast DNS – Why start using it today?

Get your own CDN

This is a very effective but expensive choice. It is getting very popular among big companies. 

Content delivery network (CDN) means to have many points of presence (PoPs) thanks to servers located worldwide. So a copy of your website is located on different servers. When a user wants to visit your site, the request is redirected to the closest PoP, not necessarily to the original hosting server that could be far from the user’s location.

Activate HTTP keep-alive response headers

Every HTTP request means to grab a file (a content of your website: JavaScript, video, images…), distribute and close. Multiply this process by several requests.

Keep-alive headers allow the user’s browser to download all that content (multiple files) through a constant TCP connection. This communication server-browser avoids the process of requesting individually every single file.  

Conclusion

To get a fast website is possible. Some optimizing actions can be implemented inside the website, while others are external. Some choices are expensive but worthy. Others are even free! 

A proper combination of both could really boost your website’s speed and launch it like a rocket, directly to Google’s first search results page! Good luck!

The biggest tech world winners from COVID-19 (List)

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Covid-19 is a massive blow to the world. People are staying at home. They are losing their jobs, consuming less. It sounds like bad, right? Not for everyone. There are many tech companies that are blossoming right now. Who are those Covid-19 winners? 

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (ZM)

We all got stuck at home for months. There was a huge need for a good platform for video conferences. Sure, Google and Microsoft already had great solutions for their business users, but they are not free. Zoom is also not free, but its freemium model managed to attract a lot of attention. Businesses, Schools, Governments… Everybody is using it now. Investors saw it, and the stock price has grown significantly. It was around 70 USD at the beginning of the year, and now it is about 300 USD. 4 times more! The New Normal will include a lot of video conferences, so there is a headwind for Zoom.  

Netflix, Inc. (NFLX)

Another industry that is going extremely well is the online video streaming one. People are staying at home, without the opportunity to go out and spend money on restaurants, movies, trips, etc. Their only choice is to find entertainment on their devices, and Netflix is there for them. Yes, now there are many new contestants like Disney Plus, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, and more, but Netflix is still the best-known. Since the beginning of the year, Netflix has added more than 26 million new subscribers, and the stock price has increased by more than 60%. Not bad at all! Will Netflix keep its dominant position until the end of the year? Probably yes.   

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) 

Amazon is on its way to full domination. Everybody was and still is, buying madly from Amazon. Masks, disinfectants, heck even toilet paper were out of stock from months. Jeff Bezos’s company shows how e-commerce must function during a crisis like the Covid-19 virus. 

If we check the numbers, they have more than a 40% year-on-year boost in revenues (Q2 results), and the price has almost doubled since the beginning of the year. 

Amazon AWS is also doing its part. It is fast-growing, and each year, it is responsible for a bigger percentage of Amazon profits. It is the most immense “cloud in the sky” right now, and it is on a patch of growing even more. 

Suggested article – Top 10 tech companies in 2020

Microsoft Corporation (MSFT)

Who does not know Microsoft? They have the OS running on most computers, many excellent online services, and a good alternative to Amazon AWS – Microsoft Azure. They got 13% more revenue (Q2 2020 vs. Q2 2019) and over 30% stock price increase since the beginning of the year. 

There are two fascinating points this year. Will Microsoft buy Tik-Tok? And the premiere of the next Xbox. 

The first might be an excellent addition for Microsoft for their social networks’ portfolio. Tik-Tok will give them plenty of young users and a weapon against Facebook and Snapchat. LinkedIn is great, but Tik-Tok is fresh and cool now.   

And when we are talking about young users, the next-gen Xbox is just around the corner. We still don’t know the price, but from the rumors, it will be a worthy competitor. 

Tesla Inc

Yes, Tesla is a tech company, don’t be fooled by the cars they are selling. Their stock price is going through the ruff. I already commented about Tesla stock price (https://maxpc.co.uk/tesla-stock-price-in-july-2020/), you can check it out, but basically, in time of crisis, they are just going up. Now they cost around 2200 USD (up from 1430 USD a month ago). 

Elon Musk is a very charismatic and futuristic person, but it is a bit scary how people are trusting 100% in him. The way I see it, the bubble will grow some more in the next months.  

Conclusion

A problem for some is the opportunity for another. The Covid-19 virus has pushed many industries to evolve. Many businesses already became digital in just a few months. Adopt or die. This is how the world works.