manngo

I'm not sure is everyone is up-to-date about site performance testing tools. Even not me.
I use Pingdom full page test for testing my sites and pages for load speed any analysis.
Link is: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
Just run a test and than click "Performance grade" for a detailed report. It's free and unlimited.

I'm not sure is everyone is up-to-date about site performance testing tools. Even not me.
I use Pingdom full page test for testing my sites and pages for load speed any analysis.
Link is: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
Just run a test and than click "Performance grade" for a detailed report. It's free and unlimited.

I'm not sure is everyone is up-to-date about site performance testing tools. Even not me.
I use Pingdom full page test for testing my sites and pages for load speed any analysis.
Link is: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
Just run a test and than click "Performance grade" for a detailed report. It's free and unlimited.

I'm not sure is everyone is up-to-date about site performance testing tools. Even not me.
I use Pingdom full page test for testing my sites and pages for load speed any analysis.
Link is: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
Just run a test and than click "Performance grade" for a detailed report. It's free and unlimited.

Actually my sister is happily running photoshop on her ACER laptop. OK, it's not lightning fast but works, you just need to wait a few seconds. Coding for web should work fine with even the most minimalistic configuration.
 
(I believe all coders should use the minimum system requirements of Windows. The guy developed XviD used a 200 Mhz Pentium even in 2003.)

Let's say you have a large scale project. I work on large IT projects but not in web development area. Nevertheless the general approach should be similar. In general the following roles are needed with the key tasks:
 
Project Management:
Overal planning, Status monitoring, Risk management, Issue management, Budget management. Kick everyone else's ass.
PMO (Project Management Office):
All sorts of administrative tasks, communication.
Business function leads:
Responsible for functional design. Obtains approvals from client on detailed site functions. Ensures management involvement. Finally test and approves delivered solution. Can be a team lead or a single person. You can have more than one business function lead e.g. one for finance (payments), one for marketing (cover design, SEO), one for logistics (inventory levels, delivery times) etc. As needed... Business function leads should be provided and employed by the client.
Technical function leads:
Translates the business functional requirements to technical requirements. Program flowcharts and so on. Communicates with developers. Creates test scenarios. Execute tests on developments before the client does it.
Development lead:
Leads all developers on the project as a single point of contact for the development team. Provides effort estimates, tracks development items, coordinates developer work. Key position. Needs to be experienced in coding and project management. Usually leads a team of developers.
Architect:
Ensures that functions, hardware, solution works together. Responsible for performance and security. Should be able to veto any tools to be used if judged inappropriate.
Basis:
Everything to do with harware and software infrastructure. Manage, restore, backup databases and all server content. Resolve server level issues, ensure stable IT environment. Install servers, manage system landscape. Communicate with harware support.
Hardware support:
I don't think you will have your own data center, but if yes someone needs to be next to the machines. If external some is needed to manage server resources, etc.
 
This generally applies to all full-blown IT projects with about 50+ people working on. For smaller projects you need to combine these tasks to less number of employees. This structure can work well with an offshore or decentralized development center like an India based "development factory".

Welcome, good to see that some serious people also signing up, not only those who try to market their sites here.

Let's say you have a large scale project. I work on large IT projects but not in web development area. Nevertheless the general approach should be similar. In general the following roles are needed with the key tasks:
 
Project Management:
Overal planning, Status monitoring, Risk management, Issue management, Budget management. Kick everyone else's ass.
PMO (Project Management Office):
All sorts of administrative tasks, communication.
Business function leads:
Responsible for functional design. Obtains approvals from client on detailed site functions. Ensures management involvement. Finally test and approves delivered solution. Can be a team lead or a single person. You can have more than one business function lead e.g. one for finance (payments), one for marketing (cover design, SEO), one for logistics (inventory levels, delivery times) etc. As needed... Business function leads should be provided and employed by the client.
Technical function leads:
Translates the business functional requirements to technical requirements. Program flowcharts and so on. Communicates with developers. Creates test scenarios. Execute tests on developments before the client does it.
Development lead:
Leads all developers on the project as a single point of contact for the development team. Provides effort estimates, tracks development items, coordinates developer work. Key position. Needs to be experienced in coding and project management. Usually leads a team of developers.
Architect:
Ensures that functions, hardware, solution works together. Responsible for performance and security. Should be able to veto any tools to be used if judged inappropriate.
Basis:
Everything to do with harware and software infrastructure. Manage, restore, backup databases and all server content. Resolve server level issues, ensure stable IT environment. Install servers, manage system landscape. Communicate with harware support.
Hardware support:
I don't think you will have your own data center, but if yes someone needs to be next to the machines. If external some is needed to manage server resources, etc.
 
This generally applies to all full-blown IT projects with about 50+ people working on. For smaller projects you need to combine these tasks to less number of employees. This structure can work well with an offshore or decentralized development center like an India based "development factory".

