Categories
Social Media

Tips on using Facebook Effectively

Have some people become obsessed with their Facebook profile. Have they become their own brand and social media marketing entity? Have we all fallen into the trap of thinking we are something important to the rest of the world and we must invest in hours of personal online marketing? Here is a no-nonsense look at how to interact on Facebook.

Facebook is the core of social media marketing, but how many of us really know how to use it? How much are all of your friends actually paying attention to what you are doing on it? How much are you interacting with others on the site, or are you really just reading whatever is put in front of you? Getting attention on Facebook takes some special skills, it also takes some other abilities. Here is a look at how to get more involved with others on Facebook. Let’s face it, you are after attention yourself.

Use your likes

While we all want to be the wittiest person ever, most of the time it is hard to come up with something more entertaining than an eight year old. Your next option is to use your like button. This is an easy way to interact with others and make them feel good at the same time. Whether you like it, them, or not, does not really matter, they will feel that you have given them some positive attention.

Upload photos as much as possible

Just like a picture speaks a thousand words, photos give you a whole essay of material you could not possibly write. It would be great if I could come up with something interesting everytime I opened the site, and it would be something that attracted attention. Just like most of us, I can’t. The next best thing is to upload photos. Everyone likes to look at photos, it is just the way people are. Photos give a visual dimension to your existence, and this adds more to your personality online. Words are wonderful for conjuring up provocative thoughts, but photos and videos lay it all out there for others to see. Do your best to select only those photos and videos where you look fantastically fabulous or completely ridiculous. Either one will intrigue.

Comment on photos

Looking for somewhere to say something, and not sure what to say. Other’s photos will always give you something of interest to say. More importantly, because it is them you are talking about, and it is plain to see for everyone else, you will get a reaction every time.

Be yourself

Facebook is your personal online marketing tool. Perhaps you are not that interesting in the first place. Perhaps, what is more important, is those who care about you. Don’t try too hard to impress. Just be yourself. If people out there are not interested in you, it is time to find friends who do. Don’t take your Facebook profile too personally. Those who like you will like you anyway. Those who added you just so they could add another number to their total friend count, are not your friend anyway. Just because someone has more friends on Facebook, does not mean they have more influence. The quality and amount of interaction with that network is what really makes the difference.

Categories
Internet

iVPN: the best VPN service provider

Couple of weeks back I was in dearth need of a VPN service and while doing my research, I came across numerous VPN service provider. None of them were fulfilling my requirement, in a sense they were not offering what I was looking for. Just then one of my friend suggested me this VPN service called iVPN. I went deeper into their site and got in touch with their customer service to clarify few of my queries and guess what ‘” I found exactly what I was looking for”. This review is based upon my personal experience with iVPN service for last couple of weeks.

For those who are not sure what exactly is a VPN, let me take this opportunity to define it. A Virtual Private Network or a VPN (in short) is a secured way of connecting to a private network (LAN) present in a remote location through an unsecured public network like Internet. You can use VPN service to connect to your office network from your home which majority of us do. But the VPN service comes in handy in many other ways too.

The speciality of iVPN:

If you go with the enormous amount of VPN service provider available in the Internet you will find many loopholes in the service and most of the time you have to pay a hefty price as your security might be compromised. Some of them are such a waste that you will neither get security nor the speed and do not ask about the worst customer service. generally when we look for a VPN we primarily consider the security and speed. So without this the service is a waste.

The iVPN offers the best security as it is built with most secured Open Source software available today like OpenVPN, IPSec and freeRADIUS. (Most of other providers use insecured protocol like PPTP where data can be sniffed easily). The traffic between the client machine and iVPN network is encrypted with AES 256 bit encryption.

IVPN offers maximum speed as they offers very low subscribers ratio and offer premium bandwidth through their Gigabit network. Hardly ever your connection will be dropped.

