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Mobile devices are playing more and more important roles in our daily life. From comScore analytics, over 40% internet surfers logon websites via mobile devices. Creating a mobile friendly website is crucial to burst your online business nowadays. Recently, google published 10 rules to build your mobile website. Just follow up and rank your website high from mobile search engine!

NO.1 Simple and Fast

It requires your website be able to provide what user needed with fast response from limited size mobile screen. Google suggests:

• Provide user needs and functions in priority
• Do substraction and cut off as more contents as possible, leave core functions for user needs
• Concise words
• Compress pictures and speed up website loading

NO.2 Simplify Navigation

Provide clear contents structure and "Back"/"Forward" buttons for easy navigation. Google suggested 4 popular types navigations for mobile websites:

• Horizontal type(same as traditional website with top navigations, categories should be less than 7 based the screen size)
• Big button type(The most common and mostly used for mobile websites)
• List type
• Option list type

NO.3 Thumb Operation

Means your mobile website should be friendly for thumb operation. Because most mobile devices are designed with touch screens, a thumb friendly design will make your website easy to both people and search engine. Some tips below

• Bigger buttons for easier operation
• Bigger space to avoid wrong click(Leave more space between buttons so people can hit their desired buttons easily)
• Bigger clickable space(In case your button is small, you can give it a bigger clickable space so people can click on it even it's not hit in the center)
• User color and shadow to highlight buttons

NO.4 Be clear at a glance

It's also for user friendly consideration. You don't want users to navigate a lot in order to learn what's provided on your site. Some tips below

• Ensure your website height and width the same as mobile screens
• Obvious color difference for words and background
• Steady composing
• Confortable fonts

NO.5 Compatibility

It's the best to design your mobile site via HTML5 technologies for it's smart recognization for different devices. Just google it for guidance. Your mobile website must

• Be able to browsed on different mobile devices
• Get rid of flash, use html5 instead
• Be able to adjust based screen directions

NO.6 Easy Conversion

If you're running an ecommerce site, you must bring customer convenience and reduce any potential problems in purchasing your products. Time is gold, people do not want to waste lots of time on your website.

• Simplify your website registration/login process
• Reduce manual typing, use option forms and menus instead
• Focus on factors that help with conversion rate

NO.7 Local Optimization

The users' local information is most valuable on your website. You might consider the following on your website

• Recommendation based user geographical location
• Maps, routes, phone numbers based user locations

NO.8 Smooth Experience

If possible, try to keep the same website layouts on all platforms(either pc, table pc or mobile phones). The Apple is good to learn about.

NO.9 Smart redirection

Your website should be able to judge different mobile devices automatically and provide according contents. Users be able to redirect between desktop and mobile versions easily.

NO.10 Keep Optimizing

You should monitor your website performance and gain user feedbacks for further improvements. Mobile website is not a mobile App so it can be improved on the fly. You should make use of any available analyzing tools for better website presence.

You might find it hard to deal with lots of tech stuff for mobile website creation. If you would like to convert your desktop site to mobile version, we highly recommend to check out goMobi solution which is leading choice by lots of webmasters. You can get a powerful mobile website up and running in few minutes by simple guidance.

When your website grows up or your existing hosting provider can not serve you well any more, you have no choice but to transfer your data to another service. Website migration is a pain to many people because of the complicated configurations on new server space. Especially when you have to wait a long time for file downloading/uploading. But today we're going to guide you about how to move your website in quick time and avoid data loosing.

By tradtional methods, we need to download all files to local computer from old hosting service then upload everything to new server space. In case there's connection issue we always have to start over the process because we're not sure which file missed anywhere. If we have a large size website, we might need hours or even days to migrate over successfully. Thanks to the fast development for hosting service, we no longer need to deal with the boring task and waste our time for such transfer. We're going to introduce two best solutions.

