Category: Others

Simexams.com Exam Software with Authoring Tool – Web Version

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SimExamsSimexams.com, leading exam software developer, recently released web  version of it’s examination software with authoring tool. The software works in conjunction with web and uses advanced authoring software. Given below are the important features of the authoring software:

  • Create any number of exams with any number of questions.
  • Add and Remove any number of candidates and assign them to different groups.
  • Assign questions to different categories or topics.
  • Full control to configure exam parameters like number of questions per exam, exam time, pass percentage, allowed exam modes and permitted buttons.
  • Support different question types including Multiple choice single answer and Multi Answer, image, audio and video.
  • Preview questions to see how they are presented to candidates.
  • Export exams for distribution.

Most importantly, the exam software works offline and integrated with the web for dynamic exam module download and upload of exam results. Detailed stats are available for analysis of results. Granular management of features offered by the exam engine by the test author allows rendering the exam as required.

Some screenshots of the exam software are provided below:
I. Authoring Options: The figure below shows the features available to an author. These include a) Exam Options, b) Author Options, c) Candidate Options, and d) Group Options. As may be seen in the screenshot, you will be able manage all said options.

Author Question Input Screen: The screen shot below shows MCQ question input screen. There are several question types that may be used with the exam software, including MCQs, Drag-n-Drop, Hot Spot, etc.

Exam Software Question Input

III. Exam Engine Home Screen: The exam engine home screen is shown below. It shows available exam modules for the candidate. The candidate just needs to select one of the available exams and click on start to begin taking the exam.

Exam Engine Home Screen

IV. Question Screen: An MCQ question type is shown below. Other question types are available. As may be seen from the screen shot, several features like Flash card, pause/restart timer, full screen mode and night mode are available among other things. Any of these features may be blocked by the author as per the requirements. For example, “Previous” navigation button may be disable, if required by the author.

Exam Engine - Questions

V. Review Screen:

Exam Review Screen

VI. Exam Results Screen: The screen shot below provides a brief view of exam results screen. As you can see, it provides the name of the candidate, result, pass score, and category wise scoring among other things.

exam results

In addition to the above, detailed web stats are available on exam results, wherein, you can see individual candidate exam results or compare the groups results and sort the candidates in ranking order.

Check out the trial version of the exam software and email us for more information.

CertExams.com Revises A+ Labsim

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CertExams - SwitchSimCertexams.com, leading exam sim and network sim website, recently updated A+ Labsim to conform to the latest exam objectives. Recently, Comptia has released new A+ exams, consisting of A+ Core1 and A+ Core2. The new exam codes are A+ Core 1 220-1001 and A+ Core2 220-1002. You can’t mix the new series with the old exams. The old exams are no longer available and discontinued as on 31st July 2019.
A+ Labsim is available with exam sim to make it convenient for users to prepare for the A+ Exams.

A home page view of the lab simulator cum exam simulator is shown below:

Comptia A+ Labsim
Demo version is available and the same may be downloaded her:
https://www.certexams.com/comptia/a+/comptia-aplus-exam-sim-with-labsim.htm
Labsim is also available without exam simulator by going to http://routersimulator.certexams.com/aplus-lab-simulator.html
The newly revised exams put more emphasis on mobile devices and virtual machines in addition to traditional laptops and desktop computers.

Disclaimer: CertExams.com is neither associated nor affiliated with CompTIA® or any other company. Network+™ and A+™ are trademarks of CompTIA® organization and duly acknowledged. The Simulator lab exercises material is a copyright of CertExams.com and the same is not approved or endorsed by respective certifying bodies.

SimExams.com Website Launched

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SimExamsAnand Software and Training launched long awaited website SimExams.com, a website offering solution to student evaluation, ranking, and assessment. The two main components of the assessment solution are,

  1. Author Software, and
  2. Exam Software

The author software provides a platform, wherein, an author can develop content as required by the course that he/she is taking. The question types include multiple choice, drag n drop, hot spot (identify the correct component in a motherboard, etc), and media type questions. Once the question database is ready, the exam may be administered to the students in a classroom setup or in home setup. Results are available on the web and it is possible to compare and rank students.

The exam software is compatible with desktop Windows computers, and mobile devices. Check out the website for more information.

ExamGuides.com Website Update

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ExamGuidesThe website http://www.examsguides.com has been updated recently for better user experience. The website is compliant with Mobile First design as specified by Google and other major search engines. Further, breadcrumbs have been added for better navigation. Check it out and leave your comments.

TutorialsWeb.com Major Update to Mobile First Responsive Site

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The website TutorialsWeb.com  has undergone a major update towards fully responsive site. A fully responsive site, also called Mobile First, provides uniform appearance on mobile as well as desktop devices.

