Month: April 2011

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.

Categories
Browsers

Internet Explorer 9 features walkthrough

Year 2011 saw a web browser revolution as almost all the web browsers had a major release. Thanks to html5 and CSS3. As the web standard saw a big overhaul, it was necessary for the software houses like Microsoft, Opera, Mozilla to give facelift to their web browsers. And now as a result we have access to better browsers like Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4 and Opera 11. We have already covered the features of Firefox 4 on the release date and IE 9 though released few days earlier to it, we are covering the feature walk through of Internet Explorer 9 now. It shows our love for Firefox but I would like to say that Internet Explorer looks equally competitive in it’s new avatar as Internet Explorer 9. After I tested the features myself for this post, at the end of it I started loving Internet Explorer 9.

Internet Explorer 9 has seen major improvement in most of the aspects then the predecessors. Let’s have a look at the enormous amount of new features and improvement Internet Explorer 9 currently sports:

Speed:

Microsoft claims Internet Explorer 9 to be the fastest browser. But not sure if it is fastest among all other versions of Internet Explorer or fastest among all the available browsers :). Whatever be it speed is definitely a noticeable improvement in IE 9. Internet Explorer 9 takes full advantage of both the operating system and hardware to fully accelerate rendering of web pages. IE 9 leverages the power of the GPU through the DirectX®, Direct2D® and DirectWrite® API’s to ensure that text is crisp, graphics and animations are smooth. New GPU powered HTML5 enables stunning HD video and audio content without the need for a plug-in.

IE 9 uses a brand new JavaScript engine called Chakra. It is optimized to take advantage of the multiple CPU cores running on Windows Vista and Windows 7 by compiling the JavaScript to highly efficient machine code in the background, while interpreting the JavaScript in the foreground. Once compilation is finished, Chakra switches to the compiled and significantly faster machine code optimized for that PC.   Internet Explorer 9 scores very well in popular JavaScript benchmarks like WebKit’s SunSpider.

HTML 5 canvas support:

Canvas is a way to program graphics on the web. Ths standard has been included with html5. The canvas tag is an “immediate mode” (drawing commands are immediately applied) two-dimensional drawing surface that web developers can use to deliver things like real-time graphs, animations, or interactive games without requiring a separate plug-in to be downloaded. IE 9 has full support for this canvas.

Better User Interface:

IE 9 sports a clean and clutter free user Interface. In Internet Explorer 9, the simplified yet enhanced user interface and user experience puts the focus on the content of each website. By default, only the controls essential for browsing are in the browser frame and less screen real estate is used compared to other current browsers, letting people browse and experience all that the sites have to offer.

Characteristics of each website are reflected throughout the experience, allowing users to focus on and be more immersed in the site’s content. Elements of each website are integrated into the browser. If a site is pinned to the task bar, when the site is launched, the navigational controls integrate the site’s icon and primary color.

New Tab page:

IE 9 uses Windows Direct User Interface (DUI) to create a graphical new tab page that loads quickly and features crisp graphics. When users create a new tab, their intent is to navigate. Internet Explorer 9 focuses on making this experience fast by visually suggesting the sites you visit frequently. Each site is represented by a tile with a large favicon and a title, and users can track their browsing habits with a meter on each tile. From the new tab page, users can also reopen closed tabs, reopen their last browsing session, and start an InPrivate Browsing session.

Optimized Navigation Controls:

IE 9 uses a simplified navigation control. As modern websites include much of the functionality that browsers had in the past, the new browser frame emphasizes the controls that are necessary for browsing, with customizations available to show more controls. The back button in IE 9 is made far larger then any other previous version, because, it is the most used item and it has been placed at the top left. The address bar and search box are combined into one and now called One Box, and the Tools menus are consolidated into a single drop-down menu. Only the functionality necessary for a modern browsing experience is shown.

Pinned Sites:

With Pinned Sites, a user’s favorite websites can be accessed directly from the Windows taskbar without opening the browser. IE 8 introduced Web slices in the Favorites Bar. Because users wanted their sites still more readily available, IE 9 introduced Pinned Sites. With pinned sites you can bring your favorite sites into the Windows taskbar to make access even more efficient. You can pin sites to the taskbar by dragging the thumb pin icon  from One Box to the taskbar. When a pinned site is launched from the taskbar, the browser frame and navigational controls integrate the site’s icon and primary color, emphasizing the site and providing an even more site-focused experience.

