The Best Website Monitoring Services

I recently did a small experiment to evaluate the reliability and response time of various website monitoring services available on the Internet.

In case you are new, these services continuously monitor your website(s) for downtime and send email alerts as soon as your web server goes down or becomes slow and inaccessible. You get another alert when the site is up again.
Also see: Use Google Docs as Website Uptime Monitor
For this test, I configured my site with  Pingdom, Watch Mouse, Site Uptime and Zoho’s Site 24×7. They are all commercial site monitoring services but also offer a trial version which is good for around 30 days.
Now as you would know, the site went down last week for a couple of hours due to some issues with the file server of the web hosting company but this was a good opportunity to test how quick and reliable these site monitoring services are.
Here’s a snapshot of email alerts that came from all the above services along with the exact time when these alerts were received.

As you may have noticed, Pingdom was able catch the downtime within seconds while Watch Mouse and Site Uptime were late by 5-10 minutes. Uptime party sent a notification almost 30 minutes after the site went down.
When the site was up and running again, Pingdom and WatchMouse were the first one to send an uptime email alert while the rest two were late by 10-15 minutes.
The problem resurfaced yesterday night when the site went down and here’s a snapshot of email alerts from the second instance. Pingdom response time impressed again.

I was not too sure why there were no email alerts from Site24x7 and it later turned out that site monitoring was disabled in the control panel. Have no clue why that happened so can’t really comment on Zoho’s service.
Finally, here’s a quick chart comparing the price of various website monitoring services for bloggers and small web publishers.

How to Add Custom-Sized AdSense Ads to your Website

Google AdSense, since its inception in 2003, has supported a dozen-odd ad units – from the 300×250 Rectangle to the 160×600 Skyscraper – that abide by the IAB guidelines. Premium AdSense publishers do have the flexibility of customizing the layout of text-only ads but not the image or rich-media ads.

Last week Google introduced custom-sized ad units in AdSense that blurs the line between Premium and regular publishers. Now all AdSense publishers are given an opportunity to create ad units of custom dimensions, tailor made for their own website. Let me explain.

Say your website has a sidebar that is 250 pixels wide. Previously, you could only choose between the regular skyscraper formats – 120×600 or 160×600 – even though none of these units would perfectly fit inside your sidebar. With custom-sized units now available in AdSense, you can create an ad unit that is exactly 250×600 in size thus taking all the available screen estate. Or if the sidebar is long, you can even choose to have a 250×1200 unit.

Custom-Sized Ad Units vs Regular AdSense Ads

An obvious advantage with custom-sized units is that they better fit the layout of your website. That said, Google algorithms may sometimes override your choice.

For instance, if you have created an ad unit that is 500×300 pixels, AdSense can still serve display ads in standard formats like the 300×250 or 336×280 for that unit. The smaller ad will be center-aligned and the remaining area is filled with whitespace.

Google may serve display ads of lesser dimensions inside custom-sized ad units.

Since Google is likely to display the highest performing ad – which could either be a custom-sized unit (that you’ve requested) or a regular unit – it may be a good idea to use custom-sized units in place of regular units as, with the former, you get the best of both worlds.

Convert Existing AdSense Ad Units to Custom-Sized Ads

Google recommends that you create a new ad unit in your AdSense dashboard and choose the option “Custom Ad Size” for creating a new custom-sized ad unit. You can however use your existing Ad units and convert them into a custom sized units.

All you have to do is adjust the width and height values in your existing ad code and regular unit will be automatically converted into a custom sized unit. Just make sure that both height and width values are less than 1200 pixels and that only one of these values is greater than 300 pixels.

Custom-Sized Ads vs Responsive Google Ads

Earlier this year, Google introduced Responsive AdSense ads where the size (read width) of the ad is dynamically specified based on the screen size of the device where that ad is being served. With responsive ads, you can serve a 336×280 large rectangle on the desktop and the same ad slot may serve a 320×100 ad when the page is viewed on a mobile device.

Now that custom-sized ad units are available, should you make the switch to these new units or continue to use the Responsive Ad units.

Google’s official recommendation is:

Custom-sized ad units are fixed sized ad units, i.e., they don’t dynamically change their size or respond to changes in screen orientation. If your site uses responsive design, we recommend that you use a responsive ad unit instead.

You can however still make your custom-sized ad units responsive such that their suggested size changes based on the device size or orientation. In Responsive Ads, you serve ads of a fixed width based on the screen size while in custom-sized ads you specify the maximum width that the ad can occupy. If you can dynamically specify this “maximum” width, your custom-sized ad unit will be responsive as well.

