8 tips for boosting the speed of your WordPress site

Posted on February 16, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, Blog, News
Tagged: , , , ,

Chances are you’d not have waited for this page to load had it taken a second or two longer.

That’s the best known fact on the Internet today. users expect web pages to load very fast as soon as they click on a hyperlink.

Slow loading web pages can become the leading cause of high bounce rates, low user engagement, lost traffic opportunities, and abandoned sales journeys. Here are some numbers to put things in perspective.

◾47% of users expect a web page to load in less than 2 seconds.

◾40% of online shoppers abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

◾A 1 second delay in page loading can lead to a 16% dip in customer satisfaction, a 7% dip in conversions, and a 11% dip in page views.

What’s more, ecommerce websites associate fast loading with increased revenue, and the reverse is also true.

The calling is clear: your websites need to load super quickly to sustain and nurture audience attention, avoid high bounce rate, and prevent abandoned sales.

If you have a WordPress site, there are a number of easy and effective methods you can begin using today that will significantly increase your site’s loading speed.

Use grids and floats instead of nested tables

It’s surprising how many websites still continue to use nested tables, in spite of the negative impact they have on page loading speeds. Here’s what a nested table code looks like:

………

Such coding adds additional burden on the browser, delaying complete loading of the content. Instead, use non-nested table structure as follows:

……

More importantly, use floats and grids to enhance loading speed. Here is a basic float example:

Basic float example

image anchor text

Sample text

Sample text

Reduce the number of HTTP requests

A web page consists of several components – style sheets, Flash components, images, scripts, and more. To deliver content rich experiences, you need to opt for entire Page Speed Insights Optimization process.

More the number of elements per page, more the number of HTTP requests made for each of these, resulting in longer page loading time durations, which could hurt your conversions. Yahoo estimates that almost 80% of page loading time is accounted for the time spent in downloading the different elements of the page.

Use the HTTP requests checker tool to find out how many requests your page makes.

Luckily, you can reduce HTTP requests without ruining your web design. Here’s how:

◾Combine files: Use scripts and external style sheets (but don’t have more than one script and CSS file each.

◾Image maps: Use contiguous images instead of several image blocks, to reduce the number of HTTP requests.

◾CSS Sprites: Combine multiple images to a sprite, and call the sprite instead of each image. When the sprite contains images from internal pages also, the internal page load times improve, because the content is already downloaded before the user reaches there.

◾Make smaller Javascript blocks inline.

◾Convert images to Base64 coding using an encoder; because it transforms an image into code, the HTTP request is prevented.

Break comments into pages

Your most popular content posts could also be the ones loading the slowest, because of the hundreds of comments on the page. You can’t block comments, because they are conversation starters and link builders for you.

How do you manage, then? WordPress offers a very smart solution – break the comment stream into pages.

In the Dashboard, go to Settings. Under the section Other comment settings, you can tweak the settings for how many comments appear on a page, and which page is displayed beneath the article.

Upgrade to the latest PHP version

Upgrading your website every time a new PHP version is launched can be a bit of a headache. But it’s worth your time and effort. The same scripts could run almost 25-30% faster on newer PHP versions; imagine the kind of website loading time improvements it can bring for you.

PHP Classes published an extensive experimental study, which highlighted that scripts ran significantly faster on PHP 7.1 as compared to previous versions.

Gzip compression

If you use Google’s Page Speed Insights tool for a quick analysis of your web pages, it’s likely you will find advice to use Gzip compression. This compression enables web servers to compress heavy website content elements.

The compression is so effective that it could reduce your page size to 30-40% of its initial size. Dolloped speeds, because of this, could increase to three or four times their previous speed.

For many webmasters, installing a Gzip compression plugin continues to be the best option. W3 Total Cache plugin, apart from all its amazing features, also offers HTTP compression.

Other options are:

◾Ask your web host if it offers Gzip compression.

