Something odd happened on Alexa… What does it mean?

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I just noted that I don’t have a traffic rank for 3-months on Alexa at the moment, but I recorded a daily traffic rank:
Yesterday 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change
78,860 110,773 — up 2,465,450

This is the first time I ever recorded a daily stat. I’m very puzzled why. It’s still stated at the top of the page (740,860). Perhaps Alexa is updating its stats as we speak.

edited: I checked Alexa again, and it seems that my top line score is unchanged at the moment, but I have moved under 100,000 ranking for the first time. Other top websites no longer have 3 months’ ranking, just daily and weekly. That’s what my website has right now.

While there are many criticisms of Alexa, and how it can be manipulated, in the absence of any other 3rd-party reasonable medium for monitoring and reporting website success, I’ll stick with Alexa, Technorati and Google right now. I haven’t tried to manipulate Alexa at all, even though there are ways to do that. I’d prefer to just blog and promote the ‘old-fashioned’ way. It’s more fun!

Ibackup.com: Do you back up your data?

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When I first started using computers in the mid 90s, I didn’t know what ‘back up’ meant. I really didn’t. My first pc was a notebook 486 which lasted a while, but one day the system died and wouldn’t reboot. Sorry, your data is gone! Woops!

My second pc was a desktop system actually but in those CD writers were the stuff of fantasy, and I hadn’t really learned my lesson on data backup. One day, I turned on the system and … nothing. No boot up sounds. Stone dead. Sorry, your hard disk is gone.

It was at that point I started to get serious about backing up data. I bought a zip drive with 100MB capacity and a half dozen disks. Now that worked well for a while, but then the data began to grow… Suddenly I didn’t have enough space.

So by then I invested in a CD writer as they were quite affordable by then. It worked well. For a while. But then I began to have another problem: I had copies of copies of copies of CDs. I didn’t mark them clearly enough. Then soon, my data needed several disks, then more to back up safely. Yikes. Confusing reigned.

I’m now looking at IBackup – Online Backup and Storage as a way to provide for the present and future growth. Now with a business, and five systems (all used by people who don’t know what backup means!), I’m facing a nightmare situation, so I’m considering using online storage as a way to conveniently update regularly and automatically.

IBackup is offering a number of options that are attractive for internet users: with software that operates like Explorer (in Windows) and options to save data that is typically overlooked in general back up software, such as data in Outlook Express or Outlook, using wizards. There are even downloads for Linux Users, but oddly nothing for a Mac User.

While the pricing is not as cheap as as an extra hard drive nor as big, the storage solution offers a convenience factor in that you do not have to care what happens to the stored date once it’s placed on the service. That’s their job. I’m all in favor of offloading tasks on other people! It’s definitely an economical use of MY time!

My only real criticism of the service is the space size. These days 1GB isn’t that much. A few hundred photos or songs. A presentation can run big, too! If it were my place, I’d multiply the size by a factor of 10 or even 100. Now that would be a good amount at a great price!

This post is sponsored by IBackup.com.

SiteProPlus: Webhosting + Design – in one package!

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When I started my first websites, it was always a challenge to get the site up and running. My first pages were so ugly it was amazing. I hadn’t got a clue about HTML or anything like that. There was no such thing as a blog, nor PHP. At least, if there were, I didn’t know about them!
The web has grown much more sophisticated since 1997 when I was playing with Geocities, and considerably less expensive, too.

So when a site like SiteProPlus which offers to do Wesite Design for free as well as provide hosting, it is hard to stop staring at the website and wonder what madness now possesses the engineers at SiteProPlus!

Their rationale, however, is quite sane, if a little zany. The design is a kind of store loss leader for their hosting services. People are attracted by the special offer, then find themselves signing up for the hosting services at the same time.

This solution would be ideal for people who are very busy running their own business or consultancies but don’t have a big budget or time or skill to oversee the nitty gritty details of website maintenance.

I have three suggestions for this company that they should take note of:

1. Please check your spelling on the front page: how can you claim to do design when the first thing a visitor sees is “…Finally it’s easy to get a professional loonkng website design online fast”

2. Do not hide your pricing or the features that your hosting includes. Your audience may not know that much about website hosting or design, but you still need to provide basic information on the pricing and features, including space and bandwidth, and anything else that might affect a site’s operation or cost.

3. It’s quite difficult to contact anyone. I tried to let you know about the huge spelling gaffe, but there was no contact form. And when I clicked on the link that offered live help, nothing worked.

Actually, these are issues that many companies on the internet face. I wouldn’t single them out particularly except that it is easy to lose customers with these three problems.