Apart from this they offers maximum privacy as they do not collect any personally identifiable information except the mail ID. Backed by all this they have a fantastic support team who are always ready to help.

Signup and Setup:


In order to start using the iVPN service you need to signup to iVPN as a subscriber. You have the flexibility to pay monthly, quarterly or annually. They also have a very attractive pricing plan with a reducing price for increased duration. If you want to try the service before buying, they offer a 7 days risk free trial without any obligation.

The signup process is fairly simple and takes less than 30 seconds as they do not collect any information apart from the mail ID and password. After signing up, you will receive an email with setup instructions and the Username and Password to connect to the iVPN network.

Depending upon the type of protocol you will be using like an OpenVPN or IPSec, you will need to download the client program and configuration file. I prefer OpenVPN as it is slightly faster, more stable and can pass some firewall restriction which IPSec cannot.

For OpenVPN, the downloader is available here and the ones for IPSec/L2TP are available here. You can also follow the extensive step by step tutorials for setup by visiting the iVPN knowledge base.

Once you download the client for the type of connection, double click on the installer to start installation and proceed with the default options.

I would advice to use the automatic setup scripts for configuration available in the download page as manual configuration is too complicated and making something wrong will not allow you to connect.

This iVPN has served my purpose and I am overall quite happy with the service and I would rate them 8.5 out of 10.

If you happen to use the service of iVPN or any other VPN service provider, do not forget to write your opinion through comment.

Categories
Webmaster Wordpress

WordPress 3.2 features and test drive

Automattic seems to be in a spree to bring new and exciting features to it’s most widely used bogging platform WordPress. In the last few months we have seen WordPress is going constant overhaul. And we saw the platform has evolved tremendously. Just recently we heard about WordPress 3.0 and then it WordPress 3.1 was released soon after. Now the talk of the bogging arean is the release of WordPress 3.2. The beta version of WordPress 3.2 is already available for download and the final stable version is expected quite soon.

WordPress 3.2 is expected with a lot of new and exciting features, so we downloaded the beta version to give it a try. And guess what, this version of WordPress is just amazing. Some of the notable features in WordPress 3.2 are a new User Interface for Admin, Distraction free writing, New default theme, change in system requirement and a much anticipated Faster WordPress.

New User Interface for Dashboard:

The Admin Interface in WordPress 3.2 s not a complete makeover but a slight change as compared to it’s predecessor 3.x. This new look good cool and elegant and occupy less space. There is also a new option at the bottom to collapse the menu which will then show the icons for different section of the menu and hovering on the icons will reveal the menu options. The footer area in the Admin dashboard has also got a facelift. Also the Favorite menu at the top right is removed. This new Admin Interface looks quite professional and neat. Overall I like it pretty much.

New Default theme Twenty Eleven:

As we are already in 2011, so the default theme Twenty Ten that comes with current versions of WordPress also need a change. Matt finally realized that and the default theme from WordPress 3.2 will be Twenty Eleven. It does not mean they are scrapping out the Twenty Ten theme. hence WordPress 3.2 will come with 2 themes like the 2.x versions but Twenty Eleven will be installed by default.

Clutter Free Write Panel:

Don’t you feel like putting your complete concentration on the content while writing a post? I surely do. To help us concentrate in creating a better post, the WordPress 3.2 will feature a less cluttered and clean write panel. By default all the options like Excerpts, trackbacks, custom fields etc will be hidden. So if you do not see those excerpts or custom filed, do not panic, you just need to Click oN Screen Options at the top right and check the options which you really need.

If that is not enough, you click on full screen mode and you will see a completely new write panel which you will fall in love with for sure. This full screen write panel is definitely a boon. I am going to utilize this feature to the fullest.

Performance Improvement:

While everything being the same, WordPress 3.2 provides a better performance and a faster site load as compared to it’s predecessors. This is very much essential considering Google is now taking into account the page load time while ranking websites.

