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Web Analytics Services

April 17th, 2011


In this global arena websites are mushrooming and its analysis and monitoring would be a burning issue if technology and WWW had not gifted us with free online web analytics tools.

Web Analytics is a measuring tool, a metric that measures all the activities on a website, tracks visitors and monitors them. Getting a figure and statistics of your web site will help you promote your online business.

The two main technologies accepted these days are: Web server log file analysis and Page-tagging. Irrespective of technologies used the web statistics serves the same, difference lies in some extra added flexibility and rich interactivity.

In general, web log file analysis lets you generate statistics report in your desirable format, import the report and save on your system. We can view the complete website stats from the first day of visit to last day website is accessed. These stats will include number of unique visitors, number of visits, clicks, pages, hits and bandwidth.

First understand what log analysis is?? Web Log analyzer parses web server (apache, IIS) log files (web transactions i.e. when visitors are on your site) and generates report of how and when websites are accessed by the unique visitors.

Starting from website history which may span from an hour record to years record, you can view these statistics record in different graphical form. The stat also gives you information about the geographical locations from where visitors are coming to your website. Not only visits but visit duration can also be measured. For which keyword your website is searched the most, website bandwidth consumed, web browser through which visitors are coming, referring sites, HTTP status code are various statistical segments covered. You can filter this report for specific country, region or cities. You can also check from which IP address clicks are coming, filter out traffic from your own IP. You can give access to different users; can filter result by eliminating user from specific IP address.

Web server log file analysis technology produces detail stats in ASCII or HTML format. Web log files are generated on the server where your site hosts, these log file may be in plain text format or in zip format, user can download it on local host and with the help of analytics tool it can be converted in form of organized report and can be easily readable. With the help of these tools log reports can be generated offline also if you have web log files. Various tools are used to convert log files into organized reports, few of them are:

123 Log Analyzer: this does not require any set for configuration, supports logs from server farms; visitor’s geographical statistics, powerful data mining filter are its important features.

Absolute Log Analyzer: This tool is most suited for large websites with unlimited domains. This tool helps you generate 160 detailed reports, instant customization filter, parsing filter and combine several log files into single log file are its important features.

Affinium NetInsight: This log analysis tool is used in large enterprises across channels supported by hosting solutions.

AlterWind Log Analyzer: This tool analyzes web log files of any format and can produce separate report for SEO, Web Promotion and PPC by gathering information from its extensive database covering almost all countries and these reports can also be customized.

Analog: This tool can analyze files from major servers. It is one of the most widely used web log file analyzer because of its several unique features; it can work on any operating system, report can be generated in 32 languages and is highly scalable.

AWFFull: This is also a free web log file analysis tool and mostly used to generate simple reports. No additional set is required but requires additional libraries.

AWStats: This log analysis tool can be used to analyze log files and generate web stats, FTP and email statistics reports in graphical format.

ClickTracks: This tool also uses web log files to visually analyze website visitor’s behavior. You can see instant stats of ROI, PPC, SEO and campaigns.

FastStats: This tool is basically used for health websites.

Sawmill: Sawmill is very old and most reliable universal web log file analyzer that analysis web server, mail server and monitors security and provides most scalable and flexible solutions.

Visitors: Very fast web log file analyzer tool that is designed to be executed by the command line, output html and text reports and can process more than lakhs of lines per second.

WebAbacus: This tool provides detailed analysis of visitor’s behavior and browser usage.

Webalizer: This software also generates analysis report based on web log files generated by web servers. The stats can be viewed at different time frames geographically.

WebTrends: It is used to provide web statistics and leading web analytics solutions. This tool lets you improve your conversion rate and maximize your ROI.

W3Perl: This is also free tool for website analysis, ftp and mail analysis and record statistics.

Xlogan: Website statistics and analysis is done using web log files.

SurfStats: If you are looking for web server, proxy server or media logs analysis tools – surfStats can generate web statistics and web analytics reports.

But these tools have their own limitation: you can only check but cannot track or monitor these stats figure. Emergence of search engine spiders, dynamic IP addresses, web proxies, web caches made it very difficult to identify unique visitors. Log file accuracy was topic of concern with page cache running in parallel. Example, if you wish to see the landing page, complete path from where and how visitors reached your website it is not possible with web log file analysis technology.