The website uses HTML5, CSS3, Media Query, and JQuery for coding and breadcrumbs aided navigation for better user experience. Typical screen shots for various devices are given below:

The mobile version of the site consists of the same menu items as that of the desktop site, but customized to the mobile device. The menu is user friend and the web page contents are readily accessible with just scrolling vertically.

As may be seen, the first level menu consists of Certification Notes, Electronic Assembly, Satellite Communications, Computers & Networks, RF Test & Meas, and Software. On clicking the first level menus, a user would be presented with second level menu as shown in the figure below:

For example, the Main Menu tab Certification Notes has four Sub-Menu items, namely, Comptia Certificaiton, Cisco Certifications, ITIL Certifications, and Others. By clicking on respective sub-menu item, one would be taken to the third-level menu link or to the corresponding web page as applicable. In this particular case, third level menu item is presented as shown in the figure below:

The third level menu items consist of A+ Cert Exam, Network+ Cert Exam, Server+ Cert Exam, and Security+ Cert Exam. On clicking the hyperlink, one will be taken to the respective web page as shown below:

Reponsive Website Design – TutorialsWeb.com

As may be seen in the figure to the right, the web page consists of navigation bread crumbs giving the path to the current page. In this example, it is Certification Notes > A+ Cert Exam > A+ Essentials Cram Notes (An ad appearing below that and followed by the notes).

The website has been thoroughly updated and reviewed for design and visual interface so that web pages are rendered properly in all possible mobile and desktop devices.

Please email us the feedback if you find any bugs or suggest any improvements.

AnandSoft.com Converted to Secure Browsing Site

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Anand SoftwareThe Company website anandsoft.com has been converted to Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). HTTPS is secure version of regular HTTP, the protocol of the Internet, over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are visiting. The ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS stands for ‘Secure’.HTTPS protocol offers end-to-end data encryption and no one in between would be able to see the data moving between your browser and the website. In earlier days, https (often used in small letters) was used only with ecommerce websites. However, these days most of the websites are supporting https due to privacy and security reasons.  Given below are some of the advantages of using https protocol over http:

  • Improved Google Ranking: Google officially stated that https is a ranking signal and the sites with https protocol are given some preference over non-https sites.
  • Referrer Date: When a secure referrer is provided to non-secure site, the referrer data is lost. By using https, referrer data is preserved, which may be used in website analytics.
  • Privacy and Security: As mentioned earlier, https offers secure communication that is fool proof. By using https, a secure tunnel is formed between user computer and the website and all the information flowing between the client and sever are secure and encrypted.

Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome also display a green padlock icon in the address bar to visually indicate that a HTTPS connection is in effect.  It encrypts all communication, including URLs.

Google has provided the following tips for best practices when switching to HTTPS:

  • There are several types of certificates for use with a website. Decide the type of certificate you need: single, multi-domain, or wildcard certificate
  • Use 2048-bit key certificates where possible
  • Use relative URLs for resources that reside on the same secure domain
  • Use protocol relative URLs for all other domains
  • Don’t block your HTTPS site from crawling using robots.txt
  • Subscribe to Google Analytics (often called GA) to track your HTTP to HTTPS migration carefully in your analytics software and within Google Webmaster Tools (often called GWT).
  • Remember to provide permanent redirects from http to https URLs using htaccess file.
  • Submit you revised sitemal.xml so that Google and other search engines get the new map of your website.

There might be slight dip in your website traffic during transition period which is most likely to get back after all the new URLs are crawled and indexed properly. Check out for any Google emails suggesting any difficulty with crawling your website.

Check out the new secure anandsoft.com and leave your comments with webmaster at anandsoft.com.

Google Imposed $20million (Rs.136 crore) penalty for Biased Search Results by Indian Watchdog

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India Watchdog, CCI (short for Competition Commission of India) imposed a fine of Rs 136 crore on internet giant Google for unfair business practices in the Indian market for online search.

After a detailed probe on the complaints filed in 2012, the regulator through a majority order said the penalty is being imposed on Google for “infringing anti-trust conduct”.

Google’s specialised search options that lead to its commercial flight unit, prohibitions imposed under the negotiated search intermediation agreements and ranking of universal results prior to 2010 were found to be violating competition norms.

Read more at (source):
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62838992.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Is this a Google Search Engine Vulnerability? It seems to be the answer!

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Further to my previous blog posts on inappropriate results in Google search, some further studies have been made.It appears to be a robots.txt file exploitation! The contents of the robots.txt file on site www.sunnydaysandlovelyways.com has been analyzed, and found to contain the code as shown in the file below (as on 12/15/2017 11.00PM IST):

CCNA 200-125 Practice Exam-no-links

The hyperlinks in the file have been removed for obvious reasons. However, the robots.txt file contains all the links in the format as shown below:

h??p://www.sunnydaysandlovelyways.com/?htm=exam-details/ccna.htm

(replace h??p with http)

Whole of home page code has been copied to the robots.txt file followed by a couple of most visited pages.