Change in System requirement:

If you are quite excited with all these new features and are in a hurry to upgrade to WordPress 3.2 when the stable release comes in, you need to first check with your hosting provider to verify if your server meets the system requirement for WordPress 3.2. As going forward WordPress will require PHP 5.2.4 and MySql 5.0. Once you are sure your host meets the requirement, then you decide to upgrade.

Also WordPress 3.2 will not support Internet Explorer 6. Though the front end of your website/blog will not receive any warning, when you try to log into the Admin Dashboard you will be warn that you are using an unsecured version of Internet Explorer and it will ask you to upgrade the browser.

The current release of WordPress 3.2 is a beta version, so do not use it on your live site. As lot of bug is expected and site might become unstable.

If you have not yet tried the WordPress 3.2 beta, we have setup a WordPress 3.2 test drive site so that you can try it on our server and familiarize yourself with the features. use the username and Password both as qlogix to login.

Categories
Mobile WinMo

Features and the future of Windows Phone 7

The race to produce the world’s best smartphone was and truly opened up with the release of the Windows Phone 7 OS in October last year. While there have been complaints from critics that the range of available apps is poor and that the first release of the new OS was lacking in basic multitasking capabilities, Windows really is stepping up to the plate and seems to be picking up quite a pace to catch up with and surpass the likes of Android and iOS.

At Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in February 2011, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a major update to Windows Phone 7 due towards the end of this year. The update will see the inclusion of a mobile version of Internet Explorer 9 that supports the same web standards (e.g. HTML5) and hardware-accelerated graphics as its PC counterpart.

By all accounts, this is going to be pretty exciting stuff – demonstrating the new browser during a keynote speech by Mr Ballmer at the MWC, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, Joe Belfiore, used a fish tank video to show off the updated OS’s speed and graphical capabilities. Mr Belfiore also compared the smooth motion of the tank’s 50 fish with the same video on an unnamed HTC model (surely not the HTC 7 Pro?), demonstrating just how fast and flawless the movement was with IE9 compared with its Safari (iPhone) counterpart.

While Belfiore didn’t really emphasize the fact that this version of IE9 wouldn’t be due until towards the end of this year, and while it was also indicative of the strength of Windows Phone 7’s competitive edge, it’s also very likely that Safari will be subject to similar standard of improvement, given Apple’s track record.

Even more exciting news, according to gottabemobile.com, Windows Phone 7 will also, thanks to their alliance with Nokia, be the forerunner of the smartphone OS industry by 2013. Having conducted research into the growth of the various leading smartphone OS giants such as iOS, Android and Blackberry, Pyramid Research’s senior analyst, Stela Bokun, prophesised that WP 7 will beat previous predictions that it will be ahead of the game by 2015 in two years.

Bokun proffered the idea that while Android’s primary strength has always been its availability with the various members of its Open Handset Alliance, WP 7’s availability on a variety of hardware besides Nokia will see WP 7 enjoy similar success. Bokun explained: “While Android will continue to grow beyond 2013, its growth will slow down compared to the skyrocketing surge in 2010 and 2011. Even though WP will maintain the leadership from 2013 through 2015, the battle with Android will be fierce going forward and will result in many overtakings and ties between the two operating systems going forward – all at the expense of iOS and BlackBerry, which will experience a losing streak.

“While RIM and Apple are powerful players in the smartphone market, their desire to limit their mobile operating systems to their own hardware has antagonized large manufacturers, such as Samsung, LG and Nokia, who have the capacity to enjoy the benefits of economies of scale and whose devices account for an overwhelming portion of the smartphone market.”

Expected Features in Windows Phone 7:

With regards to specifics about the updates, Microsoft revealed earlier this month that Bing on WP 7 will be subject to a major overhaul. Bing Navigation will be updated to give people faster access to common searches like ‘movies’ and ‘traffic’, while also providing a handy satellite navigation service (turn-by-turn voice navigation).

