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Posted on AWS Tour

Amazon Lightsail – What is it?

We are big fans of the Amazon Web Services army of tools.  Thus, we plan on digging deeper into the various services and will keep you informed of our journey.  In this article, we will look at Amazon Lightsail.  It is a service in their “Compute” group.  It is not free, but instead, has a set monthly cost that is perfect for gauging your development overhead. What Does Lightsail Provide? The Lightsail service, at a high level, is a quick start for EC2 instances.  Lightsail allows the user to set a monthly subscription/cost based on instance size.  The server includes storage and IP allocation.  Our Launch Your Internet Business walks people through this process via the typical steps.  We have found... Read more

care and feeding of a baby
Posted on General

Proper Care and Feeding of Your Business

We have provided a lot of content on the technical details of your business.  All of this is important.  However, it is not all you need for care and feeding of your business.  We have looked at tools and techniques, but we also need to use them to make our company stronger.  It is not uncommon for a business owner to get myopic in their focus so let’s look at some ways to avoid this pitfall. Care and Feeding Defined The first step is to define some terms.  When we talk about the care and feeding of your business, we are looking at two types of work.  There are tasks done in your business.  These are the tasks that are done to... Read more

speed your site to earn a seal of approval
Posted on General

CloudFlare – A Walkthrough

In a prior post, we looked at the CDN provider Cloudflare as an option for speeding up our site.  In this post, we will take the promised deeper dive into their offering.  We will focus on the free features and note the paid ones available. The Cloudflare Dashboard When you log into CloudFlare, you will be able to select a website if you have more than one tied to the account.  Then you will be taken to the dashboard screen.  There is a lot of content on this page.  The main tabs/buttons across the top are: Overview Analytics DNS Crypto Firewall Speed Caching Page Rules Network Traffic Customize Apps Scrape Shield This list may seem like a lot to cover, but... Read more

Buffer screen shot
Posted on General

A Buffer Walkthrough – Easy Social Content Management

Buffer is an excellent tool for anyone interested in social media marketing.  Other tools have their strengths and weaknesses.  However, we use Buffer a lot and feel a tour is helpful.  You can get a free account at buffer.com and join us as we walk through the menu options. Buffer Manages Multiple Accounts The first thing you need to do is add an account.  The free version of Buffer allows you to add one per social platform so at least add a couple.  We use LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for nearly all of our posting.  Each platform handles authentication a little differently.  In most cases, select a platform, login to your account, and you will have it added to Buffer.  Add... Read more

CDN Content Everywhere
Posted on General

What is a CDN? CloudFlare to the rescue

When you tackle the issue of speeding up a website, the concept of a CDN will come up.  Since this is obviously not a push to host your server in Canada, it begs the question, what is a CDN? So, what is a CDN? The letters are short for content delivery network, and it is an important concept to understand for performance tuning.  At its simplest, a CDN is a network of servers that help bring content to users from as close to them as possible.  Think of the Postal Service as a form of CDN.  You can go to the nearest office to you to pick up your mail.  It even goes a step further, and you have a... Read more

evaluate performance
Posted on Tech Notes

Evaluate Your Site, Get Improvement Suggestions, For Free

In a prior post, we looked at the Google speed test tool. It is an excellent way to evaluate your site and comply with what they consider to be user-friendly guidelines.  The essential purpose of their guidelines is to get sites fast, secure, and mobile friendly.  Although their tool is free and useful, we can get more help from another free tool.  Let’s look at what GT Metrix can do for you. Evaluate Your Page for Free The GT Metrix site offers a free page evaluation just like Google.  The tool is not a web crawler.  Thus, we recommend that you test every relevant page on your site.  The tests should include the home page, landing pages for ads, and call... Read more