How to Make Custom-sized AdSense Ads Responsive

The AdSense ad units on this website are custom-sized units but they are responsive too. Here’s how you can implement such a thing on your own website or blog:

1. <div id="google-ads-1"></div>
3. <script type="text/javascript">
5. /* Replace ca-pub-XXX with your AdSense Publisher ID */
6. google_ad_client = "ca-pub-XXX";
8. /* Replace YYY with the AdSense Ad Slot ID */
9. google_ad_slot = "YYY";
11. /* Replace ZZZ with the custom height of your Ad Unit */
12. google_ad_height = ZZZ;
14. ad = document.getElementById('google-ads-1');
15.  
16. if (ad.getBoundingClientRect().width) {
17. google_ad_width = ad.getBoundingClientRect().width;
18. } else {
19. google_ad_width = ad.offsetWidth; // for old IE
20. }
21.  
22. /* The width of an Ad unit should be between 120-1200 pixels */
23. if (google_ad_width>1200) {
24. google_ad_width = 1200;
25. } else if (google_ad_width<120) {
26. google_ad_width = 120;
27. }
28.  
29. /* The height of an Ad unit should be between 50-1200 pixels */
30. if (google_ad_height>1200) {
31. google_ad_height = 1200;
32. } else if (google_ad_height<50) {
33. google_ad_height = 50;
34. }
36. /* Both height or width cannot be more than 300 pixels */
37. if ((google_ad_width>300) && (google_ad_height>300)) {
38. google_ad_height = 300;
39. }
41. document.write (
42. '<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:inline-block;width:'
43. + google_ad_width + 'px;height:'
44. + google_ad_height + 'px" data-ad-client="'
45. + google_ad_client + '" data-ad-slot="'
46. + google_ad_slot + '"></ins>'
47. );
49. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
51. </script>
52.  
53. <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>

Go to your AdSense dashboard and create a new Ad unit with the type as “Custom Ad Unit.” You can specify the dimensions as, say, 300×1200 pixels (either the height or width should be 300 pixels or less) and choose a default color and font scheme for the ad unit. Click the “Save and Get code” button to generate the ad code.

Note your AdSense publisher ID, Ad Slot ID and replace those values in the above block of code (line #6 & #9). You should also change the default height (line #12) of your custom sized unit (the width is automatically determined by JavaScript). Copy-paste the modified code anywhere in your web template and the custom-sized ads will fill the available width while being responsive.

The technique will work on both responsive and regular (non-responsive) websites.

Smart-sized Ads vs Custom-sized Ads

Some have pointed out in the comments that smart-sized responsive ads could be a better alternative to custom-sized ad units. Yes, implementing a smart-sized responsive unit is easier (you just have to add data-ad-format=”auto” to the ad code) but the downside is that you do not less control over the ads that will be served.

For instance, if the available ad space is 200 pixels, AdSense may serve a longer 160×600 unit though a small 200×200 square unit could have been a better fit. In that case, an option would be that you specify the height and width of the container div or simply use the custom-sized unit.

Quizot – For Those Who Like To Quiz And Learn

The latest buzz and talk among fellow quizzers in the quizzing circuit is about a brand new platform, Quizot, for quizzing enthusiasts and self-learners who are looking for something fresh, interesting and compelling.

Quizot, was launched about a month ago when it was launched in New Delhi by childhood friends and now, co-founders, Varun Jain and Akshay Bajaj, who have been active on the quizzing circuit during their school and college years.

How Does Quizot work?

Users on Quizot get to choose the topics they prefer to be quizzed on out of the various topics provided. However, unlike the type of quizzing most people are familiar with, such as the ones popular in schools, and trivia based quizzing which is more along the lines of quiz shows on television like the Bournvita Quiz Contest or even the infamous Kaun Banega Crorepati, the format of questions on Quizot very much follows the kind of quizzing seen mostly in Engineering and MBA colleges.

The user gets 10 questions for each quiz and each question has an individual time limit. For each correct answer a user receives credits. A user can also go ahead and contribute questions to Quizot using the ‘Add a Question’ feature. Answers are evaluated for both spelling and the time taken along with accuracy. Credits usually vary from 0 to 10 for a user’s response. For adding a question 20 credits are awarded.

Simple enough?

How did it come about?

You must be aware of quiz blogs and groups on Facebook and other social media websites, but have you ever noticed how a question is rather short-lived in most of these places? As soon as somebody answered a question, there was no incentive for anybody else to work on it.

The founders of Quizot had a notion about how online quizzing should be done. That’s what prompted them to start conceptualizing, and after lots of brainstorming, Quizot came into the picture.

