Thursday, 21 December 2017

What Is a Website Backup and Why You Need One



Most businesses now have a website and in order for that website to be live it must be hosted on a server. The IP address of the server combined with your business URL is what delivers the stuff you've been looking for. It might sound complex, but it is simple fit the people who set it up, configure or maintain it!

What could go wrong?

The server where your website files sit, whether that be 'in the cloud' or in a freelancers spare bedroom, is a physical piece of hardware, and that makes it vulnerable to failure. This failure could be down to a number of things:

Security breach

Everyone that has heard the word 'website' has also heard the word 'hacked'. Hacking is a major issue that you have to face. There are many 'types' of hack, from a brute force attack - which is an automated 'bot' guessing thousands of passwords a minute - to more sophisticated breaches. For example those that get into the root files through something like a plugin, and install malware on the website itself. Whatever the hack is, they cost a lot of time and money, not to mention the loss of credibility with customers. Doing all you can to minimise the chances of a hack occurring, or reducing the impact when it does, is only a good thing.

Accidental deletion


To clarify, the site files and the database sit on the server and power the whole website. You won't (or shouldn't) ever need to concern yourself with these, only your web developer or hosting company will ever touch them. It is possible, because humans are involved that there may possibly human error and someone deletes your site off the server. Think about that - someone just simply deletes your whole, entire, website with a couple of errant clicks. A reputable company hosting your site with really good infrastructure, will take a copy of the entire server every night and transfer that to another completely separate server. However if it is a small company or a friend hosting your site, it is highly likely you now have no site at all and no way of retrieving it.

Malicious deletion

One thing that is less common, but something to consider is malicious deletion. You may have a disgruntle employee with access to the content management system (CMS), the facility that allows you to make all the content updates. They may not even work for you anymore, but if their access credentials haven't been changed, they can log in and cause all kinds of damage. While they might not be able to delete the core site files (the actual site architecture), they would be able to delete all the content that is on the site, or perhaps worse, write all manner of 'inappropriate things'. With content deletion you would notice, with new content slipped in, you may not. If they have access to the server and the site files, you may have an even bigger problem on your hands.

Server Failure


A server is a piece of physical hardware, and therefore it can break, no different from your laptop or your phone. If the site isn't backed up, then the inability to get the server working will mean that your website cannot be restored.

How can I avoid these things happening?

Ensure you have a good policy in place that allows you to monitor who has access to what, and as soon as an employee ceases to work with you, or there are employee relationship issues you can restrict, or remove access to avoid any issues.

There is a step that you can take however which means that you're covered for every eventuality, and that is having a robust backup schedule in place. So how do you get this?

01 - Find out who hosts your site and their backup regime. What is the disaster recovery plan? Just in case the worst happens

02 - Ask if you can get a physical copy of your website site files and database sent over to you as a zip file, so if the absolute worst happens, and your site is completely deleted, you have a copy of your site on your hard drive

03 - If a backup schedule is available, ask what it is and establish whether it is enough. For instance if the site is backed up every three months but you add and amend content three times a week, you stand to lose a fair bit of content. Ideally you want it backed up every night

04 - Make sure that you check your site regularly for any issues and that backups from longer periods are saved. If your site is backed up every night and you have been hacked, each new backup will overwrite the old one - effectively a bad copy replacing your existing good copy. Unless you establish you've been hacked immediately, your restore copy (from the night before) may not be the clean version. This is why you need a series of backups taken so you can go back to various points in time with a 'clean copy'.

05 - When you write content for your website, make sure it is saved elsewhere as opposed to just being added to the website directly. That way if the worst happens and your content is wiped, you still have a copy of it to paste back in the CMS - for example as I write this blog, I'm writing it and saving it as a Word document so I can retrieve it if needed in the future.

06 - Make sure you keep your website and plugins up to date, and ensure you have as few people as possible with access to the server and the CMS, and those that do have really solid passwords so there is less chance of a security breach. 



How Square Daisy can help with website development and website back up hosting
Having a good hosting package with a decent backup regime is like insurance, it feels like a pain paying for it... until you need it and wish that you had made the investment. We make the process pain free, deliver a great service and help you to understand how it all works, because after all, you only know what you know, and why on earth would you know about hosting infrastructure.

If you've recently lost your site through unfortunate circumstances, we can help you get back up and running with a temporary site while we build a bespoke, new one for you. Never waste a good crisis as Churchill said!