NO.1 – SSH Wget File Transfer

Nowadays, more and more hosting providers support SSH connection to your hosting account. When it brings convenience for hosting management, we can also use the great file transfer facility and simplify our account migration process. Just a simple command and all files will be transfered to new server space by the most possible fast speed. Because the transfer is server to server, our local internet connection issue is avoided and you will see how amazing the transfer speed is! How to start SSH file transfer? Just look below.

First, you need login to your old account space and zip your website directory to your website root and make sure it's downloadable from your website such as http://yourwebsite.com/backup.zip. Now you need connect to your new server space via SSH client such as Putty. Once you're connected, send this command to terminal window "wget http://yourwebsite.com/backup.zip" then file transfer will be started. Just wait till the transfer completed. The waiting time will depend the actual file size that may take seconds to minutes but it's absolutely faster than FTP transfer.

When you use SSH file transfer solution, you must find a quality web hosting service who supports this protocol. For fast and stable SSH connection, we highly suggest check out Arvixe(www.arvixe.com) and Bluehost(www.bluehost.com) hosting plans. Their hosting come with SSH support by default as suggested by their service. If it's not enabled, just contact support for assistance and they will enable it for free. NOTE: SSH file transfer is only for linux hosting, it's not applicable for windows hosting service.

NO.2 – H-sphere File Downloading

There's a hosting control panel called H-sphere that comes with a bounch of great features for hosting management. It has simple navigation but powerful design for all hosting services. Especially when you like to migrate website from other space, H-sphere is probably your best choice for GUI operation. H-sphere comes with two file transfer protocols called "Wget" and "FTP". The Wget option is GUI version ssh service where you can download files from specific location directly. FTP option allows user to connect to any available ftp space and download files to your desired destination directory. Screenshots as below:

You can not really find better solution other than H-sphere control panel if you would like to simplify website migration process. It works with both windows and linux platforms so it's great choice if your website is developped under either technology. H-sphere is currently only supported by ixwebhosting service. They're great in providing cheap and rich feature hosting plans. Especially when you have high requirements for dedicated IPs, ixwebhosting be able to offer you up to 15 free IPs per hosting account.

Go to Ixwebhosting for plan details http://www.ixwebhosting.com

Website Migration Tips

It's very important to follow the correct migration process so as to reduce your website down time. In case it's the first time to deal with website transfer, please follow these steps:

• Backup your entire website folder and database if any
• Transfer all website data to new server space
• Test via temporary URL provided by new hosting provider to make sure everything works fine on new server
• Pick up a prefered time and change over domain DNS from registrar

When should you close old hosting service? It's not suggested cancel your old hositng service once your migration completed. You might need the old account access in case something not working properly from new server. If they learnt you're migrating away, they will not help with your new problems. So it's wise to let the old service alive for some time and close it when you really don't it anymore.

Should you use free website migration service from hosting provider? Many hosting providers now offer free website migration service in order to get more clients. However, we don't recommend to use this service because they might not completely understand your website structure and you have to deal with new problems. Instead, we highly suggest do it by yourself. In this way you can be familiar with the entire process and you won't seek for more help in case you need to migrate again in future.

When you plan to put your business online, you have two choice. Purchasing web hosting service and domain name then design your ecommerce site with your personal style, OR go with an existing B2B/B2C platform like amazon, ebay, alibaba etc. But which is better choice to earn your business success? In this article we'll going to compare the pros and cons for both options and you make the final smart choice.