The difference between Quizot and other quizzing websites

You see all these quizzing websites that keep coming up every now and then, and they’re all the same with the same features, the same type of questions, the same boring rules; you get the idea, right? But there are many of Quizot’s features that make it stand out.

Content

“Crafting a question for quizzes requires a specific style of writing.”

A lot of research and efforts are being made to keep the content on Quizot interesting, exciting and fresh. It is tightly controlled and each question is reviewed before going live. This ensures that only quality questions survive.

None of the questions repeat. The team goes to great lengths to remove duplicate questions. Funny, intriguing and dramatic at times, these questions are aimed at capturing a user’s imagination and drawing them in.

User Interface

The User Interface is well thought out, simple and interactive, without being loud or garish. The ‘flag’ and ‘add a question’ options make it possible for quizzers to be involved in the process.

Intuitive

The team is yet to receive a query like “How do I do this?” or “What does this mean?” That goes to show that the application is quite easy to understand and use. That’s exactly the type of no nonsense, intuitive application that the team had aimed for.

No options

It may surprise many users that there are no options for the answers. The answer has to be typed in and they are evaluated using complex string matching algorithms.. This is a feature that makes Quizot exactly like standard quizzing events. It makes a quiz more challenging and fun too!

Non “Google-able” text

Most quizzing websites are prone to “Google-able” text and don’t give any answers or explanations, or are limited to questions mostly from a certain predefined source but Quizot provides a healthy combination of all, and the topic selection makes it even better.

Pros and Cons

According to the feedback and suggestions received by the number of users Quizot has had in the past few weeks, here’s a list of pros and cons:

Pros

• The best thing about Quizot is the fresh, imaginative and innovative content. For a true quizzer, that’s the biggest plus point.
• The different topics which users are allowed to choose before taking a quiz.
• A simple yet elegant User interface.
• Different features like ‘Add a question’, ‘Flag’ and the pause button.
• Very fast and real time evaluation of answers.

Cons

• Non inclusion of social networking websites.
• Lack of leader boards and user profiles/statistics.

The cogwheels behind Quizot

Quizot has been built using Ruby on Rails on the server end and HTML5,JQuery on client end. The application employs MySQL for storage. Several optimization techniques have been used to make ensure high performance and minimum waiting time for the users. To this effect the website close follows Steve Sounders guide to High Performace Web Sites.

The current team

Varun Jain, one of the founders of Quizot and a graduate from Delhi College of Engineering, quit his job at Deloitte after working there for about a year and a half to work on his first start up.. In April 2013, he decided to start work on Quizot with his childhood friend and avid quizzer, Akshay Bajaj, a graduate from VIT, Pune. Akshay had been at the forefront of all student activities in his college, and had even represented India at ISFIT 2011 (Norway). Putting these skills to good use, he takes care of the business and content aspect of Quizot.

The current status of the project and the future

Quizot is a bootstrap start up with no funding, and it is not looking for funding at the present moment. The concept development started this year in late April, and then product was launched with practical features around second week of September.

Currently it is a minimum viable product with many more features in the pipeline and right now access to Quizot is on invite only mode. Users can invite their friends using email invites.

Though there are many features like difficulty levels, user statistics and explanations of answers that are currently being worked on and will go live in a few days, the main aim for the future is to follow the same guiding principle and keep the content as hygienic as possible while being inclusive.

If you are a quizzer or someone who just wants to learn something new in a fun way, and are looking for a change and for something exciting and new in the quizzing world, you should definitely check this out. I believe it’ll be worth your time.

5+ Effective Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers

Getting the icon for RSS feeds on websites and blogs is no big deal as the user-friendly interface of your blogging platform will aid you in adding RSS icons easily. The task is to keep your readers and regular visitors of your blog under the control so that, they will be able to know the updates on your website and visit it when needed. This is such a useful technique that lends its hand to even a million-dollar business but what is much more difficult is that making the visitors of your blogs to hit the RSS button to make him/her a regular reader, which is equivalent of signing up for your website.

I would not say this as that much hard even as there are certain ways which can help you to increase the subscribers count. Here are some of the main ways to increase the subscribers and of course it will help for your blogging as well.

#1 – Have Good Enough Sized RSS Icon

Well there is something that you can do to display that your blog or website has the RSS subscription enabled, make the RSS icon (using the HTML) size to a bigger size. This way you will find yourself capturing the visibility of the readers of your website and check on the icon to get into their daily reading board, as and when you update your website. Check this 70+ Resources to get perfect RSS Icon to match your blog’s theme.

