As mobile app usage increases, load testing mobile apps is becoming a key part of the software development lifecycle to make sure your application is ready for traffic. If your mobile app interacts with your application server via REST or SOAP API calls, then LoadStorm PRO can load test mobile app servers like yours. LoadStorm PRO uses HTTP archive (HAR) recordings to simulate traffic, and we normally create these recordings using a browser’s developer tools on the network tab to record all requests sent to the target server. In this article, I’m going to introduce you to two ways to […]
This weekend the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots battled to give fans quite possibly the strangest game ending ever. From a one-in-a-million catch, a turnover, and an all out fist fight, this game will go down as one of the most interesting in recent Super Bowl history. Super Bowl Site Performance Game But while we may love football, we all know that this is only half of the competition. At $4.5 million dollars a piece, Super Bowl commercials only get a few seconds to vy for our attention, beat the competition, and make a valuable impression. After previous […] 
Super Bowl ads crashing websites isn’t a new story. But it is one that deserves a bit of attention about this time every year. Back in 1999, Victoria’s Secret made a big splash with their Super Bowl Ad. The ad was one of the very first ever to tie in TV and web. It promoted an online lingerie fashion show and over a million viewers logged on to watch. . . crashing the site. Since then, using Super Bowl ads to drive traffic to a website has become a very popular marketing technique. Many companies use the massive marketing power […]
Last November, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a new database service, named Aurora, which appears to be a real challenger to commercial database systems. AWS will offer this service at a very competitive price, which they claim is one-tenth that of leading commercial database solutions. Aurora has a few drawbacks some of which are temporary, but the many benefits far outweigh them. Benefits Using hardware specially built for Aurora, AWS has come up with a service that tightly integrates database with hardware, Aurora delivers over 500,000 SELECTS/sec and 100,000 updates/sec. That is five times higher than MySQL 5.6 running the […]
In light of the recent Sony hack, security should be on every web developer’s mind. This cyber attack, which is being called “the worst cyber attack in U.S. history” by Sony’s CEO, is a perfect example of why security is something we all need to take seriously. An enormous amount of personal and financial information was revealed for millions of customers. As we grow increasingly aware of these occurrence, we as developers need to go forward with the mindset that people will be trying to access our data. As the internet and technology permeates throughout physical stores, our information is […]
Update: Mobile-friendliness added as a ranking signal Starting April 21st, Google will add mobile-friendliness as a factor in its ranking algorithm. Test out your URL using their mobile friendliness test to see if your page meets the new requirements, and keep reading for help adjusting your site. Every year mobile traffic is growing. This year 41.2% of all cyber monday traffic came from mobile. It’s a trend that every business should start to plan, and develop for. Options for Mobile Optimized Experiences Based on figures provided by the mobile experts at Flurry, app usage is increasing while mobile web surfing is decreasing. With […] 
Click to Zoom Experiment: When it comes to web performance, study after study has proven: fast and scalable wins the race. But with thousands of WordPress hosting providers, how do you know which one is fast and scalable? That is where ReviewSignal.com comes in. Their business is all about helping people identify which hosting provider is the best choice for them. Kevin Ohashi from ReviewSignal has been working with LoadStorm to run a series of load tests on some of the top WordPress hosting providers to determine which is the best for companies who need scalable websites. Our performance engineers […]
Here at LoadStorm, we’re happy to announce one of our newest, free features! Are you interested in web development? Have you creating your own site? QuickStorms are a great tool to get initial insight into site performance, and can also be used as a tool to benchmark performance before making performance enhancements on your site. What is a QuickStorm? QuickStorms are small, short load tests that can be used to evaluate site performance. All you have to do is enter your site’s URL. LoadStorm will generate a load test against the URL, scaling from 1 – 10 virtual users over […]
Google recently announced their “no CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA” method that simplifies the end-user experience while offering an intelligent threat assessment behind the scenes to detect potential robots. All you will typically need to do is click a checkbox that tells their CAPTCHA that you’re not a robot. Then a brief loading animation occurs while it runs the assessment algorithm. If the system is not sure you’re human, it will then prompt you with an additional CAPTCHA check that uses the traditional distorted image for an extra security check. However, if you’re on a mobile browser, you may encounter a different method […]
From Amazon to Argos, online retailers are experiencing more traffic than ever this holiday season. This Cyber Monday reached a record high of $2.68 billion! Competition is fierce, and in this game, seconds = $$$. This year, we selected 29 major e-commerce sites and used LoadStorm to run several tests to compare their performance on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with Cyber Monday. We created scripts for each site to model typical e-commerce user activity. Each script would hit the homepage, search for a product, add a product to the cart, and then visit the cart. Then we ran our performance […]