Today I’m going to take things off topic a bit and share my latest experience with our website issues. Lately, Google has been saying that website speed is going to be considered a factor in their search algorithm. So I thought I would do a speed test on our site to see how we compared to the big players. I started to look more into the issue when we noticed that our site wasn’t the most stable. As time went on, it was getting to the point where this site would actually crash for a few minutes every time we tried to edit a post. So when we received a media mention from the Globe and Mail last week I was pretty nervous that we would crash due to the increased traffic! Speed Test Your Website With Google As it turns out, I shouldn’t have done anything because the results were pretty terrible and we needed to take some big steps in order to improve. According to Google Speed Test we were anywhere between a 74-79 depending on the time of day. With our site being so unstable I was beginning to wonder if a full moon had anything to do with it. As I dove deeper into the issue I found there were a number of things wrong and went about making things right. From the speed test sites I was able to get a good handle on what the issues were and was able to get some guidance on how to correct them. So we did the basic stuff Installed Caching Decreased the size of all of our pictures Installed Cloudflare (use a CDN) Removed unnecessary plugins Deleted Themes that we weren’t using Optimized Database………..Here is where I found my 2 week headache. WordPress Databases Will Skew Your Speed Test Despite what Teacher Man thinks of my technical abilities, I can’t do any serious coding. I can use WordPress pretty good, but as soon as I see more than 3 lines of HTML code I get confused pretty easily. With that said, I’m still light years ahead of him ;). When WordPress databases came into the picture I was immediately lost in the thousands of lines of code and tables. On every website I found on speeding up your website, they all mention the basic stuff that fixes 80% of the problem, speeds up the site by 80%, but for us it was something a little out of the ordinary. To break it down, whenever you leave your WordPress post open for editing it will create an auto-save every few minutes. Each time it saves, it generates a new copy; thus a new line of code in your database. After editing 200+ posts it tends to fill the data base up with garbage that you don’t need slowing down your site. Another annoying thing is each and every plugin you install will leave most of its settings in the database, even if you uninstall them. I’m pretty sure this applies to themes as well and when we first started out we were [...]
Speed Test Your Site For Stability
We Are Officially Media Moguls
“Hey man, you want to buy a blog” “Can we do that?” “Yah, but our girlfriends will kill us…” And just like that, we began the process that ultimately led to us buying a blog that is pretty cool by any metric (maybe even as cool as this one) – Young and Thrifty. If you’re not familiar with the site, it’s original author is this cool PF chick from British Columbia who wrote all kinds of good stuff about personal finance in general, and plenty of Canadian-specific content. So how does a person come to buy a blog, and why the hell would anyone pay anything for a website you might ask (or at least a lot of our family and friends did)? Taking Care Of Business… In truth, we bought the blog because we are confident we can build on the successful momentum created by the original author. In case you weren’t aware, blogs generate income through advertisements and such (or at least they are supposed to… we’re still waiting for it to come flooding in). If all goes according to plan, this blog purchase will pay for itself in roughly a year or so… or 2. In case you just pulled out your calculator… yes that’s a pretty sweet ROI. That being said, it will require a large degree of time and effort, so success will not come without its price. … and Working Overtime! We had a couple advantages we thought were pretty key in the acquisition as well. The first consideration is that I have already been writing over there for quite a while now as a staff writer; therefore, I knew the audience, and I know quite a bit about the site. A second factor was the fact that the original is going to stick around and help us out going forward. Basically, I believe she likes writing, but all of the other stuff involved with blogging was starting to burn her out. We were happy to take the baton and are now planning to run like hell with it. Wish us luck as we take some of our first entrepreneurial steps forward into the abyss/promising future. Don’t worry My University Money readers, you’ll always be our first, and we’ll always make time for you (wow… that sounds like a really bad break up line… seriously though, we’re not screwing you over, we’ll still post cool stuff here too). Here are a few of the sites most popular articles: 9 Reasons Why I Deactivated My Facebook Account Are Financially Independent Women A Turn On? Shoppers Drug Mart/ Pharmaprix Optimum Program Review Sites Like Groupon Are Easy To Come By – Living Social, AtCost, Yipit & GoodNews How To Get More Money From Your Tax Return Cohabitation Agreements Variable and Fixed Mortgages And here are a few of the articles I’ve written for the site over the last year: Why Deflation and Falling Home Prices are a Big Deal Generation Y and Leadership How Your Living Arrangements Affect [...]
