I recently noticed that apart for the decrease in page loading time, the activity of Googlebot has increased manyfold. Here’s a screen-shot of the report from Google Webmaster Tools :

Not bad, eh?

More recently, I moved this blog to the VPS running on Nginx, and I have not been disappointed. This blog is running on WordPress 3.0.1, with no caching plugins. The posts seem to load faster than ever, as evident from this Google Webmaster Tools report :

I couldn’t be more happy.

PS: Of course, some of the speed improvement can be attributed to the fact that I moved from a shared server to a VPS, but that doesn’t undermine the awesomeness that is Nginx.

PPS: Just in case anyone’s interested, I’m providing limited slots for hosting your site on this VPS. If you are interested, visit the page.

Related posts:

1. WordPress permalinks in nginx
2. Nginx: Resolving “No input file specified” error
3. WWW or no-WWW?

I logged into my VPS and checked the access logs.

cat animorphsfanforum.access.log | grep 'mail.php'

174.129.237.157 - - [20/Jul/2010:05:32:40 +0000] "GET /mail.php HTTP/1.0" 200 0 "-" "ia_archiver (+http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters; crawler@alexa.com)"

I have a Firefox plugin to check the Alexa rank, and the URL must’ve been sent to Alexa when I executed that script for the first time. The Alexa bot sent the email while crawling the URL.

Much ado about nothing?

No related posts.

Advantages :
Not using WWW :

• WWW is actually a subdomain. Would you like users to access your site using a subdomain?
• WWW, as pointed out by No-WWW.org, is deprecated. There is no purpose of typing www into the address bar except following a premeditated custom.
• Users have to type less into the address bat to access your website.
• Long domain names look better without the www.
• According to some, not using www has a geekyness or coolness factor associated with it.

Using WWW :

• People tend to trust sites which use WWW. Many take a WWW at the front of the domain name to be a sign of reliability and trust.
• Most of the biggest players in the web industry use a WWW before their domain names.

Disadvantages :

Not using WWW :

• People tend to think that sites not using www are unreliable and unscrupulous.
• Not using WWW presents some difficulties while load balancing. The most common load balancing setup involves duplicating the files and the databases across different servers and pointing the WWW subdomain to those servers using CNAME records. But according to DNS specifications, bare domain names cannot have CNAME records. So, what is commonly done is, the domain is pointed to the different servers using A records instead of CNAME records. This essentially results in load sharing, not load balancing. In this configuration, the user won’t automatically load the page from the least loaded server, instead the requested page will be randomly served by any of the server.

Using WWW :

• There is actually no feasible disadvantage of using WWW. However, we can say that while requesting a page, using www, we actually have to type out 3 extra Ws, and those three extra Ws are sent to the DNS servers for resolving. However, in this age of gigabit communication, such things hardly matter.

Now you’ll have to choose what you should implement for you website: WWW or no-WWW. Here are the .htaccess codes for redirecting users from www to non-www URLs and vice versa :

Redirection Codes :

WWW to Non-WWW :

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Non-WWW to WWW :

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

However, there is a common misconceptions about WWW/Non-WWW :

Q. Having both WWW and Non-WWW URLs valid is bad for SEO and will result in penalization.

A. This isn’t sufficient evidence to support this statement. Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have algorithms that are intelligent enough to know that www and non-www versions of a website are same. However, in some rare cases, it has been found that www and non-www versions of a page have different pageranks. So, it’s best to specify your preference (www/ non-www) using Google Webmaster Tools and direct all traffic to either www or non-www versions of your site.

Related posts:

1. A guide to DNS
2. How to set up a sub subdomain
3. How to change hosts without any downtime, step by step

• Step 1 :

First, add your domain to the control panel of your new host. This way, you’ll ensure that their name servers are updated with your domain’s information, when you point your domain to your new host.

• Step 2 :

Put your site in read-only mode or maintenance mode. This way, you can ensure that your content do not change while you shift your files. Put up a short message informing visitors of the shifting of hosts. If your site consists of static HTML files, you do not need to worry about this.
Note : Most forums have an option for turning on the maintenance mode. For a WordPress blog, you might consider using the Maintenance Mode plugin.

• Step 3 :

Next, backup everything : your databases, files. If you use cPanel, use the Backup feature to backup your files and databases. You might also request your current host to backup your databases and files for you and they should probably do it. You can also manually download all your files using an FTP client and backup your databases with tools like phpMyAdmin.

• Step 4 :

Now upload the files into your new web host’s webspace. Most hosts provide a way of uploading your files and databases and view your site before the DNS changes propagate. However if your host does not provide you any such a way, you can take help of a little trick.
Note : This would not work unless you have performed the instructions in step 1 of this guide.

Take a note of your new host’s name servers. Let’s say, they are ns1.newhost.com and ns2.newhost.com. Now let’s query those name servers about your domain using the nslookup utility. Go to Start>Run and type in the following :

nslookup yourdomain.com ns1.newhost.com

Replace yourdomain.com with the name of your domain.
The query should output something like this :

Server: ns1.newhost.com
Address: XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

Name: mydomain.com
Address: 1.2.3.4

Take a note of the IP address of mydomain.com. Now, go to ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc’ and open the file named ‘hosts’ with a text editor. On a new blank line, add the following lines :

1.2.3.4    yourdomain.com
1.2.3.4    www.yourdomain.com

Replace yourdomain.com and 1.2.3.4 with their real-life equivalents.

Now your domain will be pointed to the IP address of your new host’s server only for you. Now you can upload your files, databases to your new host using yourdomain.com as the URL. After uploading everything, check whether your site is looking as it should and whether it’s generating any errors. If there is any errors or discrepancies, correct them. You should make a minor, but noticable change to your index file at your new host so that you can know if the DNS changes have propagated. After this you should remove the two lines from the ‘hosts’ file that you previously added to it, so that the domain resolves to your old host.

• Step 5 :

Now it’s time to change the DNS record of your domain. First we have to check if your new host’s name servers have been updated with records of your domain. For this, we need to run an nslookup query. Go to Start>Run and type in :

nslookup yourdomain.com ns1.newhost.com

If the query returns a non-authoritative answer or a “*** UnKnown can’t find yourdomain.com: Server failed” result, then your new host’s name servers haven’t updated yet. Use the same nslookup query to query the name servers again after some time. Repeat this process until it doesn’t return a non-authoritative answer or gives errors for your domain name. Usually, a name server updates itself every 15 minutes, but there may be exceptions. Now it’s safe to change your DNS records. Change your name servers to that of your new host’s OR change your A records to point your domain to your new host’s server’s IP, whichever you wish. The DNS changes will take around 24 to 48 hours to propagate around the world. You’ll know that the changes have propagated when you notice the minor change in your website which you did in Step 4.

Don’t delete your old hosting account yet. Until the DNS changes propagate around the world, people will go to your site hosted at your old host. It’s usually safe to delete your old hosting account after 5 days.

This pretty much concludes this article. If you face any problems while following the steps above, leave a comment and I’ll gladly help you.

See also : Automated website tools.

Related posts:

1. A guide to DNS
2. WWW or no-WWW?
3. How to set up a sub subdomain