Not only that, but the Windows Phone Dev Podcast – which featured Windows Phone 7 director Brandon Watson as a guest – announced that a new function called Bing Audio will be featured in the new updates. If you’re familiar with Shazam, you’ll know that it’s able to recognise music and tell you that artists, track and album. Bing Audio will do just that, whilst also being able to sell users the tracks through Zune.

Next, Bing Vision – it’ll use your smartphone’s camera to read barcodes and do optical character recognition, while it may also offer support for augmented reality apps. Updates may also include voice-to-text for SMS messages, allowing users to send texts without the need to type. All in all, Windows Phone 7 has an exciting future ahead of it – and we can’t wait to try out the new updates. Watch this space.

Further reading:

Winning with Watson Windows Phone will beat Android Mobile IE 9 review Nokia and Microsoft partnership

Image courtesy of Expansys

Categories
Webmaster Wordpress

Mashlife the best Mashable clone theme released

The elegant look of the Mashable website has enticed many theme developers to create a theme similar to Mashable as well as many bloggers want to have a website that look like Mashable. All thanks to the elegant Mashable design. Some of the theme developers have tried their hand on doing something similar but nothing is as appealing as the recently released Mashlife theme. If you are not convinced then a look at the demo site of Mashlife will definitely make you spellbound.

Mashlife WordPress theme is the first theme developed by Qlogix Solutions and they have done a fantastic job. Almost all the features available in Mashable has been cloned into Mashlife theme. So we regard Mashlife as the best Mashable clone theme.

Mashlife is a clean, elegant looking and SEO optimized WordPress theme and have lots of customization option through Theme option in Admin panel without getting into the real code. Qlogix Solutions have also created many video tutorial as well as text based tutorials to help setting up the theme for newbies. Apart from that fantastic support is also available through email. So if you are looking for an amazing professional theme and ready to go online within minutes, Mashlife is the best theme choice for you.

Features of Mashlife theme:

Mashlife not only offers the look of Mashable but also offers many of the features available in it. let’s have a look at the amazing features:

General features:

– Compatible with the latest version of WordPress (3.1.2) and utilizes many advanced features like menu managment.

– Clean and elegant look

– Advanced theme control panel to customize various aspects of the theme

– Logo switcher between image/text and custom logo.

– Home page style selection between blog and magazine.

– Widgetized footer area and sidebar

– Author bio box for single posts.

– Automatic thumbnail creation and caching for better loadtime.

– Flexibility of thumbnail selection through custom filled for featured post.

– Integrated google analytics

– Integrated Gravatar support

Social Features:

– Built-in support for social media network and feedburner

– Built-in support for Open Graph protocol and Facebook like button.

– Integrated Facebook Like box in sidebar.

– SEO and adsense optmized

Advanced Features:

– Ads control through Theme control panel.

– Custom page template for full width page, job board etc.

– Advance features like custom post type to place job board like  Mashable on the frontpage.

– Mashable like colored menu for categories.

– Support for lazy loading of images upon page scroll

– Support for related posts without any plugin.

– Amazingly fast loading to help in google ranking. (With the help of a caching plugin like W3 total cache it will be much faster and will give much better page speed score)

– Lots of new features to be added in the upcoming releases.

These are just some of the features of Mashlife theme and we feel unless you have a test drive of the Mashlife theme on your own, you will not be able to realize the true potential of this theme.

Mashlife theme is available for purchase in 3 different flavors, e.g Single use license to be used in only 1 website, multiple use license to be used in more than one website and developers license without any restriction.

Pricing:

Single License Mashlife theme:  USD 39.9

Multiple site license mashlife theme: USD 99.9

Developer license Mashlfe theme: USD 149.9

If you are wondering, we are using an advanced version of Mashlife theme with developer license here in Techie Zone.

View Mashlife Theme Demo

Buy Mashlife Theme

Use the coupon Code TECHIEZONE while checking out to get a 15% discount.

