Optimized page load times – Part 1

Besides a new theme which has been on the drawing board for a long long time (we gotta get this finished!), we have been focusing a lot on SEO and page load times.

We have been working hard over the last few days in exploring areas to make our website as responsive as possible. We have completed one major change right now by moving images to a different sub-domain. Most images are now served out from http://cache.twitdom.com/

If you see images not loading up it could potentially be due to DNS propagation not being completed for you. Some ISPs can take up to 48 hours to refresh their DNS cache.

So wait for a few hours (or a day! ) and you should see everything working fine for you again.

The 140tees Contest!

140tees

This is the first contest we are running at Twitdom and we would like to extend our thanks to 140tees for providing us this wonderful opportunity to run this contest for them.

A word about our sponsor:

140tees allows you to create one-off Twitter T-Shirts of your favourite tweets, and friends updates. 140tees will also pull in photos from Twitpic and YFrog if there are links from these picture services in any of the tweets.

UPDATE: We have simplified the contest rules!

Contest Rules:

  1. The contest runs till 19th June 2009 6:30PM IST (India Standard Time). The winners will be chosen by a lucky draw by @140tees and @TwitdomUpdates shortly thereafter. Winners will be announced on this blog.
  2. You need to follow @140tees and @TwitdomUpdates
  3. You need to tweet an interesting quote to @140tees
  4. Ensure you add the #140teescomp hash tag to the tweet for tracking purposes
  5. All you need to do is send @TwitdomUpdates a reply saying that you want a @140tees t-shirt (Click Here!)
  6. 10 tweets will be chosen at random to win a free t-shirt. The winners need to pay $5 towards S&H.

All the best!

Thank you Sponsors! May ’09

We have decided to switch these posts to the 1st of the month which is a more applicable date.

Given that, its time to thank our valuable sponsors for the month of May 2009. We have been receiving great support from our sponsors, and we wouldn’t be what we are today without them being around to support us.

  • FeaturedUsers: An awesome way to advertise your Twitter profile and a way to grow your follower base
  • TwittAd: A great way to monetize your Twitter backgrounds
  • EasyTweets: A great way to monitor your brand and market them on Twitter
  • Tweepler: Follower Management made easy
  • Swg.fm: It couldn’t be any easier to share music on Twitter
  • Cool Twitter Conferences: A global tour of conferences
  • Twit Pro Quo: Expand your Twitter following for free

Thank you once again!

Thank you March ’09 Sponsors!

We would like to extend a big “THANK YOU!” towards all our sponsors in the month of March ’09.

Twitdom continues to grow month-on-month, and we are extremely humbled by all our sponsors who continue to support us.

Our sponsors in March ’09 were:

  • TwitterImage & CustomizeTwitter: Two cool ways to get custom Twitter backgrounds
  • FeaturedUsers: An awesome way to advertise your Twitter profile and a way to grow your follower base
  • TwittAd: A great way to monetize your Twitter backgrounds
  • TwitRank: Do you know your Twitter Rank?

Twitdom has grown to list over 650 Twitter Applications and nearly 20 books on Twitter. We will continue on our mission to make it easier for all Twitter lovers to find the applications of their liking in just a few clicks!

THANK YOU once again!

Twitter App Alerts via 3 sources now

Since launch, we provides Twitter App Alerts via 2 sources –> Twitter and RSS Feeds. We are pleased to announce that we have a 3rd option available for alerts now — Email.

The image below is a screen shot that shows a portion of the sidebar from a Twitdom page. All three options are highlighted there.

Subscription Options

Thank you February ‘09 Sponsors!

This post comes quite late in the month, but its important for me to write about it nonetheless.

I would like to thank the following sponsors of Twitdom for their valued sponsorship over the last month.

  • TwittAd: Provides Twitter users and advertisers the opportunity to meet for product placement and website promotion on a Twitter user’s profile.
  • CustomizeTwitter: Customize your Twitter background for $10
  • Krumlr: Bookmark to Krumlr and tweet to Twitter with a single click (no copying or pasting URLs)
  • TwitterImage: Custom Twitter Backgrounds

Two days ago we announced a new advertising option on the website –> A prominent 300×250 banner ad on the right sidebar. We thank FeaturedUsers to being the first sponsor for this option.

Thank you Sponsors!

Sidebar Improvements

We have made some minor changes to the Twitdom Sidebar. The sidebar now shows the following:

  1. The latest 20 applications added to the database as a drop-down list.
  2. TwitterRemote: This is a widget similar to MyBlogLog but displays Twitter users who have visited the site.

Ad display changes

We have introduced several changes to our ad displays on Twitdom. This will benefit our sponsors directly.

The 125×125 banner ads were earlier shown on app pages only. Now, these are shown for both category and tag pages. This will improve the number of impressions and should convert better for our sponsors.

We are also pleased to announce a completely new ad spot — The Front Page Header. This is a 234×60 half banner. Bookings can be made via the usual page.

We will shortly include the same sponsor ads on Twitdom Books, to further benefit our sponsors.

Thank you January ’09 Sponsors!

Its been a month since Twitdom went live, and we have had a wonderful response so far.

Its the beginning on a new month, and with it its time to thank our sponsors for January 2009. We thank our valued sponsors – TwitterCounter, TweetByMail, TwittAd, and TwittelatorPro. If you haven’t visited their websites yet, do so right away! These are some of the best services for Twitter.

We also extend our thanks to TwitterImage, our Featured Site.

Improved Page Navigation

Today, we introduced a much improved page navigation system for category and tag pages.

This should make it so much easier to locate the ‘Previous Page’ and ‘Next Page’ links now! An example:

Improved Page Navigation