Web Analytics tool based on Page-tagging technology:

MatrixStats: Online web analyzer that is based on page-tagging technique. It is a comprehensive approach to generate a graphical web analysis report. This tool tries to minimize traffic volume just by accounting for sessions not hits and monitor your website performance.

Tracking will help to see who is currently on your website and track visitor’s behavior. A complete report based on the history of sessions, page usage, browser usage, OS usage can be generated.

PHP Web Statistik: Again, this is online web analytics tool based on page-tagging technology and uses php script with other modular web stats. The log function works with java script image or native php. This tool can cache file pages, can handle cookie, review code, protect password. This is free online tool and can supports linux, windows, freebsd, osx, sun.

Urchin: Urchin analyzes traffic to your website from various other websites and generates reports that are very easy to understand and tracks and extracts contents behind the firewall. But Urchin 6 that will be soon released will be paid.

[http://www.onestatfree.com:] Password protected web analytic tool that analyzes, tracks and generates analytics reports, just inserting a piece of code is added in the source code that tracks website activities.

clickbench.com: This is one of the most reliable web traffic measuring tool that provides demographic metrics and statistics, hosted web analytics, online site analytics, visitor click analysis, of your website.
The need to monitor, track activities and filter statistics result lead to adoption of new technology of Page-Tagging.

By: Rakhee Chowdhary

About the Author:
Icreon, is an Offshore IT Outsourcing Company [http://www.icreon.com/], SAP business channel partner that savvy your business needs by providing elite web analytics solutions [http://www.icreon.com/web_advertising.shtml]

Rakhee is a SEO content writer at Icreon Communications Pvt. Ltd.



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App Development – 5 Tips For Quicker PHP Development

April 17th, 2011


Developing applications with PHP has become the most popular method of app development on the market today, with PHP being extremely versatile and powerful. Web developers are always on the lookout for faster PHP techniques and this guide will suggest 5 methods for increasing your efficiency and decreasing the amount of time to develop a quality application.

Reuse PHP Strings and Script

Modifying existing PHP scripts for your app development project will save you tons of time and money, spent otherwise on creating a framework or skeleton from scratch. Reuse of your perfected scripts with minor changes will allow you to take existing PHP script skeletons and make the necessary changes to work with your app development guidelines. Not only will this save time, but you will better understand PHP coding and become more versatile in your ability to create strings that work for specific applications.

Less is Always More

Since the beginning of computers and application programming languages, less clutter and more functionality has always been key. The simpler you keep your PHP MySQL code, the easier it is to fix glitches and errors, and the less likely you will make those errors in the first place. If it seems necessary to re-do your coding structure, the time spent to simplify your scripts will prevent frustration and confusion later on. Keep things simple and don’t let your time and money go to waste, especially if you hired one of those expensive offshore programmers.

Back Everything Up

This method for saving time while developing a PHP application is slightly more obvious than the others. If you spend 3 hours working on a PHP script and you accidentally delete the data or MySQL has errors, you lost 3 hours of work. Backing up your code can save time wasted on re-doing your hard work.

Upgrade your Text-Editor

We all know that coding PHP in Notepad is impressive, but when you’re trying to save time, upgrading to a more efficient text-editor is a wise choice. EditPlus2 or PHPEdit are highly recommended and are similar to editors like Dreamweaver, color coding important commands so they are easy to find. You will save time from preventing yourself from searching walls of confusing, colorless text and fixing errors that Notepad cannot detect. Upgrading is usually satisfying as well, right?

Label Code and Document Properly

Above your code, document and put hints or explanations of your strings to make editing easier for you and other coders alike. You will save tremendous amounts of time during complicated troubleshooting by giving your PHP code proper documentation.

Follow these simple steps for PHP app development and you’ll be in the momentum of saving time and developing project after project, while your competitors are stuck, frustrated with their sloppy code, unorganized labels and complicated PHP strings.

By: Justin Bajonda

About the Author:
For premium PHP app development services that follow these valuable steps, Thriveline’s high-end development team offers clean, functional, custom app development with over a dozen coding languages.



