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Posts published in May 2021

5 Steps To Make My Website Better

By Bob on May 18, 2021

Owning a website is challenging. To be recognized in the Internet’s ocean, to be really competitive, to keep the website bulletproof and running smoothly is a lot but a must to succeed.

Here you have 5 steps to make your website better, no matter the stage your business is. They are always helpful.

1. Analyze customer’s feedback and make a plan

Besides the regular checking of metrics and statistics you surely do, look into customers’ feedback. If you don’t yet have a way to receive such feedback, it’s time to enable it. Comments from clients about your site are useful guidance to adjust stuff. From design, quality of content, navigation experience, errors or obstacles they found, etc.

Users’ experience is a factor considered by search engines to rank your site, so don’t ignore it. Once you analyze and verify that data, define priorities, make a plan with clear steps to follow for fixing.

2. Optimize navigation

Design is a vital component of websites, and it involves different elements. Navigation is critical. It’s the map for visitors to explore your website. If the routes to find everything are not well designed or takes several clicks to satisfy a single search, you could lose clients. Time and growth of businesses can add big loads of content, products, etc. Navigation can get more complicated instead of easier. Take time enhancing it. 

Optimize navigation bar, make hypertext obvious, avoid confusion through the different elements on pages (menu, sidebars, content, footer, navigation signs…), make it 100% responsive on mobiles, etc. Navigation must be connected with your business’ goals. This is a gold tool to direct visitors to the pages that mean profits for you.

3. Upgrade security

The immune system of your website must be maintained and upgrade regularly. Security is never to underestimate. Attacks happen worldwide daily. Lack of maintenance or update can open vulnerabilities for your business site. Catch up on new tech to protect your business, keep SSL certificate, software and plugins up to date, manage passwords strictly, prefer two-factor authentication to log in, control accesses, and train every member of your team about security policies. Humans making errors are the main cause of data breaches.

4. Boost your website’s speed

Speed is a critical factor that totally impacts the whole website’s performance. With the minor signs of sluggishness, take action and fix it. Faster response when your site is requested, quick loading time is so appreciated by users and search engines. Evaluate the speed your hosting provider is supplying you, use a content distribution network, check a plugin to add speed, optimize images, etc. There are many good practices that can boost your website’s speed. Implement the best for your business needs.

5. Enhance your SEO

Nowadays, no business can neglect to have a SEO strategy. Rules to manage content change constantly, so you have to catch up and update such a strategy. Well-managed SEO improves visibility on the Internet, brand awareness, increases your organic traffic, and raises your position on search engine results.

Practices to enhance SEO are many. It is not just about developing your content and posts based on convenient keywords for your business. Not disregarding basics like body content format, page title, meta descriptions, links, etc. Or offering relevant content. It involves much more metrics, analytics, refreshing of low-performing pages, optimization of images, use of snippets… So work on it!

Conclusion

Businesses’ websites have to be constantly tested and enhanced. For sure, you are doing great in some things, but others require to be adjusted. Success in online businesses is a process of continuous learning and improvement. Don’t think about the effort, but the result!

What happened with IPv5?

By Bob on May 11, 2021

Like the normal world, the Internet also has its happy moments, scandals, and mysteries. Daily, computers on the whole planet use IPv4, IPv6 protocols to do their job. But have you thought, where is the IPv5? It’s not a rule, but usually, versions of different things are used consecutively. You can also use previous versions of software instead of recent ones. But here, there is a miss between 4 and 6. What happened with IPv5?

What is an Internet protocol (IP)?

IP is a suite of rules through which connection between devices and the Internet is possible. Those rules determine the routes for data to travel around (host-destination-host). In this process, IP addresses play a key role in identifying every device connected.

Let’s dive a bit into history. At the end of the 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began linking computers across U.S. buildings. Such a network was ambitious and required some tech to be developed, software and hardware. An Internet protocol was part of those needs. So the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was created for data to travel safely and much more. It was a host-level, end-to-end packaging and routing protocol. Too much to be handled. The developers realized it, so those functions were split, and IP got only packaging and routing tasks.

Three versions of TCP had been created. The fourth was called IPv4. You should know how it looks like a string of numbers between 0 and 254, grouped in 4 teams. Example, 230.114.10.32. IPv4 utilized 32-bit address space, what provided 4,294,967,296 (232) unique addresses.

Officially, the IPv4 standard was created in 1982. Its available addresses (over four billion) were over in 2011. It’s not hard to believe. IP addresses can be finished, but daily, connected devices to the Internet are more. Every user on the planet connects more than just one device. When even after reusing IPs, they are not enough to identify more devices, a new standard arrives on the scene.

IPv5 creation

Originally, IPv5 was called Internet Stream Protocol or ST. It was planned as an ambitious experiment for streaming audio and video. An attractive capability for the transfer of data packets on determined frequencies while keeping communication.

Each address’s structure was four groups of numbers between 0 and 255 this time. 

Unfortunately, problems showed up. The design of IPv5 focused on the development of new features, but the 32-bit limitation was not overcome. IPv5 provided the same 4,294,967,296 (232) unique addresses supplied before by IPv4. Considering the daily growth of connected devices, this was a big problem. There was not evolution between versions.

The successful launching of IPv5 fall apart. It was not accepted as the next Internet protocol. IPv6 inherited the promising features of IPv5, and it gave the base for the voice-over IP tech that currently all the world use for communicating.

This happened late in the 1970’s decade. IPv6 would be created more than twenty years later. In 1998, IPv6 was born with 128-bit to provide around 340 trillion trillion trillion unique IP addresses (2128). IPs were built not in four groups of numbers but eight groups four hexadecimal digits. Every group, separated by colons, represented 16 bits. Example:

2002:0db6:85a2:0000:0000:5e2a:7003:4351.

Conclusion

IPv5’s mystery solved! Now you know what happened.

IP addresses won’t stop being required. Users’ demand for the Internet is bigger every single day. A connection is reaching even the most isolated locations, therefore more humans. And the amount of devices every person owns and connects is hard to calculate already. There is still a lot to see in the future when it is about IP.