#2 – Place Them Right

It is not good enough that you get a size alone for the RSS subscribe feed icon, but is also necessary that you get the icon placed in the right hand side top position of the web page so that the reader will find it easy to click to subscribe. Some of the positions in the website or blog will include the topmost corner on the right hand side of the page, or in the lowermost region at the end of the article giving the readers the opportunities to subscribe for reading your blog posts regularly.

#3 – Place them all over the website

When you are placing the RSS icon, see that this icon for subscribing readers to place them all over the website, that is in every page of your website. By this way you will have the readers subscribing in any of your page (he/she may land in any of your page) and once subscribed they will be intimated automatically on any new posts in your blog.

#4 – Tell your readers

RSS is not a new concept but still you will find many non-tech savvy people visiting your blog so let them know about RSS. By this way it is easy to attract a number of RSS subscribers by introducing them to RSS subscription. You can have a string of text near the icon to explain what is this being kept for and how does it works.

#5 – Comment with your RSS Feed URL

This is a clever way, I would say. Bloggers do leave comment on other blogs when they come across a good post but they will use their blog URL in the comment details. Let us do a simple tweak here, use your RSS Feed URL when you leave a comment on other blogs. This will be beneficial in 2 ways, the blog owner will subscribe to your feed and the people who leaves comments to the same post that you left will also subscribe to your RSS feed.

#6 – Subscribe to get more subscribers

Gaining more subscribers to your feeds is like collecting donation for a cause, and you will find that subscribing to read others blogs of similar interests will encourage them to read your blogs. This is one of the best ways to get quality and targeted readers to your blogs, believe me this is one of the ways I use to get loyal readers for my Medifast discounts and Nutrisystem coupons blog. This will definitely bring a number of subscribers so do not miss to try this out.

Definitely these simple ways will teach you the nuances of RSS subscribers!! Comments are really appreciated!!

49+ Websites For Copyright And Royalty Free Photos

Basically I’m an image hunter. I love creative and innovative images. I admire those images very much and I spend most of the time hunting for my blog post images. In this article I mentioned about 40+ websites where you can get copyright and royalty free images for your blog posts. Make sure you don’t misuse the images. Make proper use of the images and play it safe.

1. Google Image Search : Google Image Search is the comprehensive image search on the web.  But they also contain copyrighted images. So play it safe. Also try Google Similar Images (Labs)

2. Stock Exchange : SXC is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to those who need them free of charge. It contains over 350,000 quality stock photos by more than 30,000 photographers!

3. Flickr : Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. It is better to give Image Credits to the Flickr Users.

4. Pixabay : Pixabay.com is a sharing platform for quality public domain images. Pixabay provides around 65,000 photos, illustrations, and vector graphics free of copyrights that may be used without attribution for any application (Creative Commons CC0 dedication exclusively)

5. Getty Images : Getty Images offers high-quality, diverse and relevant stock photos, stock footage, stock music and editorial images for creative professionals

6. Morgue File : Morgue File contains high-resolution stock photography images free for either corporate or private use.

7. Compfight : Compfight makes good use of the flickr™ API. But it is not affiliated with flickr™ though.

8. Image * After : They provide free high resolution images and textures for commercial and personal use. Daily additions. Free hi-res stock photography, with abstract graphics search.

9. Open Photo : Open Photo is an open network of photographers consisting of pictures of animals, nature, landscape, architecture, still life, and technology.

10. Bigfoto : Bigfoto provides free download of all pictures with a link or reference. Most of the photos are from amateur photographers.

11. StockVault : Stockvault.net is a stock photo sharing website where designers and photographers can meet to share their stock photos and images.

12. Deviantart : Deviantart is a community of artists and those devoted to art. Digital art, skin art, themes, wallpaper art, traditional art, photography, poetry/prose and Art Prints.

13. FreeFoto : FreeFoto.com is the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet (link back and attribution required).

14. Free Images : Free images is a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in their collection are free to use on websites and printed materials.

15. Image Temple : Image Temple provides free royalty free images for personal and commercial use.

16. FreeMediaGoo : FreeMediaGoo was created for developers by developers. The content provided by them is royalty free. No need for annoying links and no limits to the amount of images you can use.

17. Woophy : Woophy stands for WOrld Of PHotographY, a website founded by a Dutch collective of photo aficionados and internet designers who believe navigation on internet can be more visual, logical and associative.

18. Cyclo : Cyclo.ps is an easy to use royalty free stock photo search engine. It is a one-stop shop for all of your stock photography needs.