Categories
Tech News

New limitations in Google Apps free edition

Google Apps is undoubtedly one of the best cloud computing application. Since the time Google has launched the Google Apps, it has been embraced by millions of businesses ranging from a partnership firm to big Enterprise. This Google Apps has undergone various changes in terms of features as well as versions and editions. Currently Google Apps is available in various flavors like Google Apps Standard Edition, Google Apps Business, Google Apps Education editions, Google Apps Government editions and Google Apps non-profit editions.

All the versions mentioned above have their features and limitations and not all the versions are available to any one who wants to deploy Google Apps. Out of the 5 flavors of Google Apps, the Google Apps Standard or Free edition is available to all for free and Business edition can only be obtained through subscription.

The following image below gives a comparative overview of the features available in both the primary flavors of Google Apps:

The free version of Google Apps is available to any one for free without much restriction, however it has certain limitations as indicated in the above image. Initially when Google Apps was launched the free edition was available with a user limit of 50 while sign up and later on if you needed more number of users you can easily increase the limit by sending a request with a valid reason to Google. But this was the time when only the free edition was in the market.

Looking at the popularity, Google decided to monetize the opportunity and the business edition was launched. So on 14th January 2009, Google made an announcement to fix the maximum number of users for free edition at 50. That means after the announcement, even if you had a valid reason, you will not be able to increase the number of users beyond 50. Instead Google directed businesses with more than 50 users to the Business edition. Google being a philanthropic company, did not let existing users of free editions down by allowing them to operate with more than 50 users if they had.

Now Google has made another announcement today saying the limitation of 50 users will further be reduced to 10 users starting 10th May 2011. But like earlier announcement the existing users with limitations of 50 users will continue to enjoy the service. So this will only be applicable to users who signs up for a new Google Apps account after 10th may 2011. This the complete mail from Google.

Hello,

We recently announced upcoming changes to the maximum number of users for Google Apps. We want to let you know that, as a current customer, the changes will not affect you.

As of May 10, any organisation that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users. We honor our commitment to all existing customers and will allow you to add more than 10 users to your account for xxxx.com at no additional charge, based on the limit in place when you joined us.

Sincerely,

The Google Apps Team

In my opinion this is a best move by Google as any business which needs more than 10 users must be making a good money and need to pay some amount to Google for such a  nice service. But Google should also re-consider about the pricing of Business edition with an altogether different pricing model to suit the small business owners who may need just 15 or 20 users. Please share your opinion on this.

Categories
Windows

Fix for 100% CPU usage while notebook is using battery power

For quite a couple of days one of my friends had a very strange issue. When he was using his notebook in battery mode the notebook performance was very slow and CPU usage was continuously showing as 100%. As CPU was always busy at 100% every operation in the notebook was taking a hell lot of time. The friend of mine being a  novice computer user, he did not have any clue about what was going on. So I came as a rescue. With my analysis of his notebook I finally could find out that the issue was happening only when the notebook was using the battery power.

So i immediately found out that this has something to do with the Power Options and fiddle with the Power Options setting to finally fix the issue. So if you are experiencing a similar issue of 100% CPU usage by your Notebook, follow the steps below:

– Click on Start and Type Power Options in the search box in your Windows Vista/Windows 7 based PC.

– Hit enter to Open Power Options window.

– In Power Option, click on Chnage Plan setting for the current power plan you are using.

– Click on Change Advanced Power settings in the next window.

– A new window will open up.

– In this window, click on + sign near Processor Power management.

– Click on + sign near system cooling policy.

– Make sure the on battery settings for system cooling policy is set as Active. If it is passive, make it Active.

– Click on Apply and OK.

