At it’s core, Stella is a web developer’s tool for monitoring and debugging websites and applications. Stella will monitor your website or apps for slowdowns and outages.  Add that together with the handy bookmarklet and it has never been easier to check up on website performance.

After running the free test on mitchelaneous.com, I got the result: "Not bad. It’s on par with most sites". My response time was 927 milliseconds and my page size was 50.77 KB.

The free plan will allow you to have 1 public monitor and unlimited email notifications on or about your website (and checks it every 10 minutes).  If you need more monitors, then you can sign up for one of the monthly billing options. 

Overall, I would say you should at least play with Stella and see if it is a service you would like to use.

Your meta description says a lot about your web page.  If you get a lot of visitors from Google, it could be the only thing you have to use to sell them on clicking that link to find out more information.  So what steps can you take to make your search engine snippets stand out?

I have a few simple tips to share:

• Ensure each page has a unique meta description.  Each page has different content, so you should make sure your meta description reflects the content inside.
• How about length?  Ideally, your meta description should be kept between 70 and 160 characters long.
• Make sure it is explicit enough and contains keywords relative to that web page’s content.

For more help with meta descriptions, check out these two resources:

• Improve Snippets with a Meta Description Makeover
• The Meta Element via Wikipedia

This should make for a fun weekend project, and I can promise you will see even more traffic from the various search engines out there.

Often our web site statistics we gather are there to help us do better, but very rarely are we rewarded for them doing well.  GoingUp! is not only a great new web site analytics tracker, but it will also pay you back in return.

Having a good web site analytics package is key to having a successful web site.  You have to know what your visitors like, what they don’t like, and where you could improve.

What type of information will GoingUp! track?  It does just about everything:

• Complete Web Site Stats
• Keyword Position Tracking
• Actions and Goals
• Google PageRank Tracking
• Recent Visitor Maps/Locations
• Heat Maps
• Page Optimizer Tool

Plus it features a customizable dashboard that will help you pull up all the data you need to see, right off the bat.  GoingUp! integrates popular analytics and search engine optimization tools in one easy-to-use interface to see how your website is performing from all points-of-view.

• Free Web Site and SEO Tools from GoingUp!

So where does the payback come from, that I mentioned before?

GoingUp! now lets you earn points while using our web analytics tracking. Soon, you’ll be able to use these points for premium services such as search engine promotion, keyword rank monitor and more. Plus, you can even turn your points into cash or prizes.

That is a unique spin that will defiantly entice a few to give it a shot.  The best part about it all, is that it is free to try – so why not give it a spin?

You can learn more about or sign up for GoingUp! at GoingUp.com.

You can set the monitoring tools to check the web site in question you wish to monitor in intervals ranging from 5 to 60 minutes or above.

If the worst might happen, and you need to be told, here are the various ways they can alert you to trouble:

• E-mail
• RSS
• SMS Messages

For those of you just wanting to beta test the service; when you first sign up, you are given a fully functional, 15-day trial account. At the end of 15 days, your account will be downgraded to free unless you upgrade to either Standard or Premium account.

Check out the screenshots, then give them a shot at Site24x7.com.