◾Manually enable Gzip compression via .htaccess (this guide by Kinsta explains how to do so)

Don’t let ad scripts and pop-ups spoil user experience

Chances are you run at least some form of pop-up to optimize conversions. As beneficial as these might be for your website’s monetization strategies, they may also be causing significant damage in terms of higher page loading times.

To take control and strike the perfect balance, you need to know the third-party scripts running on your website, their source, and their impact.

I recommend Pingdom’s Website Speed Test for a thorough analysis of each file and script from a webpage. The tool will tell you which script takes the most time to load.

Gauge the effectiveness of your pop-ups; do away with non-performing pop-up plugins, as they’re only slowing down your page. OptinMonster is one of the most reliable pop-up plugins, helping you optimize conversions without killing speed.

Install a caching plugin

Caching plugins can be a blessing for your website; these plugins create static copies of your webpage content, and instead of making to and fro queries to the database, use the static versions to immediately showcase the web content to users. Since you ordinarily won’t update your web pages daily, caching proves to be very useful for almost all web pages, always.

Among the many caching plugins you can use, WOT Cache Plugin enjoys a lot of trust and popularity. Among its many features are:

◾Combines CSS and Javascript files

◾Leverages the power of page caching and browser caching

◾Utilizes lazy load to massively improve the page load time

◾Helps with database optimization and removes query strings from CSS/Javascript files

◾Saves a lot of bandwidth by reducing the file size of the webpages.

Bonus tip: Seek help from your web hosting service provider

It makes sense to move to a dedicated hosting plan, so that your website gets all the resources it needs to load in a jiffy, always. Ask your web host as to what help it can provide you to improve your website speed.

Most web hosts are willing to offer their technical expertise to help you pluck the low hanging fruits in terms of your website’s speed issues. This, in turn, benefits them, as the load on their servers reduces.

Particularly, ask for their advice on optimizing mobile website speed, because the impact of slow loading is much severe on mobile devices.

Concluding remarks

Every few milliseconds of improvement in your web page’s loading speed could bring tens of percentage points of improvements in its traffic and conversion rates.

Start with these easy and practical tips, most of which will result in almost immediate improvements in page loading speed for your website.

ABCO Technology teaches a comprehensive program for web development. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Building fast loading webpages today!

CompTIA Security + holders in demand

Posted on February 15, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
Tagged: ,

If you are a desktop support specialist, network administrator or network engineer, the #CompTIA Security + certification is the one to get.

As #cybercrime continues to increase due to changes in technology, demand for network professionals who have cyber security skills continues to increase.

In 2018 companies are putting their money where their mouth is with respect to #CyberSecurity . Chase bank told investors during their most recent conference call that the bank will be spending one billion on cyber security in 2018.

Bank of America along with hundreds of national banks also are following Chase Bank’s lead in ramping their spending for cyber security.

The certification, which appears to have the greatest value is the CompTIA Security +. This certification provides a strong foundation for cyber security. Holders of this certificate understand how to protect a network, harden devices against cyber-attacks and educate employees about cyber security.

When you hold the CompTIA` Security +, you will be aware of the fact that even your printers and fax machines plugged into your network need to be hardened against cyber-attacks.

#Cybersecurity professionals understand the standards of encryption and the best ways to implement them so important work will get done.

The CompTIA security + can be completed in less than six weeks or in one week if you can stand the fast pace of a boot camp.

#ABCO #Technology offers a complete program for cyber security. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can call us at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who can qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE # 588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304.

 

Get your Security + today.

Google Bulletin Enhances Local Search

Posted on February 14, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
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What is Bulletin?

Bulletin is a new app published by Google, which allows everyone quickly to create and post news stories which will appear both in the app and on the web…

“Bulletin stories are public and easy to discover: on Google search, through social networks, or via links sent by email and messaging apps”
Source: Google
Bulletin App

Bulletin is currently on trial in two locations in the US: Nashville, TN and Oakland, CA.

Google has termed this new type of news ‘Hyperlocal’ and it’s aimed at people being able to create posts quickly about what they encounter in their immediate area.