 

Skill level: Beginner

Categories
Internet Social Media

Do’s and Dont’s of Social Media for Business[Infographic]

If you are wondering how to start your social media campaign? what to do in your social media campaign and what to avoid in your social media campaign, this infograph will definitely help you. It provides quite useful points about the usage of Social media for the business. The rise of Social media has made many business embrace it. But it is as essential to know the strategies to make maximum benefit out of it. The points cited in this infographic is very general but quite useful. Most of us know about it but don’t follow. So I would suggest those using Social Media as one of their primary marketing medium to abide by the points cited here, this will surely help you guys.

This infograph is created by the steel method.

Categories
Tutorials Wordpress

How to configure W3 Total cache for best performance

Since the time Google announced that the Page Load time also plays an important role in ranking a web site, all of us are craving for a faster site load to get the SERP. But WordPress is notoriously famous for giving slow performance as it dynamically generates every posts and pages using database queries. Usage of various plugins for customization of a WordPress based site adds to this to make the site more slower. It does not mean that we will abandon WordPress and embrace another blogging platform. WordPress is the best blogging platform and have millions of good things to offer. There are various ways to make the WordPress based site faster.

Using a good performance optimization plugin is one of the best way to make your site faster. When we think of performance optimization plugin 2 things come to our mind e.g W3 Total cache and WP Super cache. For a week or so I have been testing both the plugins in various websites and in all my tests W3 total cache has far exceeded WP Super cache in all aspects. The Page speed and Yslow scores are higher in all my tests while using W3 total cache. Only problem with W3 total cache is that, it has huge customization option and if not done properly will result into a negative effect. Hence in this tutorial, I will take you through a step by step configuration of W3 Total cache.

Before you activate W3 Total cache, we suggest you to check the PageSpeed and Yslow score of your website using GTMetrix. Make a note of the scores and see the differences in score after you finish configuring the plugin.

Installing W3 Total Cache

First of all uninstall/deactivate any performance optimization (caching) plugins like WP Super cache. This is mandatory to avoid any conflict in further steps. When you are sure there is no caching plugin running, Download W3 Total Cache for free from WordPress Plugin repository and save it on the desktop. Unzip the archive and use your favorite ftp program to upload it to the wp-content/plugins folder of the website where you want to configure W3 total cache. Before we activate and proceed with the configuration, we will need to make the wp-content folder writable. So using the FTP client, change permission of wp-content folder to 777 till we are done with set up. Now go to WordPress Admin panel and click on plugins, look for W3 total cache in the list of inactive plugins and activate it. Upon activation a new menu item as shown in figure will appear in Admin panel.

This plugin has a nice notification system, which will issue notification messages whenever some action needs to be performed.

General Settings:

The first step in the configuration process is the general setting. Click on the General settings from the new Performance menu that appear. You will be presented with the General settings page.

The General settings is an overview of different features available in W3 total cache. This will show settings for Page Cache, Minify, Database Cache, Object Cache, Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Browser Cache. From here we can globally enable or disable a feature available in W3 Total Cache. By Default the W3 Total cache runs in preview mode. In that mode any changes we make in the plug-in will not be applicable to the live site. So our very fast job is to enable the plugin for the live site by disabling the Preview mode, hence the General settings page will look like this:

If you disable any of the features under general settings the option “Deselect this option to disable all caching functionality” will be automatically unchecked. So if you disable any feature and see that the option is unchecked, do not worry about it. It looks like a wrong reference. While testing various options I found that the Minify settings from W3 total cache can be disabled and we can use another plugin called Wp-Minify for the best minification. So my suggestion for General settings is

Page Cache:  Enable  and the method is Disk (enhanced)

Minify: Disable

Database cache: Enable and the method is Disk

Object cache: Enable and the method is Disk

Content Delivery Network: Enable and the CDN type depends upon what kind of CDN you use.

Browser Cache: Enable.

Once you are sure the general settings look like the above, we can proceed with the configuration of individual features.