"Square Daisy specialise in building quality websites using WordPress as the content management system. We have a great process and use really clean code. We deliver bespoke designs and provide training, and support, pre and post launch, so you know how to use your spanking new site. We also work with you to develop optimised content, enhance your organic search ranking, set up and manage paid search campaigns and social media channels, and also implement automated marketing systems for your digital world. https://web.squaredaisy.com/

Friday, 15 December 2017

Make Money Online Sharing Tips



Have you ever imagined a situation in which to make extra money, you do not need to wake up, start thinking of how to get to work each day? Rather than working when you need to work, you only work when you want to. Through the internet, you can make a lot of money and live the kind of life you always dreams of. In this article, we will be discussing some of the ways you can make money online.

Here are 5 tips which I would like to share and help you to explore making money online. Go through each tip and choose the best one which will work for you. I believe with your perseverance, results will show gradually and turn into a long term passive income source for you.

CB Passive Income

The idea of CB Passive Income is teaching individual various methods of generating quick traffic which is then sent to a squeeze page. With this, you can build a money-making email list. After then, various Click Bank products are then sent to every email on the list. Once a sale is made through a link, a certain commission will be received by the owner of the list.

Freelancing
Freelancing is another simple approach in which you can make money on the internet. As a freelancer, you work online by offering little services. You can offer totally anything varying from writing, playing tricks, interpreting, making music, short video clips, voice overs, and lots more. Freelancing gives you the opportunity to make money online while doing what you love most.

Email Marketing
Email marketing stands at the heart of each effective activity on the internet. If you are really serious about making money on the internet, email marketing is unquestionably a great avenue in doing this. If those email subscribers are effectively and acutely inspired by what you need to say, and they joined directly through your web page or blog, your rate of success will be much higher.

Websites that pay

Another way to make extra money while you work from home is by performing various tasks on some website. The task may range from shopping to taking surveys to testing products. Some of the websites include Swagbucks, InboxDollars, Project Payday, User testing, and so forth. However, do not dream of earning millions. Just an opportunity to save extra money.

Work-at-Home Companies
Furthermore, certain companies are ready to hire your expertise, even if it requires that you work from home. You will be assigned specific tasks to handle. Once you complete the task, you will be get paid. Some of these work-at-home companies include CrowdSource, Liveops, Leap Force, and Demand Studios.

Source

Tuesday, 12 December 2017

Google Cached Pages: How To View Tips And Tricks



A cached link or a page is a temporarily stored HTML web documents and data such as images, pages, and content in order to lower the bandwidth usage and the server's loading time to fetch the requested web page. The web cache system saves millions of copies of documents that pass through it on a daily basis. Once a user requests a particular page, which would normally be previously stored in the cache, it would be loaded way much faster than the first time. A cache system can be either a server such as Google cache system or a computer program.

When we surf the web, our browsers usually save a copy of those visited web pages in a cache system in order to speed up the process of retrieving data, from the browser's cache where it was stored, rather than fetching it from its original source.

What Do Google Cached Pages Mean?

Running a search on Google would often come up with "Cached" pages. Google cached pages are page snapshots taken by Google and saved when the bots actually last crawled a particular web page and indexed it. Users are informed that they are seeing a cached page snapshot followed by the day it was captured.

How Do I Check Cached Pages On Google?


Google cached pages can be easily reached by clicking on that green arrow, as shown in the screenshot below, next to the page URL. Once you click on "Cached," you will be redirected to a different version of a page which Google usually saves it as a backup when it visited the site and crawled its content the last time.

How Do I Find Google Cached Pages?


When you visit a particular website but the request returns a page error or an inaccessible page, you would normally be suggested to view a "saved copy" of the web page you landed on. Chrome would display an option of "Show Saved Copy" button when the browser fails to load the page.

If you want to remove a cached content like snippets or pictures that still be found in search results and you do no longer want people to see it, then all you have to do is to submit your request by using Google's Webmaster Tools.
Despite the fact that the titles and the URL of the cached page will still be seen, Google will delete the snippet and the cached page from the search results.

However, if you want to restrict a specific page from being cached by Google, you may want to place the tag below into the<Head>
section of your page's code.



meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOARCHIVE,NOODP,NOYDIR"

Why Do I Need To View A Cached Page?


Due to the fact that several websites change quite often, their cached versions might be much different from the existent page you have visited from the search results. In fact, it probably is useless to view an out-of-date web page, but there are specific situations where both of website visitors and developers find viewing cached pages advantageous and useful such as:

When a website does not load or no longer available, you can still view the cached copy stored in Google archives.