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Inward Link Analysis And Optimizing Your Website

April 16th, 2011


Like reciprocal linking, inward links to your website can be an effective strategy to increase your website’s visibility. Inward links are links pointing to your websites from other websites without providing a reciprocal link from your website.

There are many techniques to improve inward linking. Many of these have enjoyed success. The most proven technique for inward linking is through Ebooks. You can offer interesting and educative Ebooks for free to other websites and they could install the icons or the Ebooks on their sites. The icon or the Ebook you create would have a link to your website. This will allow a spider to crawl through that link and visit you website. For example, a footer on every alternate page can have a link to your website that would increase the probability of your website being listed with a crawler based Search Engine.

Other techniques include posting newsletters, white papers, news stories and press releases at other websites, particularly industry specific and general portals. The newsletters and press releases would contain a link pointing to your website, thus, promoting your website.

Optimizing your Website

To get listed correctly in the search engines each page of your site that you want listed needs to be optimized to the best of your ability. Since the keywords that you decide to target will be used throughout the optimization process choosing the right keywords is essential. If you choose the wrong keywords you will not be found in the search engines. If you are not found in the search engines how will anyone find your site? Since the keywords you choose to optimize your pages with are so important we have put together some tips to help you make sure that you make the right choices. You should utilize these tips when selecting keywords for each page that you plan to submit to the search engines.

Think “specific keyword phrases” not “keywords”. Due to the extreme amount of competition for general terms in the search engines, if your keyword phrases are too general it is very unlikely you will rank well in the search engines. You stand a far better chance to rank well for specific phrases where there is less competition. The resulting traffic, since it is more highly targeted, should also be much higher quality too.

You should try to come up with as many keyword phrases as you can think of that relate to the page you are optimizing. Try asking a few friends and family what they would search for when searching for a site like yours. Check out your competition for ideas. Do a search using keywords that you already know you want to target and click through on the top sites that come up. Once on the site view the source HTML code and view the keywords they have in their Meta tags – this should give you many more ideas.

Make sure to only use keywords that relate to YOUR site or page. To view the HTML code, simply click the ‘View’ at the top of your web browser then select ‘Source’, or ‘Page Source’. You should develop a list of keyword phrases, following the tips on this page, for each page that you optimize for the search engines.

Apart from these, there are certain aspects that should be avoided. These are:

Dead Links – As search engines index your entire site by crawling through hypertext links, you must make sure you check for dead links before submitting.

Graphics and Image Maps – Search engines cannot read images, be sure to include Alternative Text tags.

Frames – Many Search engines aren’t frames compatible. Meta tags and the tags are important in this instance.

Spamming – Avoid resubmitting your pages repeatedly to search engines if your site does not get listed in the first few weeks. Allow at least 6 weeks before resubmission. Continual resubmission (such as those caused by automatic submission software) can cause your site to be penalized.

By: Tim Yu

About the Author:
Tim Yu is the owner of http://www.Online2Biz.com providing information on Creating Your Own Business Online. To get Free “Internet Marketing Guide” & “49 Ways To Find A Profitable Niche Market Instantly!” course, go to http://www.Online2Biz.com



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IT Contractor Versus Consultant – What’s the Difference?

April 15th, 2011


Is a computer consultant or IT consultant just a contract programmer or software engineer who uses a fancy title and charges a higher rate?

The short answer is no. Each is valuable for the right type of engagement. But putting one into an engagement where you really need the other is a mistake–and you can’t always tell who is who by the titles on their business cards.

Find out what they do. That will tell you what category is the true one, and in turn will tell you what roles are appropriate to consider them for.

What Contract Technical Workers Do

Contract technical workers focus on exactly that–the technical skills in which they specialize. It’s up to you to tell them what to implement. For a software designer, you say what the software has to do. For a programmer, you provide specifications for the software.

A good contractor is a self-starter with superb technical skill, and can produce excellent technical work with less need for supervision and motivation than most regular employees. When your project is done, the contractor leaves without fuss. Your employees carry on with maintenance of whatever the project built.