Why?

Between Facebook and Google local news has truly suffered. Print media in general has experienced large financial losses and this has been very severe for smaller local news media outlets as well. Online players in this space such as The Gothamist have also collapsed leaving a vacuum in the area.

The bigger question here should really be why Google would want to fill that space. Call me a cynic but I think it’s unlikely that it’s due to some altruistic need on Google’s part to fill the space which it helped to destroy.

If this was the case, if Google was seeking to help replenish local news, then it could instead promote local news sources more heavily over national ones, as Facebook has recently announced it will be doing. Instead Google has seen an opportunity, reinforced by the rise of other locally focused sites such as NextDoor.com.

nextdoor.com

Google has been part of the undoing of a media format and there is now the opportunity to step in and fill that void. But that still creates the question…

Why should Google care about local news at all?

The more personalized the advertising, the more likely we are to respond to it. This includes the source of the advert. You’re more likely to listen to the advice of a friend about their experience with a company than the information on the company blog. This goes for local news ads as well.

According to Local Media Works local media is not only the most trusted source of information but also the best at driving customer interaction. In other words ads served on local content are more effective.

It combines personalization (adverts tailored to you) and contextualization (ads shown at the right time) for incredibly effective advertising. It also, importantly, gives Google an additional data collection point.

Each story you post provides key information beyond just geo-targeting. For example, post a story which shows an event at your local pet store and you might start getting shown ads for dog food.

Even without posting a story, but by just interacting with the content, this provides additional data, showing businesses and geographic areas you’re interested in without Google ever needing to record your physical visit to those places.

What’s the harm?

Some existing sites which specialize in the ‘hyperlocal’ have already encountered issues in how different sections of the same community interact. For example Nextdoor.com has had problems with neighbors ‘racially profiling’ people within their own communities.

It takes more than geography to make a community and there are often existing divisions within a small or ‘local’ area. This could be exasperated by the ‘echo chamber’ problem we already see across search and social platforms. Through personalization of content we don’t see outside of our own world view. In other words the content we see serves only to reinforce rather than challenge our beliefs.

Picking up your local newspaper or reading their stories online is more likely to show you information from across the full demographic of your community. In the case of hyper localization of online content, however, it may serve only to provide us with information from a subsection of our community rather than representing its full diversity.

Editorial standards and fake news

We also need to stop pretending that everyday people are as good of a source for information as trained journalists. Bulletin celebrates the quickness and ease of posting on its platform. It does not, from what I read in the promotional material, mention editorial guidelines or validity of content. Any journalist with a news organization has to adhere to editorial standards, research what they are writing and will at least attempt to convey news with some depth.

If Google chooses to show Bulletin stories in the same section as they show other news stories, – and I’m not sure where else it would show them – then it’s promoting them to the same level as actual editorial content without any of the checks and measures.

My final thoughts on this

I don’t think Google has deliberately set out to replace local news, I certainly don’t think they intended to harm the industry. However it would appear that local news is in decline and there is a gap in the market for Google to step into with Bulletin. The way it’s done this is typically clever, moving yet more content off proprietary sites which can show advertising or generate revenue in whatever way they darn well like, right on to a platform owned and controlled by Google (ahem AMP, cough cough).

Google has also embraced the idea that we can all be part of the news. We can all share events locally and connect with each other through our local postings. After the failure of Google Plus I’m not sure how far the ‘connecting’ side of things will go but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but the ramifications for local news sites could be severe, especially if Google prioritizes content from its own service over that of other providers. It’s also creating further problems with placing equal or even more weight on unverified and unchecked content compared to that of a reputable publisher.

This could end up as little more than another version of Yell, mostly used only by businesses to promote events, or it could really take off like a localized version of Twitter with people in masse connecting and sharing within their communities. The crucial thing is that it doesn’t become a replacement for all local news.

#ABCO #Technology teaches a course for web development, which includes social media strategies. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Promote your business online today!

