Just Completed the Google Analytics Digital Analytics Fundamentals

 

Google launched a course last month on Digital Analytics Fundamentals. It’s a great course for all people who are interested in learning the basics of Digital Analytics. If you are interested in web and love data analysis, then I would recommend that you sign up for this course and go through the simple set of videos.

The course also had a assessment test with a Certification of Completion (yes, I graduated .. yayy!). The test is fairly simple if you go through the course or have been working with Google Analytics. However when you have a busy work week, you often tend to procrastinate these things … such as I did for the last day!!

However, this is a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn Web Analytics.

And, here’s my certificate of clearing the course! Unfortunately, this is linked to the Google Account that gives the test, so it’s not available to view for the public!

Ubuntu completes 9 Years

OMG Ubuntu released this beautiful infographic, which talks about the history of Ubuntu … I have literally grown (yes, even my waist) as a person when working with Ubuntu. Here’s a look back at the history of Ubuntu.

I have been using Ubuntu since 2004, when I only used to flirt with Linux. What tickled me back then was the Ubuntu was afrikaans for freedom.

2006 was the first time when I stopped using Windows altogether and worked for 2 straight years on Dapper Drake. Those were the days, when I was single, was in Hyderabad and spent consecutive new years eves drinking a single malt and installing a new version of Ubuntu.

As I look back and see how working on Ubuntu has impacted me, and my preferred style of working, I only appreciate that this distro has made such a huge impact on personal computing, that its being used by non-techies to do day to day work. It is because of such distros the Linux has been touted as the future of gaming.

Ubuntu completes 9 Years

Some WordPress plugins to Enhance WordPress Websites

WordPress plugins

In a prior post we saw 5 wordpress plugins which you should always install. If you have missed that  article then you can read it here.

In a follow-up post we will discuss some more WordPress plugins. Today’s plugin will be those which I and many other WordPress authors use to enhance the visibility and performance of our site.

WP Super Cache

I am in love with this particular plugin as it has helped me a lot in my WordPress development.

All webmasters know that the site response time is an essential part of your Website SEO as well as site statistics. Studies say that most visitors don’t like to wait for more than 10 sec while the site keeps loading. This is one of the main reason behind scrapped articles which results in higher Bounce rates.

WP Super Cache helps you reduce the site load time by serving your site from cache to the visitor. This plugin serves your dynamic site as a static HTML website to the visitor. Thereby reducing the load time significantly. It also has an compress pages option which compresses your JS, Images and other scripts and html adding to the site reduction.

Following are recommended settings in the plugin

  1. PHP caching.
  2. Compress pages.
  3. Don’t cache pages for known users.
  4. Cache rebuild.
  5. CDN support.
  6. Extra homepage checks.

This plugin helped me achieve a Pagespeed of 87 from 81 which is at significantly higher side of the marking being a WordPress news/articles website.

 

WassUp Real Time Analytics

wassup real ime analytics

Wassup is my personal favorite Analysis plugin and I’ve been using this plugin for the past 2 years. Wassup provides almost realtime analysis of the visitors. This plugin comes with a dashboard widget giving an idea of the traffic and online visitors.

When we visit the plugin settings page it provides much more in-depth details of the visits. It provides

  1. IP
  2. Pages visited
  3. Type of visitor (Spam, Spider, Bot, Human etc.) and much more info.

My personal experience shows that the plugin provides almost same statistics as the Google analytics just this is a compact version and worth a try.

 

Adminimize

This particular plugin is most helpful when there are more than one contributors to the site or you are developing a website in which you required to display only certain menus to the user as they may not require most of the menu.

Now WordPress does offer some default role based accesses, however, I have noticed that more often than not these roles are not completely usable.

Adminimize Options

Above image is sufficient to give you a hint at what this plugin is capable in doing.

 

Enable Media Replace

enable media replace plugin

This is a real helpful plugin. Most developers have a habit of uploading new content on the site when any wrong media files are uploaded. But mostly they forget to delete old incorrect files. Enable media replace helps in such situation.

When installed and activated this plugin puts a  Upload new File button in the media file .

This can be found in Media →Media File Name

In this it allows to replace the media file with the new one and also it replaces all the references of the old file in complete site with the newer file.

 

NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster{SNAP}

snap

SNAP is a very helpful plugin for connecting all the social media to the wordpress blog. All the SMO’s out there love such plugins as these reduce their efforts.

WebMaster have to just write the article. SNAP will automatically post the said article to all the connected and configured social media accounts.

Following is the networks supported by the plugin

Blogger/Blogspot Delicious.
Diigo Facebook
FriendFeed Instapaper
Google+ (with third party API library) LinkedIn
LiveJournal Pinterest (with third party API library)
Stumbleupon Tumblr
Twitter Plurk
vBulletin vKontakte(VK.com)
WordPress YouTube

Free version of the site allows adding only a single account of all above mentioned social sites.

