5 Tips for Making Green Websites

“Green” lifestyle is definitely a trend of 2009. Thanks to green incentives and environmentally-friendly strategies of major technological companies, “green” trend is very distinctly seen in IT. Check for yourself simply searching for #green on Twitter.

One of the main approaches in Green IT is, definitely, “green hosting”. Companies like Green Hosting.org, Go Green Hosting.com, Host Gator and many others offer servers powered by renewable energy power such as wind generators.

Still, it is important to remember that a website hosted on “green” hosting must be optimized for environment, if a website owner wants to contribute to a better way of life. We have created a list of 5 checkpoints you should be aware of while making “green” websites.

1. Make sure the website loads as fast as possible.
The faster your site loads, the less energy is consumed by servers of a hosting company and by your computer. Complex scripts, not optimized queries, large graphics contribute to the excessive machine loads and irritate users. Making your website load fast is a number one criterion to be checked for green websites. You can evaluate performance of your web pages with free utilities like Page Speed or YSlow.

2. Green websites must follow Internet standards.
The logic is simple: browsers are made to follow the standards, therefore the best use of browsers’ resources is possible when they open standard-made websites. Of course, it does not mean that all green or optimized websites look the same. They just follow a number of guidelines documented in HTML and CSS specifications. It is very easy to check if code of your website follows them: enter your URL in validators: CSS and HTML

3. Use of Flash is justified and fair.

While British Energy creates a Flash game to raise awareness of sustainability challenges in the energy sector, Adobe Flash is known to consume too much memory and CPU, especially in Linux. Due to its inefficiency, it makes your computer consume more electrical power than usual. It is easy to check by unplugging your laptop and running it from a battery: it will die much faster with a Flash application running.

4. Check content of your website.
Greenness of your website is contained not only inside, in the backend or source code. It can also be clearly seen from outside, just looking at the content. Promoting green practices just by placing a small button, logo, or statement in the footer will keep the public aware and distribute the green ideas throughout the world.

5. How about far-reaching consequences?
If you stop and think how people may be using your website, you will inevitably come to an idea that people may be printing your website. Printing means using paper. Without being paranoic, you can optimize what gets printed by using special CSS print stylesheets. A giude to print stylesheets can be found here. For example, you can remove headers, make fonts smaller and send to printer only the valuable content, reducing the amount of paper needed to print a web page.

For those of you who are ready to check their websites for “greenness”, we have developed a special tool called GreenOrMachine. This tool examines your website against 10 criteria (i.e. 5 more than described in this article) and provides a report how your site performs on the green scale.

Log off the web: save the planet

A new fun project is live. Check how you destroy the Earth by browsing the internet:

www.greenormachine.com

Simple 50 Google AdWords management rules, Part 1.

Yesterday I was happy to attend the web seminar by ROIRevolution, the Google AdWords qualified and Google Analytics authorized company. The webinar was named as “50 Ways to Make Your AdWords Advertising Drive More Response and More Profit”.
The knowledge I recieved was very direct and clear for understanding. And, due to it great sense, I thought to share this information with the world, ’cause everyone should be involved.

I decided to share this information in two parts, today I’ll tell the first half. Let’s begin.

1. Use Negative keywords to avoid irrelevant traffic
2. Logically organize your campaign structure for freely swimming through your AdWords acct
3. Separate campaigns with Search advertizing and Content Network advertising
4. Keep in mind that bids differ for various match types of keyword
5. Position 1-3 won’t surely lead to incredible conversions

6. Evently revise positions that your ads occupy on Content Network
7. Also it is not the best way to make changes to account from dusk till dawn, some time is required for system to collect statistics
8. Promote benefits, not features in Ad text
9. Test at least two Ads in every AdWords group: when you found the better ad text, then try to find a better one
10. Examine CTR and Cost per Conversion of each Ad

11. It is a good practice to include keywords and key phrases in the headline of Ads
12. Use Call2Action in the bottom line of Ads
13. Using “&” instead “and” will help you to save place for Ad text
14. Attract attention in Ads that you place in Content Network
15. Try to provide a “unique selling proposition” in your Ads
16. “Words That Sell” by Richard Bayan

17. DON’T USE ALL IN CAPS, there are much more ways to impress your point
18. Ads that are straight to the point work better.
19. In order to get rid of unwanted customers, include price in Ad text
20. Want to increase QS, than you have to improve CTR
21. Use several landing pages, don’t sent all traffic on single page – your customers need space for choice

22. Keep out of money wars for Ads positions
23. According to your market include “free”, “no charge”, “open” and so on in your negatives
24. Do not neglect matching types when you create keywords
25. It may be profitable to create campaign based on your competitors terms, but be careful and smart with this advice
26. Maybe special “branded” campaign with different versions of your company name or site title will bring you additional traffic. Look at example: HireRussians, www.hirerussians.com – is right name, Hirerussians, hire russians, hire russian, hirerussian – variations of our brand name, which may be, and according to Google Analytics it is, used as search query to find our company in the Internet

Don’t you agree that this is pretty useful for advertisers who interested in successful AdWords account management? I think you do, and if so, come back tomorrow for the second part.

In addition, today I was involved in very interesting game provided by collaboration of Google and Virgin America, Day in the cloud. It was some kind of intellectual game, duiring one hour every participants answers questions from various part of life and solves puzzles. The most amaizing was the fact, that here, in Novosibisk, was rain after which beautiful clouds appeared on sky of wonderfully blue colour. You can see it on image below, view from our office window.

Adios!