When a website made has dramatically changed, a cached copy would be useful to quickly find your pertinent and familiar content.

Although the cached web page is not frequently updated, it would load way too much faster than the usual page, which is an advantage for slow internet users.
For SEO purposes, seeing a cached page in text-only version permits you as a developer to find out the way Google bots crawl and index the pages, which would act as an advantage to enhance the content for targeted keywords as well as other elements.

Expiring promos and special discount offers might still exist in cached pages and hence you still can catch up and benefit.

Eventually, Google's cache is such a useful feature which can assist not only the visitors but also the developers in finding, viewing and/or removing a particular web page content.

Source

Thursday, 7 December 2017

How Much Longer Can You Try And Do Everything?



When you initially get started with your own online business, you think you can do everything by yourself. But time is money and in due course you'll have to outsource some elements of your online business. When you outsource your online business, you save yourself time and money.

Outsourcing allows you to free up your own time for essential tasks that demand your full attention. Also, enables you to hire people who are more experienced and proficient at certain jobs than you. What could take you hours to do, could take them half the time.

But before you start using others to do jobs for you, take into account these 5 outsourcing tips.

1. Get Referrals

Outsourcing to inappropriate people can push everything back and give your business a poor reputation. Get referrals from people you know. It's not always the cheapest price you want to find, but rather the best deal. If you go with the first person you find, you may end up using the wrong person.

2. Start Off With Smaller Jobs

The attraction of outsourcing everything can be strong when you think about how much money you could save and how much extra time you'd get if you someone else did all your work. Begin by outsourcing small projects with each new person you use as a way to find out how well they work and if they're suitable for you and your business.

3. Communicate Effectively

Pick freelancers who communicate well and also make sure you're communicating effectively with them. They need to know exactly what you need and you need to know where they're up to and if there are any important updates. Go over terms of working before of giving them tasks.

4. Safeguard Your Money


If you're outsourcing lots of work or lots of money, take the time to get an agreement which is legally binding in order to safeguard both parties. When somebody provides you their prices, don't feel like you can't negotiate. The worst-case situation is that they say no, whilst they could compromise and give you a discount off the final price.

5. Keep In Mind You're Not An Employer

When you outsource to freelancers, you're not employing them. You're using their services and they generally work on a freelance or self-employed basis. Therefore, while you can ask for certain things and tell them how you'd like things to be completed, you don't have a right to order them on how to manage their own business.


Outsourcing is one of the most cost-efficient ways to grow your business. It's how the biggest and most profitable businesses in the world generate the wealth and freedom their owners enjoy.

Source

Friday, 1 December 2017

Increase Your Leveraged Sales Through Word of Mouth



If you want to decrease advertising expenditures, you will need to find other avenues to explore and exploit without the cash investment. Your leverages sales are only as good as the conversions that you receive. It doesn't matter what you're offering, if it doesn't move, then it's not worth anything to the visitors. You could be giving it away for free and it could sit there forever. However, we want to prevent that, while helping you increase your visibility to online and offline marketing channels. Word of mouth is the oldest and best way to attract and convert prospects. While the internet provides the means to quickly disburse your marketing material. You still need reviews and positivity surrounding your offerings.


Decreasing cash spent on Google and Bing by focusing on Owned channels

While your leveraged sales are important for the long run, without traffic you won't get it with bad marketing content. So how do you decrease advertising spending without effecting your visits from a specific audience? One possible answer is getting out there and meeting people face to face, bring your tablet along and have a presentation. Create a vibe on social media channels with a live stream event. Open your marketing to different content formats that focus on providing real answers and not just positivity. Focus on finding questions and answering them on the forums. Create a buzz by sharing your links in your social media updates and generate a buzz for your team with specialized curated content.


These are some ways to increase your visibility for you and your leveraged sales. If you're not able to have a party or an event. You can still host an online event, but you will have to promote extensively and try not to use paid ads. You can leverage your friends and team to host your links, blog about your event or mention you in a video. This can and has created a stronger word of mouth pull than just the traditional handing out cards as you go.

The biggest deal is creating a positive spend around your name, not a negative one. So, monitor your name and business carefully and address any concern that arises from the internet. Always focus on the primary mission, whatever you decide it was, make sure that it is meaningful. Keep your hands busy creating new material that will wow people and get them to talk about it. Online "word of mouth" is quickly becoming a strong channel for all types of businesses. It is easy to manage your reputation and be engaged with prospects if you know what to look for.

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