Pros of Hosted Ecommerce Website

Hosted ecommerce site is more and more popular because of the big improvements of online business. More and more stores are created on independant domain names by enterprise groups and personal merchants. To host the ecommerce website by yourself, you can make full use of all available technologies including:

• Website Creation You have full access to all website data including files/database and emails etc. You can make instant change of your site without notifying anybody else. Because the website and hosting space is completely managed by yourself, you have authority for all website materials. You can design the website with any style as you like and it's fully customizable from code behind.
• Products promotion A hosted website can be deeply optimized with SEO technologies so you can get better ranking from search engine. When customer got to your product details, there's big chance they will browse your other products so more sells is expected.
• Brand Promotion Your website is your brand, you can put the name anywhere for promotion. The longer you operate the site, the more popularity you will receive on the site. Every other well known brands were started with less popularity.
• Flexible Payment With your own website store, you can configure any payment gateway as required but not limited by pre-defined solutions. You can manage clients/orders/delivery and all stuff from website behind. It's simply a full functional management system.
• Less Cost. You don't have to pay yearly renting fees to third party platform and submit various certificates in order to get your store running. For self hosted website, you just need to pay hosting space and domain name, you can setup the store via lots of powerful softwares like magento, oscommerce etc. The setup is almost one time so you don't have to make big changes in future.

The Cons

The cons of self hosted ecommerce website is you have to be knowlegeable in website installation/configuration and you have to monitor the uptime stats so you can always keep your store online. The website troubleshooting can be solved by following lots of online documentations, but you have to find a reliable web hosting provider so you can sleep well at night or else you have endless problems to deal with.

As about above explanation, what about the popular B2B/B2C platforms? Can we feel safe to put our business with them? Let's compare the pros and cons in quick view.

Pros of B2B/B2C

With such platforms, you don't have to worry about website creation as everything is pre-designed, you just follow an existing template and fill out the required information to get your store running in short time. The most important billing part is fully integrated with lots of available solutions so you don't have to deal with a single technical stuff but just need to be familiar with their system. Their tech team will be responsible for system maintenance and security updates etc. Because the popular platforms got huge daily traffic so your products will be founded more easier by people and most visitors are real purchaser. That means you can earn easier success with such platforms.

Cons

The main weakness of B2B/B2C platform is you have to pay a lot for the store. The basic fees include account registration and product promotion. Most popular B2B service will cost you several thousand dollars per year and there will be internal advertising fees to show your products from higher rank. The ads fees can be several hundreds to thousands per year based your actual financial ability. The investment is not a dead number and will easily break your budget. Also, when you make online transaction from your b2b store, they might charge per sale. Their sales team will always advise your for various paid services for products promotion.

The conclusion is, if you have strong financial support and just want to make the business more easier, the available B2B/B2C platforms are good choice, you just need to prepare the customer support to serve your clients. But if you would like to keep all properties in hand and promote your own brand, a hosted website is better choice because you have full access to all data and know exactly what's going on with the store. It's extremely helpful when you have a professional team to handle the website stuff.

The Best Ecommerce Web Hosting Provider

Unlike all other types websites, ecommerce site has extremely high requirements for uptime and speed. So basically, the best ecommerce hosting service must be fast and stable with at least 99% server uptime stats. Inmotion Hosting(http://www.inmotionhosting.com) is awarded the best ecommerce hosting based the strict requirements. InmotionHosting setup datacenters on both east and west coasts with Max speed zone enabled. Their no overselling policy is strictly followed and provide up to 90 worry free trial period in case you're not satisfied with their service.

Go to InmotionHosting for ecommerce hosting plan details http://www.inmotionhosting.com

Before your website going online, you have to get a domain name first from a reputable registrar. Or if you have already registered the domain but not yet ready to put up a website, you might consider a domain parking service. But what would be their relationship and difference?

Domain Parking Introduction

Domain parking means you're not going to add any content to the site yet and don't want to take any other domain advantages like email. However you do wish people see something on your site instead a blank or error page. In that case, you will need a domain parking service to redirect your site to a specific page where you can define the content based your needs. Domain parking can be done on domain registrar end as well as web hosting company, there's also dedicated domain parking service offered on the web.

Domain parking on registrar end is pretty simple, many reputable domain providers offer this service in your account panel where you can manage domain DNS, redirection etc. You can easily redirect your domain to anywhere you liked. Domain parking on web hosting provider simply means to point the domain name to your existing website. So if people browse your new domain it will put up the existing website content directly. It's also called domaini alias on hosting end.

