Category: Miscellaneous

Posts on topics that don’t fit in my other categories.

Bummer.

Lynn

Okay, I’m not usually one for strong language but it’s come to my attention that I totally effed up a few of my websites. Back when I thought websites were my ticket out of a JOB, I decided I should go all static on them, which was and still is a great thing. But no, it’s not a great thing because now I’m not pursuing a web empire with quite so much fervor and I only want to do updates when I have something I want to say, quickly. And static does not lend itself to quick little pithy updates.

Only problem is that with my newfound lack of attention to my websites, static is about the safest way to keep the sites. Any other software just makes them vulnerable to un-updated packages that will end up getting my sites hacked.

Bummer.

Monday Morning Update–Well, Crap. It Was Supposed to Be Morning Anyway, Now It’s 2:10 PM

Lynn

So, today is the first day of an exciting time in my life. I’m about to tackle a topic on a website that’s near and dear to my heart and that has interested me since I was about 13 years old, and it’s going to make me a ton of money.

As if.

I’m about to get to work putting together some stuff that probably won’t earn me a dime and then what’ll I do when all my domains and hosting accounts come up for renewal?

Cry?

LOL.

The thing is, I’ve tried a lot of different things over the years when it comes to building websites. One thing I tried was running a site about something I loved doing in my personal time. I had a big, big site about this topic and it did okay. If I had only been spending 2 hours a week on it, it could have been seen as profitable. Since I was spending so much more time than that on it, it was instead seen, by me, as a big fat flop.

I wanted to parlay it into a career. Didn’t work.

Now I’m thinking about doing the same thing all over again, but with a different topic that I love.

I think this makes me crazy*.

*Legal disclaimer: This is not an actual statement on my mental health. Think of it as a metaphor. Noun: metaphor: 1. A figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote…

I am an Idiot

Lynn

[Disclaimer: Okay, for the spy, you know, spying on me. I’m not really an idiot. This is what you call making a statement for effect, to make a point, and  if this ends up quoted in any way in a legal document, then don’t try to tell me you aren’t spying on me.]

For everyone else: The title of this post is possibly true, while the above statement is possibly false. ;-)

There are certain times in your life when you realize you might not be doing the thing you’re meant to be doing, for whatever reason.

There are also times in your life when you do something, for a seemingly good and valid reason and then wish you hadn’t.

This is one of those times. (Both.)

And there is the crux of my problem. I do the same thing over and over and over and for some reason I expect it to be different every time, even though it doesn’t turn out that way.

Listening to: Gotye – Somebody That I Used to Know; Flo Rida – Wild Ones

Peace of Mind is Worth a Thousand HTML Sites

Lynn

I just turned a bunch of WordPress sites into static html, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are the following.

  1. Security
  2. Peace of Mind
  3. Ease of Maintenance
  4. Peace of Mind
  5. More Peace of Mind

I love WP, really. However, I also love peace of mind, and I had too many sites using WP to have any peace of mind.

Why? Because although WordPress is great and gives added functionality to a site and makes updating content easy as typing in Word or OpenOffice, it has a bad habit of making my life harder than it has to be.

I want to make a page look a certain way? I need to create a new page template. I want to make a site look a certain way, I need to edit a theme. I want to backup my files, I have to backup files by ftp and export a database. I want to restore a site? I have to upload files, fix or create a database, and pray it all works together the way it was supposed to. Oh, accidentally delete my WP config file and wow, what a mess that new one made of the character encoding! I have freaky symbols everywhere. Ugh!

Then there’s the scary stuff.

I found a few sites where a plugin had opened a backdoor and someone—whoever you are, you are a [bleep]—uploaded some crappy IM type posts for backlinks into a few of my directories.

It was then I decided static html (or even php with basic includes) was my friend and WordPress wasn’t. Sometimes you like something (like swiss rolls) but sometimes you have to give them up because they just aren’t good for you.

I still have my blog and it will stay WordPress because that’s where WordPress works best. But because it’s a simple blog, I have no need of crap plugins or special templates or anything else.

Footprints and Your <head>

Lynn

Ah, so I was looking at some stuff this last week and realized I had let a few things slip by me when it comes to site footprints. (Notably, not footprint, which would imply how large my site is and how much space it takes up on my hosting plan, which is not what I’m getting at here at ALL.)