Page Cache Setting:

Click on the drop down that reads general setting and select Page cache or click on Page cache from the Performance menu on Admin panel to access the Page cache setting. The Page cache feature of W3 total cache creates static html pages of WordPress posts and pages. So the pages are not generated dynamically every time they are requested. hence it reduce load considerably on the server and site loads faster. There are many option here, but we need not worry about all the features and leave them as per default setting. We just need to change the settings under General category. See the image below:

The settings page above shows that the Page cache feature is currently enabled. Make sure in your set up it reads the same. If you have followed the general setting instruction above, it will read enabled. However for you, if it says disabled, go back to general settings and Enable Page cache. It also gives the option to Empty cache, which will rebuild a new cache with your changes if you have made any.

The option Don’t cache pages for logged in users has been selected for the benefit of Admin who can see the changes in the live site without clearing the cache every time they make any changes. Homepage being the most viewed pages for many site we have selected to cache Home page.

We recommend to go with the default settings for options under Advanced, cache preload and Varnish.

Minify settings:

Minify is the process of compressing CSS, HTML and JavaScript by removing the comments and line break as well as zipping it and then combining the similar files together. So the size of those files will be reduced and loading will be faster. In our test with JS files minified and combined, we ran into some issues with the sites where in tabbers, lazy loading as well as some other functions which depends upon JavaScript did not work. So we disabled the Minify features in W3 Total Cache and used a separate plugin called Wp-Minify. With Wp-Minify we were able to combine and minify the js and css without affecting site features dependent on JavaScript. We also got better Page speed and Yslow result with Wp-minify.

So our recommendation is disable the Minify features in W3 Total cache.

Database Cache & Object Cache Settings:

This Database Cache feature helps in caching Database queries. So when a database query is made it goes through the cache.  If the query is not found in the cache then only actual query to DB will be made. In a WordPress based site what we see at the front end is a result of many database queries in the back-end. Options like Page views, number of comments etc are pulled up from database using queries. So caching these queries will reduce the load on the DB and we can significantly improve the performance.

We suggest not to make any changes in the settings for Database cache and Object Cache, just leave the default intact. If you are on a shared hosting environment, you may even consider disabling these 2 options. If the disk responds slower than the database, these caches don’t help. On the other hand, if the disk works fast, Database Cache and Object Cache can considerably speed up the site.

Browser cache:

When we access a website for the first time, the static files like css, JavaScript etc are downloaded onto our browser and stored in browser’s cache. Next time we access the same website those static files are accessed from the cache. The Browser Cache feature of W3 Total Cache helps in the setting of the behaviors of those cache-able files. It enables http compressions and specify expiration header for the files. The setting in browser cache helps the web browser to understand how to behave with the cache-able files. The browser cache settings will change the rule in .htaccess file. So if you are not sure about modifying the rules in .htaccess file, making changes through the browser settings is the best option. A correct setting here will definitely increase the PageSpeed as well as Yslow score.

By default Enable HTTP (gzip) compression and set W3 Total Cache header is enabled. We suggest you the following settings for browser cache:

Under General Setting Enable(check) the options Set expires header, Set cache control header, Set entity tag (eTag), Set W3 Total Cache header, Enable HTTP (gzip) compression and disable only the option Do not process 404 errors. Enable all the options under Cascading Style Sheets & JavaScript, HTML and Media & Other Files.

The final setting for browser Cache should look like this:

User Agent Group settings:

The user agent group setting has no impact in performance. This is always enabled and helps in redirecting user based upon the user agent of the browser to a different website theme or a different page or altogether a different domain. We can create a group of user agents and take specific action for the group. This option is useful to redirect mobile users to a mobile theme and normal computer users to a normal website theme.

Content Delivery Network Settings:

This is another very important feature of W3 Total Cache plugin. One limitation of web browsers is that simultaneously a browser can download 2 resources from a  domain. So while accessing a website the download able objects have to wait in a que to be downloaded to the browser, so the site load time increases. By using a Content Delivery Network we separate those objects from our primary domain as well as we offer the flexibility of those files being served from a  globally distributed network of the CDN service we use. Hence the site loads much faster. We can even use a sub domain like cdn.primarydomain.com and serve our static files from that sub domain to allow simultaneous download of files.

