As our site grows every day we want to share some information with you on the way we are operating the project. We call this section «Business Blog» as it is similar to doing a log book where data is recorded in a chronological order. «Blogging» is gaining popularity with more and more people picking up the habit of publishing their experiences and thoughts on the Internet. Our Blog covers various topics — from TOEFL, TOEIC, MBA, GMAT, ESL/EFL test preperation to cultural traditions and current political events.
There will also be some Internet marketing terminology and if you have any questions regarding the information simply let us know.

The Business Blog is written by Torsten Daerr and edited by Alan Townend.

2004 — February 20
When you cut a long story short you get right down to the point. Alan's latest test contains expressions with the word «story» and interestingly enough Alan Townend himself could be the subject of a story in a Leipzig based newspaper. It is too early to reveal details — after all, we want to keep you guessing. Speaking of newspapers our Russian language print medium Leipziger.RU is developing faster than we expected and we have decided to rent our own office space by next month. This is a crucial step for both our projects — leipziger.ru as well as english-test.net because now we will be able to meet prospective partners and customers in person. In addition to our web addresses we will also have a real address in the heart of Europe. I recently read on CNN how Sergey Brin and Larry Page rented their first premises - a few years ago when nobody really knew them let alone their search giant to be by the name of Google which lately indexed 1 billion additional web pages to its database, increasing its breadth by about one-third. This spring promises to become an interesting one…

2004 — February 16
Are you ready for more numbers? I'm sure you are. Right. February is month number two and Alan has just written his 200th test. It's an intermediate test with incomplete sentences containing expressions with the word «stuff» such as «That's the stuff» — a line describing the stage our project is at right now.
Today we have also added a new section called «business« where you can read more about the english-test.net story as well as information on how to start an internet business. We are planning to offer a printable version of this hands-on online-business manual as a PDF document for download. By the way, do you know what the abbreviation «PDF» stands for? It means «Portable Document Format» and it preserves document formatting and enables users to view a file correctly from any computer equipped with the Acrobate Reader software. Incidentally, PDF is also a keyword that more and more people are typing into Google in combination with «english test»or «TOEIC» and «TOEFL» and they find english-test.net, which probably NOW has the largest collection of free English tests for download. The best thing of all is that Google indexes every single phrase of any of tests available on english-test.net and therefore the number of search strings through which people find us is constantly growing, too.

2004 — February 10
Do you know what a conservatory is? Well, it's a room with large windows all round that is attached to a side of your house where you can sit and find inspiration by looking out on to the plants in your garden. That's exactly what Alan is doing — he is now writing new tests containing expressions with the word «business» such as «this is none of your business» or «set a up a new business». In the meantime Slava has installed a new counter that shows the exact number of total tests completed per day — as for today it is 2220.

Slava has also added a link that allows you to click from any test question directly to the forum where you can get further information on a particular phrase or word. Thanks to this new feature our forum has become busier with people posting very interesting questions. Fortunately for us we have been able to get our server back up to a high speed performance so that the number of visitors has again picked up slightly. The next step now is to open a new section called «business»where you can read information on how to start an internet business and how english-test.net came into being.

2004 — February 08
Greatnet is the name of the company we are hosting english-test.net at but lately our server's performance has not been great at all. That's why we are planning to transfer the site from a virtual to a real server in order to guarantee fast loading and constant availability. This is what we need to increase traffic because firstly Google ranks slow sites lower and secondly internet users expect webpages to open immediately otherwise they will never return to that site again.
As of now we are sharing a web sever with 59 other clients, which means we have no control as to the speed and responsiveness of english-test.net
Now with our forum getting busier each day it is even more important to provide excellent conditions for our users.