Tear off Tab:

If you drag a tab away from the page, the tab will open a new instant of Internet Explorer Window.

Jumplists and Thumbnail Preview:

Jump Lists take users right into the websites they use every day. They’re a quick and easy to way to visit frequently visited websites without first opening Internet Explorer. For example, a user may frequent a particular online bookstore and may always start with her wishlist.To open the Internet Explorer 9 Jump List, users can right-click the Internet Explorer icon on the taskbar. They’ll see their pinned websites, as well as the sites that they visit often. There’s also access to start InPrivate Browsing, open new tabs, or close a window.

Any website that’s pinned to the taskbar also has a Jump List. What’s seen in each of these Jump Lists depends on each website, but all of them include InPrivate Browsing, opening the site, unpinning the site, and closing the window.

Thumbnail preview controls available on the Windows 7 taskbar provide quick navigation to the sites that users want to visit. Some websites that are pinned to the taskbar have additional controls. When a user hovers over a thumbnail for a website in the taskbar, they may see things like playback controls, similar to the controls in Windows 7 for Windows Media Player.

Notification Bar:

Notification bar in IE 9 has been moved to bottom of the browser. Messages in the Notification Bar are clearer and do a better job explaining to the user what they need to know. For example, instead of receiving the message “Internet Explorer is not responding,” the user receives the message “The website is not responding”.

Download Manager:

IE 9 incorporates an integrated integrated Download Manager to provide hassle free downloading and great security for downloaded content. The new Download Manager replaces the Run, Save As, or Cancel box used in earlier versions of Internet Explorer. With the new user interface, users can easily view download progress, open content that they’ve downloaded, Pause and Resume file download or cancel a download that is in progress. A default folder is used for all downloaded content, so users can also change the default download destination folder. As a security measure, all downloads are now scanned for virus and downloads of executable are verified for reliable source using WinVerifyTrust.

Domain Highlighting:

When displaying the current URL in the One Box, IE 9 highlights the domain name in black, while the rest of the URL is shown in grey. This makes it easier to identify the actual identity of the sites that users visit and helps to alert users about deceptive websites with misleading addresses. This can reduce the chances of compromising personal information while browsing and definitely curb the phising sites.

The features mentioned above are some of the noticeable and much talked about features you will see in IE 9. We have prepared a Power Point Presentation IE 9 features explained with great screenshots and explanation of all features in more detail. You can download the IE 9 features presentation .

Categories
Tips & tricks Webmaster

Use robots.txt to prevent website from being ripped

We all want to prevent our websites from being ripped. If you have a unique design the desire to prevent it from being duplicated is more. So we need to have an effective way of preventing rippers from getting an exact replica of our website. There are a plethora of website ripping applications like WinHTTrack or Webreaper which have been surfacing now a days and the rippers use these applications to create website replicas. They can use the replicated dump to create an exact clone of your website.

These rippers use bots to crawl the target websites and create static html version of all pages, copy the images, style sheets, JavaScript etc (Can not copy PHP or ASP files) and save them on the hard drive maintaining the directory structure and hyperlinks. Once the complete website is downloaded to your PC, you can use the website offline even if you are not connected to the Internet. These downloaded data can also be used to make an exact replica of your website. For static html based website the cloning becomes much easier. None of the webmaster will ever wish to allow anyone to rip their website but most of them wonder how to prevent such an operations.

The image below shows how the usage of an effective robots.txt file in our website root prevented WinHTTrack to copy our content and data:

We can use the robots.txt file to prevent the website ripper bots to crawl our website and subsequently the program will not be able to copy anything. We know that bots access to a website can be controlled using robots.txt which sits in the website root directory. Whenever we use a ripping program the bot used by the program will have to pass the check in robots.txt. If it finds that there the rule in robots.txt that disallows the bot, it will no longer be able to crawl the site which is a win-win situation for us. In robots.txt we have either an allow or a disallow rule, which looks like this:

User-agent: <User Agent name>
Disallow: /

User-agent: <User Agent name>
Allow: /

In the above examples the / indicates the root directory. It can be replaced with the directory path to which we wish to allow or deny the access. So when a bot goes through robots.txt and find itself under the Deny rule it will stop there itself and can no longer enter into the website.

