How Web Savvy are You? Check your Answers!

November 20, 2008

At Tortus we believe that business should be fun and profitable... not always in that order! This month we decided to create a thought-provoking quiz to break up these chilly fall days and test your web prowess. Check out our quiz below - then scroll down for the answers.

1. Would you rather have 1,000 hits to your website or 10 visitors? Is there a difference?

2. What is the easiest way to see if a website is secure before I enter my credit card information?

3. What does RSS stand for (as in RSS feed)?

4. Is there a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?

5. What is a spider and what role does it play on the World Wide Web?

6. Where is the well-known Northeast Data Center located?

7. What are the benefits of a CMS?

8. What percentage of all web searches are done in Google?

Answers

1. There certainly is a difference! A "hit" is not a visitor to a web site, but a hit on the web server. A hit on the server can be a graphic, java applet, html file, etc. If a page you are looking at has 79 small graphics on it, your time on that page will be registered as 79 hits. You can imagine how quickly the hits will add up when it's possible for one person to be measured as hundreds of hits! Even if your website shows up on the 200th page of a Google search - Congratulations! You just received a hit!

A visitor is a more credible way to measure web traffic. Using the IP address, domain name, or cookie of the visitor, web analytical software can track the individual people that are actually viewing your website. Each person that enters your website is counted as just that - one person. To learn more about web analytics, we invite you to attend our free seminar on Wednesday, November 26th. Click here to learn more and sign up.

2. The easiest way to verify that you are entering personal information on a secure page is to check the URL! Simply look at the web address at the top of the page. If the page has an SSL certificate, or Secure Socket Layer, the http:// that you are accustomed to seeing will change to https:// (note the "s"). A SSL certificate encrypts the data that you are entering to ensure that only the recipient of the information can read the credit card number, social security number, etc. For these reasons, a SSL certificate is a must for ecommerce websites! 

3. Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works, such as blog entries or news headlines. Instead of visiting 4 different websites to check local and national headlines, an RSS feed allows you to sign into one portal, where headlines from all 4 news outlets are brought directly to YOU. To subscribe to a feed, simply click on the orange RSS feed button located on most websites. To subscribe to the Tortus RSS feed, simply click here.

4. Yes! The Internet and the Web are two separate, but related things. The Internet is to the World Wide Web as Europe is to France - the Internet is a container that simply holds the Web. The Internet is a massive infrastructure of networks. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

The World Wide Web, or simply the Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, one of the many languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. The Web utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents, such as the page you are looking at now!

(Thanks to Webopedia for simplifying what can be a very complex subject!)

5. A spider, or a web crawler, is an automated script that reads websites and then reports information back to the search engines. It literally crawls over the web and feeds information to Google, Yahoo, AOL, and the thousands of other search engines in use. The crawler returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. The spider will periodically return to your website to check for any new or updated information. To learn more about how search engines index your site, contact us today for a free web assessment.

6. Year after year, Marlborough, MA, is consistently on the cutting edge of advancements in technology and electronics. The home of Fidelity Investments, Raytheon, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Sun Microsystems, Boston Scientific, and the many other electronic and computer firms, Marlborough has proven to be New England's technological hub.

Also located in Marlborough is a 25,000 square-foot state-of-the-art data center and colocation facility. All Tortus hosted sites are housed in Marlborough, which includes staff on-call 24/7 and a 99.99% up-time guarantee.  Tortus also has an in-house Systems Administrator who personally monitors all of our sites on a daily basis.

7. CMS stands for Content Management System. A CMS allows you to create, edit, manage and publish content in an easy to use fashion on your website. By logging into the "back-end" of your site, you can make changes to your site at anytime from anyplace with Internet access.

The great thing about the custom Tortus CMS is that you don't have to be in the IT field to manage your site - if you can work in Microsoft Word, you can manage your own site! No work orders, no waiting on someone else, YOU have complete control!

8. A study released in April delegates 67% of the search engine market share to Google. Worldwide, Market Share reports that Google controls over 80% of the market. With Google setting record increases every year, many analysts are predicting that it will soon service an astounding 90% of the market!

BONUS:  Why is Tortus spelled so funny and why does our logo have 2 heads?

In 1996 we sat down to think of a name that would set us apart. The word "Tortus" is a Latin word meaning "twisted." We were drawn to this word because business problems are complex and almost always twisted.

Our icon, the two-headed tortoise, signifies the need for both the head of "Art" and the head of "Science" to tackle these issues. We combine the art of web architecture and the science of business to help your company grow.

And of course, the tortoise won the race. And two heads are better than one. And so on...