About Domain Hosting

Domain hosting means to host your domain with hosting provider to launch your website and take full advantages of the domain name including DNS, Emails. Domain hosting relies on lots of services like web server, database server, email server and ftp etc.

What's good of domain parking? Domain parking will only cost your domain registration fee then you can redirect it to anywhere you wished, you can also put ADS on it to get paid from the vendor such as google adsense. When you do domain parking, you have predicted the value of the specific name so in case someone is interested in it you can resell it with good price.

Domain parking on hosting end is mainly for branding. For example your main website is business.com, you may also need to register business.net and business.org and many other Tlds to point to your main site. So no matter if your clients browsed the wrong domain they will always be able to see your website.

Unlimited Domain Parking explained

Domain parking is always offered as unlimited by most hosting providers. However, many times it will misguide people in understanding their policies. Many people would like to host multiple domain names from a single hosting account but we found many people just focus on the "unlimited domain parking". There're many hosting services come with a single website support but with unlimited domain parking. Take cpanel for instance, the supported number of websites is called "addon domains", when you add a new site to hosting, there're two options: add a new domain and add new domain parking. If you want to make a new site, you should choose the "add new domain" option.

As we see, nobody would like to point unlimited domains to existing site. Most of the time we just want to host multiple websites in the same space. When we choose a hosting service, make sure to check if the host support multiple domain parking or domain hosting.

Best multiple domain hosting service

There're many hosting providers support unlimited number of hosted domains. However, unless you don't mind the performance and any kind problems in using the service. We don't suggest such hosting. For reputable and honest multiple domain hosting service, we highly recommend to check out arvixe for best performance and service. For $4/mo you can host up to 6 separate websites and unlimited domain parking. Arvixe set such limitation to ensure the server performance and deliver you the best price value! If you sign up arvixe hosting using coupon "mvchosting" you will get 20% discount for either monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription!

Go to arvixe for best domain hosting plans! http://www.Arvixe.com

VPS is link between shared and dedicated server. We use VPS server hosting because shared is no longer suitable for our website requirements and dedicated server is far more expensive option. However, before we get involved to this service, it's recommended to learn about the FAQs so we can use it with best success.

What's VPS and who should use it?

VPS is short for virtual private server. It's virtualized from host server and come with it's own RAM, CPU and disk space etc just like a physical server. VPS is good choice if we want to test out some projects but do not want to crash the entire server, it's also best solution if we would like to learn for server management.

What're the popular softwares to create VPS server?

There're many technologies available to setup VPS servers. The most popular ones for live server production purpose are VMware, Virtuozzo, Xen, OpenVZ and KVM. They all come with different features for different level requirements.

What's the best VPS hosting control panel?

Almost all hosting control panel softwares can be installed on VPS server. Depends the actual VPS OS, the popular control panel solutions like cpanel, websitepanel etc can be installed without any problem.

What kind of VPS servers available?

Hosting VPS servers are mainly offered in two types, Managed and unmanaged. Managed vps server means the server updates, security and support etc are handled by hosting support team. The term unmanaged are vary according to the actual offer from service provider. Normally, it comes without a control panel but a basic ssh connection to vps server.

How many IPs can we get from a VPS?

There's no limitation on how many we can get. The number is determined by server providers. They always describe in service features of AUP terms.

What's cloud VPS?

Cloud VPS means the server is configured via cloud storage and supported by multiple server hardwares. Normally it's configured through multiple datacenter locations to ensure 100% uptime.

Is VPS secure?

Yes, each VPS is isolated via dedicated RAM, CPU and all server resources thus we'll not be affected by other people's websites like in shared server environment. All our data and processes are safe in its own virtual environment.

Can I install different OS on vps server?

Yes. There're multiple VPS instances on host server and each VPS server can be installed via different server OS so they will work independently and don't affect each other.

