OphelieL

###Introduction
As of April 2014, Google's new Universal Analytics is [out of Beta release](http://analytics.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/universal-analytics-out-of-beta-into.html). It's been in public Beta since March 2013, and upgrading the code on all Google Analytics properties will soon be mandatory. Since it's not an automatic upgrade, you have a choice: upgrade, or have a good look at some [Google Analytics alternatives](http://www.sitepoint.com/5-great-google-analytics-alternatives/). So what should you choose?

###Risks
####Upgrading
Let's start by looking at the biggest risk of the upgrade: you actually have to take action, mess with your Analytics code, and upgrade. While this seems simple, your Google Analytics (GA) code should be on every single page of your site — and in many cases, you'll have to change that code *by hand*. 

Luckily, upgrading now is easier than it was in Beta, where you had to perform several steps to upgrade. Now it's only two steps (one of which is simply requesting an upgrade) 

OphelieL

I ran into a very useful video for mobile-aware developers on the Google Developers Youtube channel not so long ago that discussed some new growth hacks you can do for your business, your web app and your mobile app with Google and Google+. This video is, quite literally, a cheat sheet on what you can do to ensure huge growth in 2014, for both your web and mobile properties. 

However, at 43 minutes, it's a bit long, and not many people enjoy a medium over which they have little to no control over speed of consumption. Since most people read very fast, here is a 15 minute recap with added details on how to accomplish all that was mentioned.

If you'd like to watch the full video, please see the end of the article. Otherwise, continue reading. Every subsection will be marked with (mobile) or (desktop) to indicate to which platform it applies.

### Pages Matter (desktop)

When searching on Google, if you search for a specific property and that property has a verified Google+ page, the latest content published b

OphelieL

#Why Choose PHP Over Alternatives?

_This article was sponsored by [AppDynamics](http://www.appdynamics.com/solutions/php-monitoring-solution). Thank you for supporting the sponsors who make SitePoint possible!_

It's a popular question. Why indeed should one pick PHP over one of the alternatives? After all, PHP has [often](http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/) [been](http://alokmenghrajani.github.com/wtf/php.html) [dismissed](http://phpsadness.com/) as a [hacky](http://www.phpwtf.org/), [unusable](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/php-sucks-but-it-doesnt-matter.html) and [badly](https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#PHP_sucks_because) designed language. Why would anyone choose it, when starting a project from scratch? 

Instead of listing the reasons why people *do* choose it (mostly widespread availability), let's instead focus on why people *should* choose it. We can't talk about that, however, without first mentioning why they *shouldn't*.

## When you should NOT ch

OphelieL

# SEO Disasters: What happens when Google de-indexes your site

It's been a tough year or so for many SEO companies, most ostensibly those that don't follow the rules when it comes to black-hat techniques, *especially* with regard to links. Personally, I've always held that quality wins out, and that chasing links through poor content is always going to raise some Google eyebrows or, even worse, result in a manual penalty.

The [major algorithm changes](http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change) that the search engine has made in recent years with regard to content means that many companies have found their site pretty much disappearing from the index. Why? Because they have not followed the rules, either deliberately or not.

[Panda](http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?906496-What-should-i-do-to-tackle-Google-Panda), [Penguin](http://www.sitepoint.com/can-negative-seo-really-get-your-site-penalized/) and [Hummingbird](http://www.sitepoint.com/what-googles-hummingbird-update-means-for-seo/), Google's 

OphelieL

<em>This article was sponsored by <a href="http://newrelic.com/?r=phpm">New Relic</a>. Thank you for supporting the sponsors who make SitePoint possible!</em>

We've discussed many ways to <a href="/series/reducing-page-weight/">reduce page weight</a> and increase performance of <a href="/average-page-weights-increase-32-2013/">obese websites</a>. Some are a one-off undertakings, such as enabling gzip compression, switching to an appropriate image format, or removing unnecessary fonts. Other tasks require repeated effort every time you make a change&hellip;

<ul>
<li>compressing new or modified images</li>
<li>removing <code>console</code> and <code>debugger</code> statements from scripts</li>
<li>concatenating and minifying CSS and JavaScript files</li>
<li>deploying updates to a production server</li>
</ul>

OphelieL

#SitePoint Spelling Guide

##Numbers
*1DayLater
*24/7 or 24-7
*3D
*5GS (as in the iPhone)
*8-bit (rather than eight-bit)