It's quite interesting that they discuss on a Wordpress blog that a responsive site takes more cost and effort.
Responsive themes are available for wordpress, why should it be a big deal to use them?

Could be a whole host of reasons. Maybe they just danced around in the SERPs? Maybe their backlinks got devalued and they pumped a load of new ones at it

On point 2:
I created the Google+ page and linked it to my website through the verification process.
Then added a link on my site to the google page (see the google icon in the footer of the page).
This link is marked with rel="publisher" (See page source).
For me it works fine, wasn't even difficult.
 
On point 3:
HomeAndConstructionBusiness is a link to the schema directory. You need to use it in the itemtype.
After that you can use the itemprops of this schema.
 
On point 4:
See the attachment. These are full screen screenshots. This is what I see in the browser, I only skipped the Windows tray on the bottom and the Chrome address bar from the top.
I think there is something wrong with the logic used to resize the images. It stretches instead of cropping.
Images.doc

Point 3:
Schemas are organized as a hierarchy. Actually HomeAndConstructionBusiness is a child of Organization, not the other way around. To use the branchOf as it is expected you need to embed the itemtype Organization (or one of it's childs) within HomeAndConstructionBusiness while using the itemprop branchOf.
So an example for branchOf itemprtop. The help says:
So you want to indicate this business is a branch of a parent company that is an organization. It is also indicated that the schema expects an organization type for the parent organization.
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness"> #Open HomeAndConstructionBusiness <div itemprop="branchOf" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> #Open Organization as itemprop branchOf <p itemprop="Name">Parent Company Inc.</p> #Use the itemprop of Organization <p itemprop="Address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">#Open 3rd layer for address <span itemprop="streetAddress">Little street 1.</span> #Use itemprop of PostalAddress <span itemprop="addressLocality">Nottingham</span> #Use itemprop of PostalAddress <span itemprop="addressCountry">United Kingdom</span> #Use itemprop of PostalAddress <span itemprop="postalCode">998877</span> #Use itemprop of PostalAddress </p> #Close 3rd layer for address </div> #Close Organization as itemprop branchOf </div> #Close HomeAndConstructionBusiness This is full usage of the links between schemas. Most people probably don't use it so extensively and it is questionable if this helps or not for search results ranking.
 
 
Point 4:
Yes, you are right. It seems the responsive feature kicks in and stretches the entire image to my full screen resolution 1600x900 that doesn't seem to match the original aspect ratio of the image.

If you have so many question in one post, maybe it's a useful idea to number them. Easier to answer...
Also easier to read answers that you may realize below. Sorry I did my best to keep it structured.
 
I don't understand this. Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker...
 
I exactly did the same thing. See my page's source for details:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/114044316392447551160/" rel="publisher"> Yes. And ALL of them are marked as name in you current tagging. I think you intended to mark only "concrete stairs" as name not the entire <li> content.
I would do this:
<h1>About Us</h1> <p itemprop="description">Concrete Stairs London is a specialist department of Precise Formwork Ltd which excels in reinforced concrete staircases.</p> You can't have an itemprop without having an itemscope in a parent tag around your itemprop.
I would do something like this:
Maybe look into the subcategories of HomeAndConstructionBusiness to see if you can be more specific.
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/HomeAndConstructionBusiness"> <h1>About Us</h1> <p itemprop="description">Concrete Stairs London is a specialist department of Precise Formwork Ltd which excels in reinforced concrete staircases.</p> </div> Well, what does the structured data test tool show? It works with my site, just check it.
If doesn't work try this:
<link href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/113326011335089676289/}" rel="publisher" /> I agree, but I don't see it happening. I learned it on the hard way trying and changing until the google tool recognized all the tags I added. Got help from this forum as well. The documentation is not ideal.
 
P.S. Are you aware that several images on your site appear distorted? It doesn't look good on my browser (Chrome).

A friend came to me today askig for some tips on his CV design.
I'm not a design guy, so I thought I can find some help for him here. At the end web design and a document design require similar skills...
Background: He is an IT freelancer specialized in skills like coding and back-end processes. He works with SAP in the area of managing systems, sytem landscapes, links between development systems and productive environments. So a whole lot of seriously technical staff.
He has a long project portfolio on top of his CV as it is common in this industry.
He prefers a conservative, serious-looking template as best for his CV.
Does anyone have a good looking template perhaps?
 
Any tips?
Examples?
May we post hic CV here for a design opinion?