Currently we at Techie Zone use Speedy Mirror as our CDN provider. This offers 50GB of free bandwidth which is enough for a normal website with around 1000 visitors per day to sustain for 6 to 8 months. If you are looking for a free CDN provider, Speedy Mirror is the best among all. It requires minimal configuration and very easy to set up. The CDN settings we provide here is for speedy mirror. The setup procedure for speedy mirror is so easy that we do not feel like providing the steps here. You just need to register there and provide your domain name. It will provide you a sub domain URL like xxx.speedymirror.com. The static files automatically gets downloaded to their server.

For Speedy Mirror as your CDN provider, we need to Enable the CDN option and set mirror as the CDN type in General setting. Now in CDN settings page under configuration, put the sub domain name you obtained from Speedy Mirror (while setting up the account) for replace site’s host name with option and Auto for SSL support option. Click on Test mirror to test if this is working correctly.

Under general setting, we need to check the options Host wp-includes/ files, Host theme files and Host custom files. Leave the options under Advanced as default.

As we are done with all the settings now, you can check the site performance in GTMetrix and note the scores and compare that with your earlier score. You will surely have a smile on your face looking at those green values.

This concludes the tutorial for setting up the W3 Total Cache plugin. I have tried my best to provide the steps in as simple ways as possible. If you are stuck while setting up the plugin or need any help, you are always welcome to ask for help and we will be glad to help you.

If you need advanced support for setting up this plugin or improving your site speed, we can assist you for a small fee. You contact us and we will get back to you with details.

Categories
Social Media Tech News

Facebook account not available

Facebook seems to have a hard time maintaining the infrastructure to support it’s more than 600 millions users. So in recent time people have started facing many irregularities with Facebook. Even I have experienced a few issues on my own. Issues like the online users section shown at the left side of Facebook showing multiple times or chat windows not opening when you click on  user name seems to be quite common. Moreover there are issues like messages disappearing from wall and Facebook group is a matter of concern.

I moderate 2 groups in Facebook and I have seen threads with a lot of response have suddenly disappeared from the

Facebook Groups. I inquired with other members about the issues and some of them told they are able to see and some reported as not available to them. So it seems to be issues related on per account basis.  Contacting Facebook for such things did not yield any result. So I was ignoring that thinking it will be a temporary issue and will be rectified soon. But today an extremely strange thing happened. I was chatting with the members of one of the group when I tried to post a comment to one of my friend’s status message. It did not get posted and I received an error saying not posted and try again. I tried again, but that also did not result in success. I tried refreshing my page and I was surprised to see the following message instead of my Facebook wall:

Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.

I tried refreshing my page numerous times but that did not work and I was greeted with same message. I was suddenly concerned and thought that Facebook has deleted my account or banned me. I tried to access it with another browser. I put my username and password and huh…instead of logging me in, I was greeted with a slightly different message with option to login with a  different user name and password.

Your account is temporarily unavailable due to site maintenance. It should be available again within a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

This message looked bit relaxing as I became sure by now that my account has not been banned or deleted. And seems like a Facebook issue.

Such incidents are not new to users and Facebook is aware of it. They told to CNET long back about some internal glitch in their server which is preventing users to access their account intermittently.  But as Facebook is growing like anything and many users and enterprise are heavily dependent on Facebook for their brand promotion and connecting with their customers, such downtime will definitely hamper their business. Facebook should take care of such issues by expanding their infrastructure more aggressively. Also they need to publish any anticipated downtime or issues in a publicly available location.

By the time I am writing this, I tried again refreshing browser and Alas I am inside my Facebook profile. So it was definitely a  temporary glitch. If you had a similar experience with Facebook recently, we would love to know about it. So please share it through comment.