Backing up your blog couldn’t be easier with a new service by Automattic (makers of WordPress) called VaultPress. This paid-service is the best and easiest way to back up your blog. All it takes is a simple install of the VaultPress plugin and you’re ready to go. VaultPress creates automated real-time backups of your entire WordPress blog which gives you a peace of mind if your server gets hacked or crashes.

Pricing plans start as low as $15/mo and up to $350 for Enterprise sites. If that’s not convincing enough, take a look at this video below.

Whether you decide VaultPress is right or not for you, one thing that I can’t stress enough is to create backups frequently.

37signals sat down with Jason Seats and Matt Tanase, founders of Slicehost, for a compelling interview on their journey from creating an idea to ultimately becoming a strong competitor  in their niche. With a start-up costs of only $20,000, the two-founders were able to cashed out big in 2008 when Enterprise hosting leader Rackspace acquired the company for $11.5 million. Check out the interview over at 37signals.

Over the past year there has been a growing trend of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). If you’re a blogger, you should probably consider getting a CDN for its significant benefits. Although it can be a bit pricey, the results could be worthwhile. Here’s our guide of CDNs.

CDNs can work wonders because they help by decreasing the server load while increasing the speed on your site. Using a CDN allows for your content or application to be off-loaded onto servers globally. This allows visitors to retrieve content from the server that’s nearest which results in a big boost in loading time. In addition, Google have been known to reward fast-loading sites with better rankings. In conclusion, CDN’s are more of a “premium” but the results can be beneficial to your site.

If you’re interested in finding a provider, I would recommend MaxCDN and MediaTemple’s ProCDN. I have used both of them and can vouch for the excellent service they have provided me with.

In some Apple news today, Apple has reportedly bought the iCloud.com domain name for $4.5 million. iCloud.com now re-directs to CloudMe.com. So far, Apple hasn’t released official details as to what they will do with the domain name. However, multiple rumors have surfaced claiming that Apple has plans to roll out a digital storage service where users would be able to store their purchased content from iTunes in the cloud and stream it back to their iOS devices.

20+ Essential Tools And Applications For Bloggers – Hongkiat

5 Reasons Not To Make Money With Your Blog…Yet – Daily Blog Tips

iMac Core i5 3.10GHz review (mid 2011) – SlashGear

Samsung Chromebook Series 5: What You Need to Know – Mashable

Next iPhone will be iPhone 4S; will feature Sprint and T-Mobile compatibility, analyst claims – BGR

One thing all Bloggers love is getting free Search Engine traffic and increasing your SEO power is important. To all my fellow WordPress bloggers, you may or may not be familiar with the popular SEO plugin, I would would like to introduce All in One SEO Pack by Michael Tobert of Semper Fi Web Design. The all-star WordPress plugin is a personal favorite of mine and I use it all across my network of blogs. But in order to maximise the potential of the plugin, one thing that’s very important is writing good titles and descriptions, in addition to the assigning proper tags.

What’s Considered “Good”?

Maybe that question might of popped up. “Good” could mean many different things but one thing you want to make sure is that it’s good enough to convince people to click on your website rather than other links that are displayed in the search results.

Post vs. Plugin

Good content can be based on many different things such as whether it’s witty, funny, informative or strikes thought, but one thing that you don’t want to mess around with when it comes to your post is playing around with your post titles, content and tags. Google is much smarter than we think and they’re constantly refining their algorithm to fight spam and provide more accurate search results. Writing content that is sometimes too unique or too original can often make you a hit-or-miss in the search engines. Therefore, it’s recommended to stick to your content’s subject and remain as close as possible to it.

When Google crawls the content on your page, it looks for true matches for the keywords the user is searching for minus the fluff. And this is where your chance to shine is; by making the SEO title, tags and description as interesting as possible in efforts to lure readers in. In a world where millions of blogs post the same material, it’s critical that you make your blog stand out. It’s much more easier to play it safe and write your content exactly how it should come across in the post. But remember, you can have fun with the META tags while staying true to what’s published on your page. You want to create a unique and catchy title and description to catch the eyes of potential visitors and make yours stick out from the rest of the search results.

5. IntoDns

IntoDNS is a great tool for monitoring your DNS health. One of the reasons why I like prefer IntoDNS over other sites such as Pingdom, is because IntoDNS doesn’t cache the DNS records of the page you’re looking for which is great for those looking for live results. IntoDNS also offers recommendations and notes for each DNS component.

4. WhoisHostingThis

WhoIsHostingThis.com is probably one of the most user-friendly whois sites for finding out which web hosting companies provide service to your favorite sites. The site also has reviews, ratings and coupons!

3. Pingdom

Pingdom is one of the best websites for monitoring your site. Pingdom is known for it’s free reliable server monitoring service. Just sign up and register your site with Pingdom and it will begin to monitor your site for uptime and dowtime. In addition, you can also setup alerts such as SMS or Email’s whenever your site is down. And if you’re local terminal app gets boring, Pingdom lets you ping and traceroute sites and even offers a page loading tool.

2.  Load Impact

Load Impact – If you’re curious about how much stress your server can take, Load Impactor may give you some insight and possibly aid you in decisions on whether you need to upgrade or not. The website can create up to 50 concurrent virtual users and provides useful statistics on response times. On your backend, you can monitor how much CPU and Memory the test has consumed and decide from there. Load Impact sits at #4 on our list because we feel that it’s very useful when you’re in those growth stages. This can save a lot of time and money later on.

1. WebHosting Talk

WebHostingTalk is a great platform for learning everything about Web Hosting. The members are great and extremely informative with there’s a ton of information on the forum. One of the benefits of becoming a member is the special offers offered by hosting companies, so if you’re looking to get more bang for your buck, definitely check this site out!

Google has made it known that they’re passionate about speed and making the web faster. The search-engine giant has just implemented Site Speed Report into Google Analytics.

Uses for the Site Speed Report:

• Content: Which landing pages are slowest?
• Traffic sources: Which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall?
• Visitor: How does page load time vary across geographies?
• Technology: Does your site load faster or slower for different browsers?

By default, the Site Speed Report feature is turned off. If you’re interested in turning it on, check out this article in the Google Help Center that details instructions on how to track site speed.

If you’re a big fan of Google Reader, like me, than you should definitely check out the Reeder app for the iPhone. The Reeder app is a definite must-have for any Blogger with an iPhone. It provides you full access to all your feeds and offers a variety of ways to share them.

Because I love the app so much, I am going to giveaway 1 copy to a random reader. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post and you will be entered into the giveaway. The deadline is May 18, 2010 and remember to use your primary email address, as I will be using it to contact the winner.