So, if you’ve ever had to restore a website because it’s been hacked, lost, or you forgot to pay your web hosting bill, you know the importance of  having a backup. With a static website, it’s sort of easy, but now that many sites are being build using Content Management Systems, such as WordPress, it’s more complicated. For a site like this, there may be thousands of files, and they are all over the place.

One of the cool thing about open source software are all the add-on tools that are being developed to the core functionality. In the WordPress world, they call them ‘Plugins.’

When we started building sites using WordPress, there were about 6,000 plugins. Now there are over 13,000 and counting. Wow, that’s traction!

An amazing tool for websites is a plugin that backs your website automatically to Amazon’s S3 service. The plugin is called Automatic WordPress Backup and can be found HERE.

• It backs up the entire site including the html, database, themes, plugins, uploaded files and settings files.
• It is a totally automated backup and you can set it for daily, weekly, or monthly backup.
• If uses Amazon S3, and if you haven’t used it yet, it’s really inexpensive. We back up about a dozen sites, and it costs us less than $5 per month.

OK, it requires certain levels of Linux & PHP to be in place and a few other things but most mainstream hosts offer what you need.

by Al Morel

Recently, I came across some stats on the use of Content Management Systems that I thought were really eye opening.

The sources of this info is the Wikipedia page on WordPress and the ongoing report of: Usage of content management systems for websites, by W3Techs – World Wide Web Technology Surveys. W3Techs surveys the top one million websites (as ranked by Alesa) on a daily basis and reports on various benchmarks, and use of CMS is one of those.

The first thing that jumped out was that only 13% of all websites employ a CMS. This is truly astounding now that we know all the advantages and cost savings that a CMS can provide.

Of all of the hundreds of CMS platforms out there, WordPress dominates the market with over 55% of the total market. Considering that WordPress was really not developed as a CMS and has evolved as individuals started to use it on their own for this purpose, it is quite amazing.

Here are the stats on the top Content Management Systems:

This month, we are participating in a networking event called Ignite NEWDA Hudson. The presentation topics will focus around Marketing, General Business,  Technology, and the Internet.

The Ignite program is an international networking event that has presentations followed by activities, libations, and networking. The presentations are all 20 PowerPoint slides at a duration of 15 seconds each, so a total of 5 minutes per presentation.

The pilot event will be held on Tuesday, November 16 at the Harvest Cafe in Hudson, MA.

Our objective is to build the model of a successful event and help run similar events throughout New England in the spring of 2011.

Ignite NEWDA Hudson Dates

• Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 7PM

Event Schedule:

• 7:00 – 7:30 Registration
• 7:30 + Presentations
• After: Networking

Event Details:

• Cost: $10 (snacks provided, cash bar)
• Location: Harvest Cafe, 40 Washington Street, Hudson, MA 01749
• RSVP: Requested but not required.
• Topics: Marketing, Technology, and the Internet

View Map of Harvest Cafe Location

If you have an interest in attending an event, or would like to run an event in your area, please contact: Al Morel: al@commareus.com 978 618 0686.

For more info on the New England Web Developers Group: www.newda.org

As many of our friends and business associates have heard, Dan is getting married this first weekend in Septemeber. Here’s a photo in traditional Cambodian dress. This really does make tuxes and white dresses look boring!

All the best to Dan and Lika!

by Al Morel

The short and sweet answer is not for a while yet, but someday…

As you may, or may not know, IE6 is the bane of existence for web designers and developers. It’s old, weak, and tired, and many sites have stopped supporting it, but somehow, it still lives.

Just in the last few weeks, we’ve found a couple of examples of lasting entrenchment of IE6. In one instance it was physician who wanted to use an eComm that we had created. This person was running IE6 and was using a system maintained by one of the largest medical networks in the state of Massachusetts. As it turned out, IE6 was not the culprit but their own firewall. In another situation it was an mid sized insurance company with about 20 employees.

In some ways, it’s actually a good thing. We test all the sites we build in all the browsers shown in the chart below. It’s not easy getting them all to cooperate together but it certainly separates the web pros from the wannabes.

I found this breakdown of web browsers from this website: w3schools.com. As you can see, IE6 is slowly dying, and if you go to the site you can see the withering, and emergence,  of other browsers over the past few years.

Remember Netscape and AOL?

Browser stats January 2009 to April 2010