19. Free Pixels : FreePixels offers free high resolution stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

20. Vintage Pixels : Vintage Pixels is a large database of historical, high quality, free-for-use images which allows people to share their archived photos.

21. Photogen : Photogen provides free, quality stock photography for both commercial and personal use. Their images are not for resale or redistribution. Please read their terms of use before downloading.

22. Kavewall : Kavewall provides free Stock Photos, Images and Textures. They have different kind of categories to search images.

23. FreeLargePhotos : You may use these images for your personal use if you note the source: © Copyright 2009 [name of photographer], FreeLargePhotos.com. If you use them on a web site, link to this site.

24. Open Stock Photography : Open Stock Photography is mashup created to help designers find free stock photography (or public domain photography).

25. Free Range Stock : Free Range Stock provides free stock photography for commercial or non-commercial use. High-resolution stock images and textures for FREE.

26. Free Stock Photography : Free Stock Photography is an open and royalty-free gallery that contains many high resolution free images.

27. Bing Image Search : Excellent competitor to Google Image Search. It is also a comprehensive image search on the web.  But they also contain copyrighted images. So play it safe.

28. Yahoo! Image Search : Google’s greatest competitor ever I can say. Yahoo! Image Search also has all the top features.

29. Free Digital Photos : Free Digital Photos provides thousands of royalty free photos for instant download. For commercial and non-commercial use. No registration required.

30. Aarin Free Images : Aarin Free Photo offers digital images absolutely free. They also provide Web Design tips to help you with ideas and image manipulation.

31. Free Photograph Networks : The Free Photographs Network is an online resource for royalty-free stock photographs for non-commercial use by the webmaster community.

32. PD Photo : PDPhoto.org is a repository for free public domain photos. Unless something is clearly marked as being copyrighted, you can assume it is free to use.

33. Animation Factory : Animation Factory provides you PowerPoint Templates, PowerPoint Backgrounds, Animated Clip Art and Video Backgrounds for use in web, email, and so on.

34. Big Stock Photo : Big Stock Photo provides true royalty-free stock images. They also provide many high resolution images.

35. Corbis Images : Corbis provides Royalty-Free and Rights Managed stock images for editorial and commercial applications, including iconic, historical, archival, and so on.

36. Dreamstime : Stock photography community providing high quality stock photos and stock images. Free photos added weekly.

37. Jupiter Images : Jupiter Images has over 500000 new Royalty-Free Stock photography images and photos. It is a subsidiary of Getty Images.

38. Matton Images : Provider of Royalty Free Stock Photography. Find an extensive library of digital Stock Photos as Single Images, CDs, available for direct download.

39. Mooch Images : Mooch Images offers contemporary stock photography covering all aspects of travel.

40. Photocase : Photocase is a royalty free stock photography community. Photocase photos are available to purchase for royalty-free use in commercial and non-commercial purposes.

41. Fotolia : Fotolia allow you to buy and sell royalty-free stock photos on. Affordable royalty-free stock photos, cheap stock images and stock pictures.

42. PhotoSpin : PhotoSpin has lot of Stock Photography. Your source for stock photos, illustrations, fonts, clip art and illustrations.

43. Shuttershock : Shuttershock provides you millions of high resolution royalty free images, stock photos, vector art, and stock photography.

44. Wallpaperstock : Wallpaperstock provides you free stock photos, free desktop wallpapers, backgrounds and so on.

45. Picapp : Picapp provides you the best stock photography images and pictures for your blog or website, royalty-free. You can use them absolutely free of cost by giving a back link. (ThanksHimanshu)

46. FreePhotosBank : Any photos/pictures posted by the author “freephotosbank” are free to use as long as you are using them for a website, book, magazine, etc. You cannot download our photos to sell as is or modified from any source. (Thanks Sunny Bhasin)

47. EveryStockPhoto : Everystockphoto.com is a license-specific photo search engine. Currently they index and search millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and present them in an integrated search. (Thanks Sunny Bhasin)

48. Free Range Stock : Free stock photography for commercial or non-commercial use at freerangestock.com. High-resolution stock images and textures for FREE.

49. Photoxpress : PhotoXpress.com provides creative professionals a vast and legal image library for both personal and professional use. Sign up and download free stock images. 

50. Ookaboo! : Ookaboo is a collection of free pictures, indexed by precise terms from the semantic web. All pictures on Ookaboo are in the public domain or are under Creative Commons — that means that you can use their pictures for your web site, classwork, or other creative projects!

Remember the images from the search engines may or may not be copyrighted, that is not for sure. After getting the required image, check the source and contact the webmaster. Find their terms or policies.