Now Introducing…
Hello Readers! My name is Bridgette Stevenson, I’m seventeen years old, and am currently in the middle of making that much anticipated transition from high school to university! After graduating high school a semester early to have the freedom to do some travelling and make extra money before attending university, I moved from my small rural community to temporarily join my sister in the city during this time. Growing up on a farm has come with limited opportunity in terms of education including course options, academic challenges, and making strong connections with diverse people. Although I can’t think of a more comfortable environment to grow up in, I am looking forward to the endless options I will have the chance to consider in university. Throughout my years in high school, I always kept busy with extracurricular activities including athletics, student government, volunteering at numerous community events, and enjoyed the lack of competition that allowed me to take on leadership roles. Over the next few years, I hope to continue having fun in these areas of the residence experience while taking on the new academic challenges. After being fortunate enough to receive a major scholarship for my undergraduate studies at any Canadian university, my small plans have expanded to moving far out of province to make the most out of this incredible opportunity. Although it is far too early to determine a long term career, I am planning to start with a degree in environmental design from the University of British Columbia. I am excited by the first couple years of general studies this degree includes, which will allow me to explore different areas while having the option of coming out with a more career focused base in the area of architecture. Because everyone has such diverse core beliefs, personalities, and ambitions, I cannot bring myself to seriously take or give advice, but do enjoy opening the possibilities which come from sharing ideas through discussions. I hope some of my writing will help aid in the transition from high school to university, while simultaneously enriching my own experience. TM: Thanks for taking some time to write for us Bridgette. While I am technically still a student, I’ve noticed that between JB and I we are having a tough time channelling our inner 17/18 year old selves; consequently we think your perspective as a young student will be invaluable to your peers and their parents. It has also been not-so-subtly suggested that we should get a female’s perspective here on MUM. I have to tell you that I will probably sabotage your articles from time to time so that our limited writing skills are not consistently shown up by a freshman!
Claiming a Business Loss – Losing Money Never Felt So Good
So a couple weeks ago I sat down to get our tax situation figured out for 2011. We decided to go with a chartered account to file all of the paperwork for us. It actually worked out pretty well since he needed a website made for him and one of us (I’ll leave it up to you to guess) is pretty good at doing that sort of thing. As a bonus for future years, we found out that since we are now a registered business, we can deduct the costs of having someone do our books, from the revenue of the business itself. If we assume our marginal tax rate is somewhere around 35-40%, this basically means that the tax preparation really only costs us less than 2/3 of the sticker price. Anyway, I had done my own taxes in the past (I still recommend trying your hand at this process if your return is fairly straight forward), but I wanted someone who was sure they knew what they were doing since we had to include business-related stuff this time around. I had never really paid attention to all the deductions that businesses were allowed to make since it never affected me before. I was vaguely aware that my dad “wrote-off” quite a few things with his lumber business when I was young, but I didn’t really understand just how extensive tax deductions can be for a business. Now I should say right up front that I am definitely no tax expert, I don’t play one on TV (or on my blog) and I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so take my opinions and thoughts for what they are worth. Running A Blog Costs More Than I Thought After adding up all our revenues and immediate costs related to the business (stuff like hosting, design help, contract work, software, internet costs etc.) I thought we would likely break even for 2011; however, after learning all the expenses I was allowed to claim against our revenues, I was never so happy to report that I had “lost” quite a bit of a money. So for our first year in business, we are claiming a business loss! The main aspect of these deductions that I was not aware of was all of the home expenses that we are able to deduct. The basic idea is that if you conduct more than 50% of your business from home, you are allowed to claim many different business costs such as rent, mortgage (sans interest), home insurance costs, utilities from your taxes. The percentage of these costs you are allowed to deduct is based on the square footage of your home office as a percentage of the overall square footage in your house. Now I know why so many people try to create fraudulent businesses – they could be quite lucrative! Now hopefully this will be the only year that we claim a loss for our business. I definitely plan on [...]
ETF Investing – Low Maintenance and Stellar Returns
So the big day is finally here and we are ready to unveil our eBook the world. A huge thanks goes out to all of the great help I’ve had building and marketing the eBook! Without further ado…. Click Here to download our thorough ETF Investing manual for FREE So why ETF Investing? I honestly believe that for most people, investing through ETFs is by far the most efficient and profitable way to invest money. The bottom line is that most human beings want the investment returns that the stock market provides, but are terrible at picking stocks. Most people get convinced that they should be buying mutual funds, and that they are the best answer, but this is almost assuredly false. Our eBook will show you mathematically, and beyond a shadow of a doubt why ETF investing is superior to most other kinds of investing for MOST people. If you are Warren Buffet, obviously you might have success in other ways; but, for most of us mere financial mortals, using ETFs just makes so much sense. I’m not going to pretend that this Free eBook is some new investment strategy that no one else has ever seen – it isn’t. What it is, is a common sense guide on the best investment option for the average person. It isn’t written by a world expert on financial machinations that holds 3 Ph.Ds. It is written by a business teacher who is relatively experienced at breaking down investment concepts for “average” people to understand. I have to admit to not conducting some new survey, or coming up with a new metric to measure stocks by, instead I used the analysis and research of people far smarter than I to convince you that ETF investing is probably the right path for you. Our eBook Is FREE – So What Do You Have To Lose? If you still aren’t convinced by the price tag and slightly above average sales pitch, I decided to give you a little taste of the product: Chapter 4 – Stock Picking Is For Suckers “Just do ______ and _______ and you too can beat the market!” “Simply follow these few basic rules to win at the stock market and make yourself rich in the process.” “If you use our secret formula for penny stocks you are guaranteed to make millions. Look, we did it, so can you!” These are just a few of the very successful marketing pitches that have found their way into the world of investing over the years. There are certainly no shortage of people who claim that they know the special way to get you unbelievable returns on money. Whether it is the “value investing approach” of Warren Buffett (which actually makes a lot of sense to me… if you are as good at seeing value as Warren Buffett is), the growth model that Peter Lynch espouses, or several other fairly well-known investing strategies that have all been in vogue at one time or another. All of [...]
Free Expense Tracking Software