9 important computer maintenance tips for beginners

Posted on February 13, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
Tagged: , , , , , , ,

abco 16 years

This article contains a brief list of nine computer maintenance tips, which will make you a valued employee at your place of work.

If you are able to perform some computer maintenance on your own, you will save both money and time.

This blog post will contain some maintenance tips, which you can perform by yourself, which will help you keep your computer running smoothly.

1 First tip make sure your computer is plugged in, connections connected and your monitor is turned on.

2 Computers often build up dust on the inside. Remove dust from your PC by using compressed air. compressed air removes dust. Perform this operation approximately every 90 days unless you are in a high dust environment. If you are in a polluted environment, then use compressed air every 30 days.

3 The disk defragmenter arranges your files in logical order. It will run automatically in Windows 7 if set up. Arranging your files in logical order will speed up your computer. The disk defrag command will defrag files up to 64MB.

If you want to defrag or arrange larger files, use this command defrag c: -w. This command will defrag all of the files in your hard drive.

4 If you want to check the condition of your hard disk, use the command, Chkdsk. This command will tell you if your disk has any errors or bad tracks.

If you want a command to fix these bad tracks and errors, use the command chkdskg/f. This command will repair your disk in many instances.

If you are using Linux, use fsck.

5 It is a good practice to delete temporary files. Deleting these files will save disk space.

6 Windows disk clean up utility will delete temporary files. Deleting these files will free up disk space, which will also increase the speed of your computer.

7 In windows you have a backup and restore command where you can restore your computer to a time when it functioned without errors.

8 It is a good practice to back up to an external hard drive. Hard drives are constantly getting cheaper. Use them, they will save you time and money.

9 When backing up files, use archive attributes, this will make it easier to find these files if you need them. You simply need to select file types to be backed up and the location where you want them to be stored.

#ABCO #Technology teaches comprehensive programs for network administration and #CyberSecurity . Possessing the knowledge to fix, maintain, install and protect networks is vital in the economy of the twenty-first century. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Call today at: (310) 216-3067

Email all questions to info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who can qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Get started by learning computers and networks today!

Block Chain Technology, will it help you get an IT Job?

Posted on January 30, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
Tagged: , , , , ,

Block chain technology is talked about everywhere in the media from local news broadcasts to bfinancial network speculation relating to the future price of bitcoin. If you ask most people about this technology, they can’t define block chain in one sentence.

Block Chain is simply nothing more than shared data stored on multiple computers, which uses encryption. When we talk about encryption, we are discussing scrambeling and descrambling data for the purposes of achieving privacy.

The basic use of encryption dates back to the mid 1980s when the first encryption standards were formed.

Encryption evolved with shared key or symmetric encryption where both parties used the same key to descramble the data. Semetric encryption was fast, easy to use, but it was cracked by hackers. Next came asymmetric key encryption where each party had a different key. This was known as a set of public and private keys. Asemetric encryption was slower than its brother semetric, but it was more difficult for hackers. The public key was assigned to the sender and the private key went to the receiver.

From asymmetric came the use of a third party or introducing a third key and party into the mix.

The third key developed into the multiple computer block chain where data is shared on a large number of computers or a concept of shared trust. In addition to simply sharing data, the algorithms or operations had to be complicated to make them difficult to attack.

Naturally bitcoin became an outgrowth of this technology. The price of bitcoin has made wild swings ranging between 20 to 60% in one week.

However, bitcoin is only one of 1376 different crypto currencies.

The jobs and money in this field will come from other uses of the technology. For example Kodak is using block chain to license images for photographers. IBM is developing uses for block chain to keep track of medical records. Oracle is developing a block chain solution for databases, which must be kept very secure. Microsoft along with other fortune 500 companies are researching uses of block chain technology.

The new uses of block chain will require anyone who works in the networking field to have a solid understanding of encryption, how encryption standards operate and the fastest solutions for descrambling the data. Bitcoin for example takes almost seven minutes to complete a financial transaction. A person making the same transaction using regular currency can complete a financial exchange in milliseconds.