Here is an example of using contract technical workers wisely. Let’s say that you have decided to build a new XYZ system to fit in with a radical change in business procedures. You’ve done the business analysis in-house and have specified exactly what you want to build. Your IT team is competent in most of the programming skills needed. However, they have not designed and built a major database before. In fact, all of their previous design and programming projects have been small. The tools and techniques needed to build and maintain a large system cost effectively are new to them.

You bring in technical specialists as the team leads for the project. They do the ‘heavy lifting’–the core of the database design and construction, software design, source code control, and quality assurance tools and procedures. Your IT employees work under their guidance, being mentored by the contracted specialists along the way.

Your project is finished faster than if you used only your IT team. The design, implementation, testing and deployment avoid the types of mistakes that happen when everyone on the team is new to the tools and techniques they are using. When the specialists leave, your entire IT team’s expertise has expanded and they are capable of carrying on with maintenance and enhancements.

What IT / Computer Consultants Do

Many contract technical workers focus exclusively on the technical work. One of the best contract programmers who once worked for me said bluntly that he didn’t want to have to understand what the equipment was supposed to do when our software sent commands to it. If I would just tell him what software I wanted, he would write it, but he didn’t want to have to pay attention to anything else. He certainly didn’t want to have to interact with other people to find out what they wanted. He wrote fine software, and I let him concentrate on what he did so well. That’s the big difference between a contractor and a consultant.

Information Technology consultants usually start out as contract technical workers. The consultant has some expert technical skills (design, programming, testing) and is likely to have at least some expertise across a wide range of the skills involved in the entire birth, life and eventual death of a system. But the consultant’s professional growth is not purely addition and refinement of technical skills.

Start with computer capability. Add business acumen, common sense, and ‘soft skills’ and the result is an IT consultant.

A formal computer related project begins with business analysis. This means looking at what the business is doing (Point A), imagining what it needs to do instead (Point B), figuring out what has to be done to go from Point A to Point B, and writing that down (business case, requirements, and so on).

Other tasks in the project grow from the analysis. On the technical side, these include functional specifications and detailed specifications, design, implementation, testing, source code control, training, and technical support. On the human side, changes in what people do have to be planned, and people have to be taught their new procedures.

Each of those tasks is done by people with specific roles, titles and skills. Many of them may labor in their portion of the project without seeing the overall picture clearly. A good IT consultant sees it all–the business objectives to be met, human procedural changes, the ‘big picture’ Information Technology systems involved, and the crucial details necessary to make it all work.

This requires a frame of mind unlike that of a contract programmer. Not everyone can do it. It’s one of the reasons a consultant gets higher rates.

Confusion in Usage of the Terms

In other fields, a consultant provides expert advice and guidance to a client. Implementing the consultant’s recommendations is the client’s responsibility. The line is not so clear in information technology.

Many people say they are computer consultants or IT consultants when their remit is primarily implementation, not guidance. That isn’t consulting in the sense that the word is used elsewhere.

Good ‘computer consultants’ provide a blend of expertise and service that goes beyond fitting computer systems to business needs–in essence, you get a blend of business consultant and IT consultant from the best.

At the highest end of the spectrum, the IT consultant goes beyond the advisory role filled by consultants in other fields. The elite IT consultant interacts with people, digs into issues involving equipment, and pays attention to logistics–even such details as the height of tables or the clearance forklifts will have in a passage. You can engage an IT consultant for expert advice. However, unlike consultants in other fields, a top level IT consultant can be also engaged to make sure the project comes through, ‘from soup to nuts.’

Our firm provides services anywhere along this spectrum. But if you ask me what we do, my answer reveals the mindset of a consultant. Where computers are used to help make money instead of count it, we help our clients make more money. That’s our best offering. Listen for a similar focus on improving business effectiveness, and a lack of emphasis on specific technologies, when you are looking for a top tier IT consultant.

Remember to Use Each Appropriately

As I said at the beginning, contract technical workers and IT consultants are each valuable for the right engagement. Make sure not to use a contract programmer where you need a consultant, because the contractor is oriented to a narrower focus. Also avoid wasting money by miring a consultant in programming chores that could be done by a programmer at a lower rate. Use each for their respective strengths to move your business forward faster, better and more cost effectively.