The result: The result is there to see. For most keywords the website sunnydaysandlovelyways.com is showing up in the google results. Please see my previous posts referenced below:

Content is the King – But you need a Queen to protect & promote!

Irrelevant Results in Google Search – Contd..

Irrelevant Results in Google Search – A Case Study

 

It was also observed that the hacker cleverly disabled forwarding to topdump . com for known user agents. For example, we could only see the forwarding when using a VPN to hide the actual IP address and the geography. Otherwise, the site is not forwarding to topdump . com

It was probably achieved by using htaccess file or the config file of the web server hosting the domain sunnydaysandlovelyways.

If the argument is true, it appears to be a serious security flaw on part of search engine algo and needs to be fixed.

Disclaimer: This is only in the opinion of the author with the evidences as presented in respective blog articles. anandsoft.com is not responsible for the accuracy or correctness of the authors post.

Post Author: Vijay Anand may be reached on vyadla at anandsoft.com

Content is the King – But you need a Queen to protect & promote!

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We often hear seo experts say that “content is the king”, meaning that you produce unique and valuable content, and every thing else is taken care of! Nothing could be more wrong than this! We discuss a few cases as to how it could be wrong here:

1. Assume that you had created a unique and worthy content for your thing of interest. It was well researched and produced after a thorough work and published on your web page. Now, two things could happen: One is that no search engine could find your content at all, remember that there are millions of websites and billions of web pages and your unique content might be some where deep inside the Internet. Second thing that could happen is that the search engines found your unique content, but tagged them as “duplicate” content and probably penalized the web page for publishing duplicate content, and the silver lining is that you would never knew that the content was penalized by major search engines such as Google, simply because no one is going to tell you about it!

2. There is what is known as black hat SEO, which uses dubious means of techniques to attain first place (or say, first page) in search engine rankings. If you just take care of your web resources with strong passwords and dedicated servers, it may not be sufficient. The irony is that a website could be hacked even without breaking into the website! Yes, it is called off-page SEO techniques. In other words, some one can break the seo ranking of your web page or even get it black listed by using off-page  black hat SEO, and even Google can’t find it! A couple of examples are given earlier in the blog and the links are provided below for the reference of the readers:

Irrelevant Results in Google Search – A Case Study

Irrelevant Results in Google Search – Contd..

If you had thought that Google is mightier and no one can possibly break it, you had mistaken just like me! After a long study, I painfully understood, black hat seo webmasters routinely game search engines, including Google! It is also quite possible, you wouldn’t be knowing it at all!

So, what is the fix now?

Simple: The King requires a Queen! As in famous Indian-origin game of chess, a queen with multitude of skills is required to protect and to promote the king. What are the skills required by the Queen? These skills are briefly listed below:

  • On-page SEO
    • Development of responsive web pages, so that the web pages render properly on various devices using different operating systems and screen sizes, and browsers using different versions.
    • Proper meta tags like title, description, canonical, etc
    • Incorporation of analytics such as Google analytics
    • Elimination or identification of duplicate content with proper care
    • Configuring htaccess, robots.txt, sitemap, etc. to ensure that the content is delivered properly to the users.
    • Hardening of the server and the website resources
  • Off-page SEO
    • According to Moz.com, “Off-site SEO” (also called “off-page SEO”) refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs)”. Off page SEO has become quite important these days, just as the on-page seo. With the advent of social signals and black-hat SEO, off-page SEO could not be ignored. Important off-site SEO techniques are given below:
      • Backlink building to your web page from other related domain sites
      • Press releases and article submissions to PR and articles sites
      • Blogging on your blog site or on related blog sites
      • Social signals, like posting on your or friends facebook page, or G+ page or twitter, etc.
    • Now, it is also important that you monitor your backlinks! Many search engines like Google may penalize for unnatural back links to the extent, that your web page might become non-existant for all practical purposes! To attend to this, you may need to do the following:
      • Use Google Webmaster Tools (GMT) regularly to see who is linking to your site (or web page) and ensure that it’s a genuine link (contextual) and not spammy (through the eyes of search engines).
      • Get the backlinks removed by requesting the offending websites’ owners to remove your linkbacks, and if it fails, requesting a disavow via GWT (short for Google Webmaster Tools)
      • Regularly checking for duplicate content on the Internet and reporting the same to Google and/or other search engines as required
      • Ensuring that your website is indexed properly and monitoring the same for consistency from time to time

The above are to mention a few, and just Google for more comprehensive list of activities. Obviously, it’s not something that one individual could do while managing his/her primary activity (that of writing your own content).

The need for capable SEO specialists has become most demanding with recent advances in search results ranking, and marketing.