Although encryption is getting a lot of attention, it’s still slow when the data needs to be converted back into a readable form. Research will continue and better solutions will be developed. It is the job of the cyber security professional to determine the best ways to use block chain.

#ABCO #Technology teaches a comprehensive class for cyber security. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. You can reach us at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Get started in block chain cyber security today!

Computer jobs for millennials

Posted on January 26, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
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One of the biggest challenges parents face in 2018 is the fact that jobs for millennials or teenagers are very hard to find.

The reasons are simple.

First of all the #US is moving toward a #skills oriented economy and teenagers or millennials haven’t had the opportunity to train for a skilled job.

Second the skills based economy with political pressure is artificially forcing wages higher than the market will bear. The higher wages forces teenagers out of the conventional restaurant jobs, which they have held for the past 100 years.

The solution to this challenge is to train your son or daughter to ensure they have an employable skill early in life.

One skill, which has high demand and job growth is computer repair. When we talk about computers, we are talking about laptops, iPhones and iPads. All of the mentioned devices will breakdown. The device itself could malfunction or simply be dropped.

A training course and certification, which trains millennials to compete in the computer repair field is the #CompTia A+. Training for the CompTia A+ or a course in computer repair can be accomplished in approximately 78 hours.

After the training is completed, the candidate passes two exams to obtain the CompTia A+ certification. These exams are: 901 for hardware, which covers the building of a computer and 902, which covers all of the operating systems, which can be installed on that computer. The CompTia A+ also covers setting up a small network, installation of printers and installation of online faxes.

Employers are looking for young people who can fix computers. Jobs come in many forms. Websites including Indeed and Glass door have many listings for young candidates with the A+ computer repair certification.

#ABCO #Technology teaches courses in networking and cyber security. Our school is ideal for the teenager who wants an employable skill. The CompTia A+ is a major part of this training. Call our campus between 9 Am and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.

Email all questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE # 588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Train your millennial to repair computers today!

Web design 101

Posted on January 24, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
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The design of a company’s website plays an important function in attracting prospects and customers, generating leads, and potentially creating satisfaction.

Generally speaking, a website has between 15 to 30 seconds to convey a favorable impression about a company, as well as the products and services offered, to online visitors; therefore, paying attention to the site’s design is a key factor in how well it performs.

Design Basics

To some extent, a website’s design will be influenced by a company’s industry and culture. As an example, a website for a law or accounting firm will likely have a more serious design approach than a party planner or an ice cream parlor.

An effective website blends design, text, images, and video to provide a good overview of a company and what it offers. A website’s images can highlight both team members and the workplace, as well as provide a personal touch that helps differentiate a company from its competitors.

To avoid increasing a website’s startup or “load time,” it’s a good idea to optimize images for online display. Because the screen resolution is lower than print, using a “save for web” command in a photo-editing program reduces the “density” of the image so it will load more rapidly. There are also many plugins available for WordPress-designed sites that will aid in optimizing load time for pages and images.

It’s also helpful to consider readability as a site’s design is prepared. Dark text on a light background, for instance, is easier to read. It’s also an excellent idea to consider the target market’s age — if your target market skews over 40, making text easy for on-screen reading will help improve your site’s usability for visitors. Font type is also a key factor in the design of a website. Fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, or Georgia are all easy-to-read fonts that can be read clearly through a variety of browser types.

Improving Search Results

A website’s content is a critical factor in how the site is indexed by search engines. Thus, it is important to make sure that headlines and content relate to products and services offered.

Consider what keywords or phrases customers are likely to use, as they search for offerings that a company specializes in, and include those phrases in page titles and headlines. Avoid repeating keywords over and over, since search engines may penalize for “keyword stuffing;” yet make sure that the site describes the company and what it does, utilizing the terms necessary to find the website online.