By: Bonnie Huval

About the Author:
Bonnie D. Huval has been a consultant since 1992 helping companies make more money, especially with their automation and transaction systems. Projects by her USA and UK firms include cutting time to ship product from two days to two hours, and cutting downtime for product introduction by 40%. Her company also provides affordable world class antispam filtering with disaster redundancy for firms of any size, encrypted remote backup, and high availability website hosting. Go to http://www.seneschal.biz for her consulting or IT services. Go to http://www.makesureyougetpaid.com for her materials to help small businesses be more successful. Copyright 2009. This article may be reprinted only in its entirety, with full attribution.



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Firefox: Benefit Analysis versus Internet Explorer

April 14th, 2011


Most of Firefox’s advantages are MSIE’s disadvantages, and vice-versa. This article will look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of Firefox in relation to MSIE.

Advantages

Security

Security is often cited as the primary reason for users switching from MSIE to Firefox. Security is of utmost importance for software that interacts with remote computers, in an era of high security risk activities such as online banking.

Firefox has fewer security holes and a tighter schedule of disclosing them. The enhanced security in Firefox is due to a multitude of factors the system’s inclusion of more source code reviewers and a better bug reporting system and exclusion of VBScript/ActiveX, often the source of vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been clamoring for years to try to clamp down on the MSIE security holes. It acquired an anti-spyware product, which it released under the banner of Microsoft AntiSpyware. It also promises its new Windows Vista platform will be more secure. However, Microsoft’s track record to date has done little to boost the confidence of today’s user.
Standards compliance

Firefox has vaulted ahead of MSIE with improved support for standard web protocols, such as its superior stylesheet compatibility.

Since MSIE had a leading marketshare, the company had less interest in conforming to web standards, and instead focused on proprietary protocols, with the goal of maintaining their market position. That is, the focus of Microsoft was to try to convert as much of its userbase to writing webpages and web applications that required a proprietary MSIE-approach, so that down the road, users would be less able to move off a Microsoft platform.
As a result, Microsoft neglected for years to improve support for basic open standards. For example, transparent PNG graphics did not work all the way through to MSIE version 6.

Multiple operating system platforms

Firefox is available for users who runs Windows (Windows 98 through to Windows XP), Mac OS X, all the leading versions of Linux, as well as some lesser-used operating systems. In comparison, Microsoft has dropped development for Mac, and other non-Windows systems. Furthermore, Microsoft has ceased new development even on their own versions of Windows, making the new MSIE only available to users who have a license for Windows XP.
Firefox also has a similar user interface among the different operating platforms. For deployments that have a mix of operating platforms (such as Linux for the techs, Macs for the graphic designers, and Windows for the accounts department), moving to Firefox for everyone thus brings technical support costs down.

Time-saving browser innovations

Internet communication and interaction is a core component for most modern businesses. Efficient use of web browser time translates to increased profits, so innovations to help workers do their tasks faster are welcomed.
Firefox leads MSIE in this regard, with out-of-the-box features such as integrated Google search in the toolbar, placing the find-within-page box at the bottom of the browser window so as not to obscure the text, and so on.

Disadvantages

Retraining

Any switch of software incurs a retraining cost. However, a switch from MSIE to Firefox requires only a mild amount of retraining.

The switch from MSIE to Firefox is designed to be easy, with proper import of bookmarks and other settings.

Browser interfaces are becoming standard, so understanding how to get up and running is not usually a problem. There are some only minor adjustments. For example, “Internet Files” in MSIE is called “Cache” in Firefox. One can use a downloaded MSIE theme so that the Firefox user interface even more closely resembles that of MSIE.

Incomplete migration

In a business with Windows computers, if the switch from MSIE to Firefox is incomplete, it can cost more to offer technical support for both browsers. This argument would only apply to shops whose Windows computers are all Windows XP. Since the new MSIE is only available for Windows XP, if there are different Windows versions (such as Windows NT or 2000), then the technical support team already needs to support different types of MSIE browsers.

Another consideration, however, is that even an incomplete switch from MSIE to Firefox could result in less technical support, since the Firefox users would be less likely to need help with fixing their computer after an MSIE-related security breach.

By: Matt Bacak

About the Author:
Matt Bacak became “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak’s Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com



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