Russian Programmers Are Champions

A team of Russian programmers from St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics has won the The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

It is the second year in a row when a Russian team of programmers wins this contest dedicated to finding the strongest programming team.

The programming tasks were aimed at solving problems in Java and C/C++. The Russian team has solved 9 of 11 problems at the shortest time.

Our congrats to winners!

Meeting your team in face proves its effeciency

Our client Arpad shares his experience about visiting our software development offices in Russia:

“Back in early December I had submitted my project via Elance looking for a well-established software development company to carry out my website. I was very impressed with the response from Sibers and decided to take the plunge and hire Sibers on.

From the outset I planned on meeting with the winning company so I made the long voyage from Calgary Canada to Novosibirsk on February 25. My stay was fairly short having to leave already on March 3.

It was great to meet the Mobizou team and all the other folks from Sibers. It definitely is great to put faces to names! It was great to see the comraderie amongst the team members and the Mobizou poster on the wall (Victor, don’t give up your day job and try your hand as a professional artist!

My visit was busy but with moments for some fun. Luckily Darya was there to save me from the police on my first day! It was a very fruitful visit all and all and it was a pleasure to meet all of you. Until the next time!”

Executives Consider Zend Certification the Main Criterion When Hiring PHP Developers, According to Sibers

Sibers has released a press release dedicated to the role Zend PHP certification plays.

Survey shows the thoroughness decision-makers employ when investigating software outsourcing. Objective proof of practical skills is the decisive factor in favor of certified developers.

Novosibirsk, Russia, April 2, 2009 – Sibers LTD, a Russia-based software outsourcing company, performed analysis of how decision making of executives looking to hire offshore developers changed in the last three months. The survey, conducted among selected current and prospective clients, revealed a significant tendency: a heightened level of cautiousness during the process of selecting a provider. Sibers analytics noted a longer period of hiring developers and weighting reasons for each supplier that takes part in the tender. The number of competing providers has also increased with the larger role of Eastern-European software companies.

Sibers experts conclude that it is the depth and character of hiring criteria that changed the behavior of product managers and investors. Prospective customers take into consideration a much larger number of decisive factors now, which they compare providers against. While attractive prices and a well-organized portfolio were the main criteria before December 2008, new customers are focused on objective methods of evaluating practical skills of their future suppliers. A universal and well-recognized tool is needed, and Zend PHP Certification is found to be an unbiased standard that helps to make their decision.

The Zend PHP certification is considered a worldwide standard for proof of practical skills for PHP developers. The target group of customers agreed that a successfully passed certification provides extra assurance that the code is written according to global PHP community standards.

“While a degree in CS assures theoretical competence, and a portfolio demonstrates abilities, the certification reveals solely the practical experience possessed by a programmer,” confirms Sibers PHP-Team leader Valery Makarenko.

Sibers contributes to the best software development practices by thorough training courses for its PHP professionals. It is confirmed by the fact that 13% of all PHP certified developers from Russia work at Sibers. The growing popularity of Zend PHP Certification in Russia demonstrates the awareness of best practices among Russian programmers who keep in step with the latest PHP technology.

“Our customers tell us that their development managers are finding Zend certification a useful tool in the hiring of PHP experts and both Zend Framework and PHP 5 certifications help those managers to validate practical skills. The Zend sponsored certifications use exam topics that are specified as competencies required in practice and are developed by a neutral board of global PHP community experts,” said Susie Sedlacek, vice president for global services at Zend Technologies. “We are pleased that the huge uptake in PHP in the Russian market also reflects the strong demand for Zend Certified Engineers with pertinent PHP and Zend Framework skills in that market, and at companies like Sibers.”

Looks Like Panic in the Outsourcing World?

Will Outsourcing prices fall in next two years?
What sectors or industries continue to grow despite global recession?
Is IT outsourcing seeing a decline given the slowdown?
Representatives of which industries will not decrease IT spending in 2009?

These are just few hot questions in LinkedIn Answers. What’s the matter? Crisis? No.

It is the fresh press-release by Gartner that claims that all prices for outsourcing services will fall.

However, if you read until the end, you will see that this press release ends up with a paragraph about the fall of India’s outsourcing operations (a major argument?). I dare to assume that the price fall (if to happen) will be due to the market inertia when businesses switch to out-of-India-sourcing not willing to pay significantly more than they are used to. This way worldwide prices *may* become more or less equal.

Anyway, it is all about what may happen and what may not. I would focus on just one thing: work.

HireRussians reaches $2,000,000 on Elance

It took 22 months to earn another million of dollars on Elance: the first one was earned in May, 2007.

The first million took 5 years of sleepless nights.

Google AdWords: Long hoped-for option

It was nice to discover an option in Google Adwords that I was waiting for – a tooltip that pops over the graph at the My Campaign Performance report and displays daily values of the selected metric. As long ago as yesterday it was needed to select a specific date and wait for the information to update. Now it happens immediately when you point your mouse over the graph.

AdWords graph with tooltip

Lucky users of Google Analytics have been enjoying this feature in their diagrams for a long time already.

Analytics graph with tooltip

This is a very friendly feature, so if you haven’t found it yet, log in to your AdWords account and take a look at it.

ASP.NET MVC Framework vs. Web Forms

ASP.NET MVC Version 1 has just been released and we are looking at its benefits over standard ASP.Net Web Forms

- a clearer concept of code division (Model-View-Controller);
- powerful backing for unit tests. Such things as testing classes for generating a page layout has become simpler;
- more global and accurate control of HTML and JavaScript generated;
- coming up with a very user-friendly URL.