Prepare for Scanners

Since most visitors scan a site quickly (think 15 seconds), instead of reading it carefully, it’s helpful to break up text with headlines, bulleted lists, and images. Keeping sentences and paragraphs short is another helpful way to improve the appearance and readability of a website. Important elements and the company’s contact information should appear “above the fold,” which is the portion of the screen visitors can see without scrolling down. Most people won’t bother to look for information that’s not directly in front of them.

Navigation Drives Results

While most people think of how a site looks, good design also includes navigation menus that are straightforward and easy to understand. Therefore, a web designer should make it as easy as possible for visitors to find their way around the site, since confused visitors will likely hit the back button instead of exploring a website further.

Some navigation tips:

•Place a company brand/logo in the upper left corner of every page, and make that logo a clickable link to the home page.

•Keep navigation menu items to a minimum. Professional web designers suggest using seven items or less on a navigation menu.

•The navigation menu should use descriptive titles. Summarize what a user will find on the specific page. Rather than have a menu item called “Team,” consider expanding it to “Meet Our Team.”

•Keep design usability in mind. A user should never have to go more than three levels deep (or three clicks away) from the homepage to find information.

Enlisting the Help of a Professional

Depending on goals for the website, enlisting help from a professional web designer could be a profitable investment in making the website as appealing and functional as possible. If you’re technically inclined, or wish to tackle the site’s appearance yourself, most web hosting companies offer a wide range of website templates designed for small businesses. Additionally many website building companies offer templates for little to no cost. WordPress and Wix are just two of the well-known companies that offer simple solutions for web design that don’t cost a fortune or require a programmer to code.

When working with a professional, it’s important to ask if you’ll have the ability to update or add content yourself (and how easy those updates will be to perform). If you have to rely on the web designer for future changes, additional costs will be incurred and possibly delays in having the website updated. Instead, ask the designer to include content management features so you or your colleagues will be able to update the site yourselves.

If you prefer to do it yourself with a design template, customize the images or graphics to give the site a more personal look and feel that better matches your company and its personality.

Either way, remember that creating a website is not a one-time project. You’ll have to plan for frequent updates as you develop more content and change your design periodically to prevent the site from appearing out of date.

#ABCO #Technology teaches a comprehensive program for web design. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

good web design = success. Become a successful web design professional today! #Website

Kodak creates crypto currency

Posted on January 22, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, Blog, News
Tagged: , , , , ,

Shares of Eastman Kodak stock were soaring Tuesday after the company announced a new #cryptocurrency initiative.

The company unveiled a licensing partnership with Wenn Digital to launch an image rights management platform called KODAKOne and a photo-centric crypto currency called #KODAK Coin.

The stock price opened at $3.10 a share Tuesday and rose as high as $7.65 after the announcement was made at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. When the stock market closed at 4 p.m., shares were trading at $6.80.

In a release, the company said the KODAKOne platform will be an encrypted, digital ledger of rights ownership for photographers to register both new and archival work that they can then license for use.

The company describes KODAK Coin as “a new economy for photography,” which will allow photographers to receive payment for licensing their work immediately upon sale, sell their work confidently on a secure block chain platform.

The system will be open to both professional and amateur photographers.

Initial reactions from financial analysts were mixed.

CBS Marketwatch said Kodak was “boarding the block chain bandwagon,” hoping to capitalize on the crypto currency trend to boost its stock price.

Bloomberg said, “The move comes as investors snap up virtually any asset related to digital coins or the block chain technology that underpins them — no matter how tenuous the tie.”

The Financial Times was more blunt in its criticism, calling it “Kodak’s last desperate bid for relevance

Encryption, which has been a part of information technology for 25 years is now experiencing an expansion of its use. Bitcoin has been the number one crypto currency out of 1375 different encrypted currency chains. Now that Kodak has entered this market we have 1376. This writer believes Kodak’s entry will gain in popularity because it is focused upon a specific industry, which is photography. Could Kodak’s new currency be the beginning of a new trend, where different services have their own currency? This appears to be the new reality.