What would be the disadvantage of VPS server?

Multiple VPS can be created from the same host server. Means the physical resources are still shared. There are still risks associated with sharing hardware with other users. Because of this, if we have very strict requirements over data security, dedicated server is best choice.

Can we upgrade/downgrade the VPS server features?

Yes. All VPS features like disk space, RAM etc can be configured on the fly. Normally there's just a server reboot requirement for the change.

When should we consider a VPS hosting?

VPS is needed when our website outgrowed the shared hosting but a dedicated server is more than enough to go. Take exact data for example, if our disk space requirement is over 10GB and monthly data transfer is over 500GB then it's time to check out vps service.

Who is the best vps hosting provider?

VPS hosting is offered by lots of groups. There're many vps plans that might cost several bucks to $100/mo. Normally a decent server always comes with high price. If we are going to host live production websites on the server, we should look into such server plans instead of focusing on the cheapness. It's highly recommended to check out this top vps hosting page for this purpose. On the other hand, if we just like to use it for hobbies or server managment leaning skills, we can pick an affordable server directly. Just go ahead and check out this cheap vps hosting.

There're actually more questions to be answered. Above FAQs could clear most people's doubts. If there're more needs to be answered, feel free to post here or contact us directly.

Before optimization, we need to analyse and find the bottleneck of the current Web abilities, then we can figure out where to improve. If we can't handle everything at the same time, we should optimize something that will result in obvious improvement.

Golden stats on website: 10~20% time on end user HTML documents downloading and 80~90% time on website components. Because of this, we provided a complete list over website optimization on a sample site. Summary of the sample test site: blog site with 2 js file, one header/footer, 3 css file, less than 10 sql queries on home page.

Step 1: Admin panel optimization, Turn on page caching
Before page caching, all data are reading from database directly, this is the screenshot of the overall loading time

So now, after turnning cach on, the entire page will be cached and the response time almost halfed

Step 2: DNS resolving optimization
DNS resolving is the first step when we open a website. The DNS resolving time should not exceed 300ms, if your domain name does take longer to resolve, you should consider to change DNS provider.

Step 3: Use CDN service
Integrate website with a quality CDN network will improve website loading speed greatly. CDN will cache our web content on multiple locations on their networks so it will greatly reduce the response time from different locations. (Tips: Better to join CDN on last step. Because we can see obvious changes after all other optimization, CDN cache will affect the monitoring)

Step 4: Use multiple servers to increase concurrent loading
The theory is, the concurrent downloading thread with the same domain is 2 for browser, 4 with HTTP 1.0. protocol. Based this, we can speed up the loading by hosting different contents to different servers with different domains/subdomains.

Step 5: Merge Jscripts and CSS
It's highly suggested solution in case your website has lots of such files. There's a tool called Minify (http://code.google.com/p/minify/). If you are fans of YII framework, there's YII version called "minscript Extension" (https://bitbucket.org/TeamTPG/minscript/wiki/Home)

Step 6: Compress CSS/JS/HTML/XML files
Sending compressed contents will greatly reduce response time. Many web servers now support this techque and should be pre-configured. Take Apache web server for example, we just need to add following to .htaccess in website root

#set compress

<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilter DEFLATE html xml php js css
</ifmodule>

Content size with no compression

Content size with compression turned on

From above firefox monitoring screenshots we found it reduced almost 2/3 transition time.

Step 7: Reduct http requests as more as possible
It's always good to expire http requests after downloading and cache static contents. We just need to add the following to .htaccess

# Image and Flash content Caching for One Month

<FilesMatch ".(flv|gif|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=2592360"
</FilesMatch>

Conclusion
From the testing results, the website loading is obviously improved. Because we used third party testing tools with no caching on local computers so it's acurrate. The final waiting is 1.1s comparing to the unoptimized 3.4s, we reduced 2s waiting.

Above article is translated/edited from a server professional in CN.