This robots.txt method can be used to prevent email harvester, leechers or any such evil spirited applications from accessing your site. We have compiled a commonly used evil programs and created the deny rule for those programs. You can use the list below in your robots.txt file to create a preventive shield from the evil programs like WinHTTrack or Email Collector or Web Downloader. If you do not have a robots.txt file in your website root, create one with the following content or if you have one, you can just copy paste the content in your existing robots.txt file.

# This list is compiled by Techie Zone part of Qlogix Network.
User-agent: Teleport
Disallow: /
User-agent: TeleportPro
Disallow: /
User-agent: EmailCollector
Disallow: /
User-agent: EmailSiphon
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebBandit
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebZIP
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebReaper
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebStripper
Disallow: /
User-agent: Web Downloader
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebCopier
Disallow: /
User-agent: Offline Explorer Pro
Disallow: /
User-agent: HTTrack Website Copier
Disallow: /
User-agent: Offline Commander
Disallow: /
User-agent: Leech
Disallow: /
User-agent: WebSnake
Disallow: /
User-agent: BlackWidow
Disallow: /
User-agent: HTTP Weazel
Disallow: /

As this post is targeted for Webmasters and you are reading this post indicates that you are one of them, we would also suggest you to read the post on Increasing your website speed.

Categories
Web Design

Fonts used in the logos of popular brands

A well designed logo can create a good recall value of a brand. If you look at the logos of some of the successful brands like Microsoft, Google, Yahoo all of them create a long lasting impression in our mind. Selection of proper fonts for the logo is as important as the logo design itself. Most of the time when we suffer from design block while creating a logo and we are unsure of the font to use. The following list of successful brand logos are carefully picked to give you an idea about the typefaces (fonts in layman’s understanding) the designer have selected for the logos. Some of these logos are created with free fonts where as some are based on commercial fonts.

 

Google:

Google logo is so simple yet so powerful. At one glass it gives a high recall value. The carefully chosen color gives more value to the logo. This uses the Catull fonts created by Gustav Jaeger. The font became popular after Google started using this in their logo in 1999. Price of this font starts from USD 99.

Yahoo:

Yahoo primarily uses the red/violet color logo which is designed with a font by the same name. It is said that after the popularity Yahoo the font used to design the logo was named as Yahoo font. This font is created by Daniel Gauthier. Yahoo font is free for personal use.

Microsoft:

Microsoft uses a black/white version of the logo. This is also one of the simple yet powerful logo design where the brand recall value is concerned. We have identified this font as Neue Helvetica® 96 Black Italic with some variations.  This is a commercial font priced at approximately USD 49. In all the corporate branding Microsoft uses Segoe font created by Steve Matteson.

Facebook:

The Facebook logo is an example of simple yet elegant logo. The white color logo behind a blue background is quite talked about among logo designer. This logo is designed using the Klavika Font created by Eric Olson. It is a commercial font available for approximately USD 75.

Flickr:

When the famous blue/pink logo fo Flickr was introduced to netizens, it marked the starting of web 2.0 era. The bi-color logo with a spell error suddenly became a hit and represented web 2.0 standard. This logo is designed using the Frutiger font created and named after the designer Adrian Frutiger.

Twitter:

Most popular micro blogging platform twitter seems to use a free font called Pico Alphabet as the font of choice for it’s logo.

Xerox:

Xerox did corporate re-branding after 40 years, and the logo that came up looks quite attractive with red color for the typography and the red/white combination for the mascot. This logo uses the custom designed font called Xerox Sans a uniquely designed curvaceous, modern typeface with lots of personality, Created by Fontsmith. This is an exclusive font and not available for download or purchase.

CocaCola:

We could not find the original typeface used for the CocaCola logo, however we could find a free font called LokiCola that certainly resembles the CocaCola logo font.

Vodafone:

The logo of Vodafone is created with a custom Vodafone font. This is an exclusive font and not available for download or purchase.

There are certainly a lot more popular logos there and can be part of this posts, howver we encourage our users to list out 1 each and share that through comment section.