#ABCO #Technology teaches classes in encryption in our cyber security program. Call our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday. Call today at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to: info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all students who qualify for funding.

ABCO Technology is located at:
11222 South La Cienega Blvd. STE #588
Los Angeles, Ca. 90304

 

Encryption is opening up numerous opportunity. Join #CyberSecurity today to learn more.

Oracle database administrator information

Posted on January 20, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, News
Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

There is an old saying, which dominates the marketing and search engine industries. This saying states “content is king.”

Content comes from information. If content is king, then information is power.

The question of how to use this information begins with its storage and access. Information is stored in columns, rows and tables, which makes up what information technology experts call a relational database. The term relational means one piece of information relates to another. This information must be easily accessible, have the flexibility to be manipulated into a report and the presentation should be in such a way that other relationships can be drawn from that information.

One occupation, which has the job of making all of this activity take place is that of an Oracle database administrator. Oracle, handles the nation’s largest databases including those from the US government, major educational institutions and Fortune 1,000 companies. Google uses a customized version of Oracle for its search engine.

#Oracle #Database administrators are responsible for the accessibility, security and safety for a company’s information.

This includes client records, financial data, product information and all other documents needed for an organization’s successful operation. Oracle database administrators do not have to possess a four-year college degree. The person entering into this occupation must be well organized, enjoy categorizing information and have a passion for making that information accessible to those persons who need to use it. Security is also a major concern. The database administrator will become proficient with Oracle’s database security protocols and procedures.

The Oracle database administrator is accomplished when students train and pass two Oracle certification exams. The first exam a student must successfully complete is that of Oracle Certified Associate. The #OCA is usually completed after eight weeks of training in an accredited Oracle class.

The final exam, which is the Oracle Certified Professional, which carries the title of database administrator is usually passed after three additional months of training.

Oracle database administrators are experiencing a wide variety of job openings throughout the country. The job sites of Indeed and Glass door show the average salary for Oracle database administrators at approximately $93,000 per year. As you gain experience in this occupation, your salary will increase. Oracle has specialized databases, which include Oracle financials, Oracle medical and Oracle biological. Students can specialize in one of these databases after passing the Oracle certified Professional exam. Naturally specializing in a specific field will mean an increase in salary.

If you are interested in training for this exciting career, contact #ABCO #Technology. You can reach our campus between 9 AM and 6 PM Monday through Friday at: (310) 216-3067.

Email your questions to info@abcotechnology.edu

Financial aid is available to all qualified students.

#ABCO #Technology is located at:
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Google pulls Adwords reviews

Posted on January 19, 2018 - Posted in: IT Career Training, Blog, News
Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Google has withdrawn ratings from Adwords extensions. So you will no longer be able to add these to your ads. Why are they taking this action and does it signify a wider problem with ratings? More importantly, does this mean local results or seller ratings

#Google #AdWords allows you to add something called extensions to your ads. Extensions are additional pieces of information that are free to add and can boost your click through rate. Some examples are:

•Sitelinks
•Call outs
•Structured snippets

If you’re not already using extensions, then you should be! It’s a great way of increasing CTR (by around 10%) and at a point where more advertisers are using them than not, you’re going to be hit increasingly hard if you’re not using them.

Unfortunately, like many things with Google, you can suggest what you want them to show but they decide whether or not they want to show it.

Reviews Extensions

Google didn’t source these reviews themselves. You added them, linking to the source, and the Adwords team just reviewed them before they were allowed live.

Although Google have given little reasoning behind why they have removed them, it seems it might just have been a badly designed system.

For a start on Google’s part it has got to be resource intensive, with team members having to click through, find reviews with matching text and approve. Although it’s likely this was partially automated, if even only a tiny percentage required manual review then it would be a large drain on resources.

This brings us to the next issue: legitimacy. Could you just make the reviews up? Well yes, you could. If you wanted to add a fake review to your site, then include it in the site link there is little Google could do to tell. This is the problem with pretty much all reviews and leads me on nicely to the final point.