Solstice Arena – Zynga’s answer to MOBA

This week Zynga launched their version of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA). Some of the other well known titles in this genre of gaming are League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth and of course the ever so popular and by now the clear leader, Defense of the Ancients 2. My personal favourite in this is by far DOTA2 and I have been also written simple tips on how to avoid dying often in DOTA2. Having said that, I was quite piqued to see how the company which did scientific data analysis and extensive research on how users planted crops in their fields in Farmville, will create a game for this audience.

Solstice Arena’s different take on MOBA

Zynga have taken a different look at MOBA, where the standard game is to keep killing creeps and farms and get enough money for weapons. Once you have equipped yourself to the hilt, then the actual game begins. Thus, the initial game is almost always wait and watch farm. This is where Solstice shines through … there are no creeps.

Yes, you read it right the first time around. There are absolutely no creeps. In fact Zynga calls this game a Speed MOBA, where the focus is to start battling as soon as possible. Which means, the entire game is a series of team fights. The better team wins.

Simple Gameplay

Gameplay - Solstice Arena

Unlike other arena games where you get kills, then XP and then unlock your skills, Solstice Arena gives you all the skills you require right off the bat.

Even weapon selection is minimal. In short, there is no point in farming, the whole focus is to kill the enemy and take down their towers. This simplicity ensures that games are short … sometimes short enough to not even let you fully equip your hero! The game involves taking down three towers and then the main oracle of the opposing team.

What makes the game interesting is a rich source of power-ups which are available throughout the map. Certain power-ups are made for you specially, and certain are meant for other team members.

Hero Development

So this is how Zynga is introducing the replay value of the game. By rewarding the player to keep playing more games with the same hero!

What this means is that for each game played, the user gets experience points per hero. Every time the hero levels up (this is outside the game), he gets to increase the effectiveness of his spells. Thus a fully enhanced hero would be far stronger than a new hero.

It also ensures that the user gets acquainted with a few heroes and works towards getting to know them.

Pros

  • The game is pretty simple and enjoyable. The focus is not on rich character development, the focus is on team fights. There would be lots of these. Since there is no character level, loosing a team fight is not such a big thing and you can always come back.
  • The game cannot last more than 20 minutes. If it is getting stretched beyond that, then you are doing something wrong.
  • There is a limit to which you can farm, after which you cannot even use all that gold you have amassed. The message is clear. Stop farming, start killing.
  • It’s fun and simple.
  • Installation is a breeze, only 500 MB in an age where games are on an average 10-12 GB.
  • Even a newbie can start playing, the community is not yet fully vocal and accepts mistakes :) … unlike the other MOBAs you see where a simple mistake can lead you getting blasted by your own teammates or even worse reported.

Cons

  • You cannot play with all heroes. You have to unlock each of them. This could mean quite a grind.
  • The game is Free to Play (F2P), but for the person willing to pay money, he gets to up his heroes and be far stronger in the game.
  • Free players are going to be fodder for paying customers. This although is the complaint of almost all F2P games, with the exception of DOTA2.

Will Solstice Arena save Zynga?

I thoroughly enjoyed Solstice Arena, in fact when I started playing it initially, I was not even aware that this is a Zynga product! For people who have been following Zynga for the past few years. you would know that the company has seen a few ups and a lot of downs. Ever since they went public with an IPO, they have had to fire their CEO, layoff a lot of their staff and drive their current set of employees to work longer hours. This was primarily due to the fact that almost all of their games were solely relying on Facebook and Facebook at one point stopped cooperating with Zynga.

Solstice comes in as a breath of fresh air and may yet give hope for the company to survive. This is a game which is fast being adopted by a lot of players, is available for free on Steam, and yet has enough products to give Zynga a fair shot in the MOBA genre. Definitely worth downloading!!

Food for Thought

The Slow Winter

A hilarious take on Moore’s Law. If you have studied hardware and transistors, then definitely read through this article. Do note, that it’s a PDF document. What is Moore’s Law? … well

Moore’s law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years.

5 Dos and Don’ts of International SEO – Whiteboard Friday

I had earlier written about Moz’s Aleyda and her checklist for International SEO. Last week Moz had a Whiteboard Friday with Aleyda running us through that Checklist. For people wishing to target other geographies where they do not have any presence, this is a must see video.

Six Visual Solutions To Complex Digital Marketing/Analytics Challenges

Avinash Kaushik gives simple and clear answers to most challenges that digital marketers. The explanation uses Venn Diagrams to make strong points. If you are a HiPPo (Highly Paid Person with an Opinion), then do take some time from your busy schedule and go through this. If your organization is not actively working on any analytics initiatives, then it is high time that you should start!

Sexy Up Your Marketing Data

Annie Cushing shares her presentation from SMX East and drives a point home. For marketers to make sense to the top management, data visualization is crucial. People prefer looking at great looking data instead of just a series of numbers.