<li itemprop="name"><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/portfolio.php">concrete stairs</a> <ul class="sub1"> <li><a href="#">complex stairs</a> <ul class="sub2"> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/helical/spiral-stairs.php">concrete spiral stairs - kensington</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/helical/helical.php">helical concrete staircase - battersea</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/helical/curved-stairs.php">curved concrete stairs - st john's wood</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/helical/twisted-stairs.php">reinforced concrete helical stairs - knightsbridge</a></li> </ul> </li> <li><a href="#">bespoke stairs</a> <ul class="sub2"> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/bespoke/half-landing.php">reinforced concrete stairs - covent garden</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/bespoke/bespoke-stairs.php">bespoke stairs - knightsbridge</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/bespoke/cast-in-situ.php">cast-in-situ - mayfair</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/bespoke/non-slip-stairs.php">non-slip concrete staircase - london bridge</a></li> <li><a href="http://concretestairslondon.co.uk/bespoke/waterproof.php">waterproof staircase</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> In the above section you have used the itemprop in the <li> tag. The entire content (that I copied) of that html tag is marked this way as the name of the product. This is normal behavior but I don't think that was your intention.
 
 
<h1>About Us</h1> <span itemprop="description"> <p>Concrete Stairs London is a specialist department of Precise Formwork Ltd which excels in reinforced concrete staircases.</p> </span> In this section the itemprops are ignored because you have no itemscope open. The previous itemscope was closed by the </div> since you opened the itemscope in that div. You need to open an itemscope here.
 
<span itemprop="name"><h2>Staircase Formwork</h2> Here you labeled a blank span as name. You need to add the tags to visible content. the correct way is:
 
<h2 itemprop="name">Staircase Formwork</h2> The next one:
 
<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization"> <div id="firm">concrete stairs london </div> <!--End Microdata Organisation--> </div> Here you mark the div as organization but you didn't add an itemprop. Therefore this is also ignored by Google.
 
To get rid of the W3TC log you may disable logging the plugin.

Can you show me your site that you have marked up?
The tool works quite good, but google is very strict on how you can use schema. I can have a look. You may also check my site with the tool, link is in signature.

Search for the English text in the php and overwrite it.
Empty all caches on the server.
Open an 'Incognito' browser session and check result.
I'm almost sure you don't see the changes because of loading a cached copy of the old page. W3TC caches template files.
If you use a CDN you may even need to purge the CDN if the template files are up there. (Usually they are.)
These were my best shots.

I can recommend you Artisteer - an excellent application that accelerates and automates the process of creating templates for websites. It also allows you to create templates for popular CMS systems - WordPress, Joomla, Drupal.

It also aligns right compared to the other menu items.
How does the page source look different for the item?

I'm not a professional, but I have no idea why you would use use a green background with transparent background PNG.
Just save it as the visitor should see it in the most minimal way.
Green backgrounds are for photoshop input raw images.
For your site use maximally compressed JPEG.
That's what I do as well.

I hired a student in China for some easy but time consuming tasks about my site. The hourly rate I pay is $2.5.

I've just realized I was wrong on 2 points.
The Amazon list is not scrolling. I think it would be better to show 4 different items in that area in every 10 seconds. I got that sometimes toys are shown sometimes books, DVDs etc. Can you mix them? Books and DVDs are so small images that I can't read the title even.

I also like the idea of pictures as a header background. Would look cool to have old pictures there just like thrown on a table randomly.
You may use this tool that is free and much less complex as photoshop. However it does a lot, much more than you need:
http://pixlr.com/editor/
 
About the amazon thing:
I don't like ads flashing all around the content, it makes my eyes yo-yo. That's why I use adblock.
So a few ideas for the amazon shop:
First, if this is an ad why is it not blocked by chrome adblock? Maybe you can get the other ads showing as well. As far as I know these are blocked based on the domain, since they load from external domains. Could you cache them and serve from your own server? I'm just brainstorming here. Images could be bigger, maybe show less items. It's scrolling anyway. All images have only 1 line description, always the same: Amazon.com. This is useless, could you use the space to increase image size? Items showing: It wanted to sell me toys. A german soldier LEGIO figure. This raises a few questions:
Who are your targeted visitors? 10 year old kids or WW2 fun grandpas and fathers?
Should you try to rater sell them serious WW2 books or serious real-looking models instead of lego figures?
​I'm not a WW2 fun but would have check on the ad for a WW2 model fighter that actually can really fly with a remote control. If you don't know who visits your site make a pop-up survey with some free giveaways by a draw. What about ebay? Don't they sell some old WW2 equipment there? Would be your visitors interested? Do collectors visit your site?

I would be interested in visitor experience. How much our visitors need to wait to see the entire page?
If you want to enter the competition and have some fun just:
go to http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ enter your website home page URL click on 'test now' copy paste the result here add a few words how you achieved the load time So here is mine:

 
Wordpress + W3TC + Shared hosing (CentOS) + Amazon Cloudfront
Challenges are welcome!
 
PS how can I change the topic title? I try to fix the typo in it.
 
 

Threads merged due to duplicate content

I use adblock in chrome that perfectly removed all ads from your site. Perhaps more of your visitors have the same habits.
The only ad I see is the Amazon store but that's not catching my attention due to the formatting is quite similar to the rest of the site.
This might be the reason the loss of revenue.
Check how many firefox and chrome users visiting your site. I think those guys tend to remove ads more than IE users.