Was the review representative? The reason why we trust a review from an unknown source is that it correlates with many other reviews. With this system you could just cherrypick whichever review you wanted, so even if the product is terrible someone, somewhere, is bound to like it and leave a good review. Which you can then legitimately use in your adwords extension.

Finally, you might be clicking on an ad for a product but for the sitelinks reviews, Google encouraged you to utilise those which reflected the site as a whole:

Reviews should focus on your business as a whole, as opposed to a review about a specific product or service. This makes the reviews relevant to just about all of your ads.

So you the user could well think that a general review such as “Absolutely excellent, will be purchasing again” is about the specific link they see in the ad. But it’s not, it’s about the site as whole and may be validating an otherwise awful product.

Does this mean there is a wider problem with reviews?

Reviews themselves have come increasingly under attack. If like myself you use shopping sites such as Amazon and have been doing so for a while, you’ll have seen what I mean. There are so many fake reviews, paid-for reviews, and reviews created by third-party companies paid to create them.

This problem has been created by the effectiveness of reviews, if customer is purchasing a third party product through your site you’ll want to make sure that the best products are shown first. This means using reviews to help weight products in how you rank them. Which in turn means vendors are more and more incentivized to have the best reviews possible. Which is fine, except that not all vendors have great products, but they still want great reviews.

So what’s the solution? What about other ratings-based extensions?

Reviews as part of AdWords extensions are in principle a great idea, but there some real fundamental issues with these which need to be resolved. AdWords needs to strike a balance between what the advertisers – who are after all paying for that advert – want to display and what is a fair representation for the consumer.

These means really they should be looking at a more independent source of reviews or way of gathering these. This is what they do with both seller ratings and consumer ratings.

Seller ratings are an automated (opt out) extension which look like this:

These are shown on search network text ads, or as an abridged version in Google shopping results. Seller ratings show a star rating and text snippet which they gather from a long list of third party review sites and they only show in certain circumstances;

In most cases, seller ratings only appear when a business has 150 unique reviews and a composite rating of 3.5 stars or more.

Consumer ratings are another automated extension and are taken directly from Google customer surveys which they ran for specific industries. So, these will only appear on certain results where they have data:

Google also use a star rating in reviews within local results and although having these linked to a Google account negates some of the problems, they are still pretty open to abuse. Many businesses only have a small number of reviews, meaning just one or two added from friends or family accounts might be all that’s needed to influence a consumer’s decision.

AdWords needs to use a service which is more long standing with a large number of reviews already present and which have their own controls in place to ensure these are legitimate, much like they do with their seller reviews extension. However, even dedicated review sites have massive problems with this. Like the guy who made his shed the top rated restaurant on trip advisor. In short you can’t trust reviews.

Adverts fall under advertising guidelines in both the UK and US where if ads are misleading they have to be removed. Publishers who regularly break these rules or are deemed to be not doing enough to prevent misleading ads can be fined. So AdWords must adhere to a higher standard than the sites it would be taking the source content from, hence the potential problem.

So was Google right to remove them and will we be seeing them again?

In my opinion reviews are becoming less of a trustworthy metric. The ability of bad actors to place them has far outstripped that of companies to ensure they are legitimate. This might be down to the cost / benefit being vastly different from both sides. For an individual company a set of good reviews could be the difference in zero revenue for a product, or $1000’s. So spending several hundreds or even thousands just on ensuring they have good reviews is well worth it. For a review site though, they simply cannot afford to spend anywhere near an equivalent amount on checking the reviews for an individual product. In short there is a lot more total effort going into making fake reviews than there is in removing them. Google tries to negate this with automated extensions by using a wide variety of sources, or their own survey results which they have more control over.

The way the Reviews extension was implemented in AdWords was pretty much asking for trouble. Then again, while there are better ways, I still don’t think there are any that are ‘good enough’. We’ll have to wait and see what Google does in the longer term and if it decides to make any changes in the organic results or to the other automation tools on their site.

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