Of course, there are the things you can’t control, such as tracking ids and publisher code. However, whenever possible, I try to use a different id or code for every site I own, just because I’m like that. Sure, I link a lot of my stuff together because it’s all relevant, but not all of it, because it just doesn’t share a topic or market and it makes no sense to do so (or I want to hide it from prying eyes—whose eyes those might be, I will not say—but I have a passion for several online fandoms and I don’t particularly want everyone to know that I squee! and woot! every other sentence, and that when it comes to these things, I am not quite as mature as my age would imply. ;-)

Anyway, my point is that there are just some things you can’t eliminate, such as if you use certain contextual ad code on your sites. It’s against the rules to have more than one account unless you create independent businesses and I am too cheap to do that. Don’t want to file the tax returns and don’t want to apply for the requisite federal id numbers. One tax return is quite enough, thank you very much.

So, my next work day is going to be spent consolidating and eliminating such codes from any and all sites that don’t earn enough to make it worthwhile to have such code on them.

And I might tidy up a few other things while I’m at it. Footprints are messy and I don’t particularly enjoy mopping up the mess but it must be done.

If you use WordPress on a lot of sites, check your <head> space. You might be using the same theme and thinking that it’s okay because you made your sites look different… BUT unless you’ve edited the html code, or created a child theme with a unique name, you probably haven’t made as much of a dent in those footprints as you think you have. Bots don’t see the end result, they see the code. :-)

This is also part of my push for saying bye-bye to WordPress and hello to static HTML (again). The control you have over output and the individuality you can give every site is a huge plus. Biggest mistake I ever made was converting almost every site I had to WordPress, not the least of why is because it takes twice as long to go back to HTML as it did to go to WP. Ah, well. Live and learn.

We Can All Use a Little Help Sometimes

Lynn

Keyword research is not overrated. I used to build sites and pages without ever bothering to check the keywords for anything. I made sites that never got traffic, that never made sales, that—oops. Wait.

I had never heard of keyword research when I first started building sites. I made several that got plenty of traffic, and made several sales. In fact, one of those sites still makes sales and still gets traffic.

The thing is, you can build sites that work just fine without keyword data.

But, and it’s a big one, you can make sites earn a lot faster if you have keyword data that tells you what people are searching for in your niche and then you create pages that match those searches. You waste a lot of time building pages that possibly don’t help anyone because no one really wants to know anything about what you’ve just built a page around.

I can’t stand to do massive amounts of keyword research where I pull words, get traffic, figure out possible earnings, and then try to incorporate all that into my pages. I pay for that lack of interest though in slower traffic growth, less earnings, and fewer breakout sites.

I still don’t bother with traffic and earnings data, but I have been using a cool tool to help me pick out all the interesting things people search for related to some of the site topics I build around. The tool tells me what people type into the search engine when they’re looking for that topic and it has helped me with something I didn’t expect it to help with.

Article ideas. :)

I have the worst time dealing with large topics. I become overwhelmed and unable to focus. When I see the list of keyword phrases this little tool spits out for me, I immediately have something solid to grab onto—something that’s not possible when I have 4,822 ideas popping into my head at once when I think of my topic! This has saved me a lot of time just by keeping me focused and working and not flitting all over the place writing drafts I will never finish because I didn’t know where I was going with it when I started it.

And the good news is that if people are searching for these phrases, then writing that article is certainly going to help someone, somewhere.

<strike>GEOLOGY UNIVERSE</strike> Oops! Guess not

Lynn

Because I have too few creative bones in my body and they mostly involve fictional tales of romance and foreign planets. This was a tough one. I had a really hard time picking out this name. I wanted something not related to the poor guy who gave me the idea, but in the end, this was as good as it got.

  1. geologyworld.com – taken
  2. earthgeology.com – taken
  3. geology.com – taken (seriously, I didn’t even have to check)
  4. geologydaze.com – not taken, but we know why
  5. geologyoftheworld.com – not taken, but doesn’t this limit me to only earth’s geology? Why would I want to do that? Mars has interesting geology and I love thinking about how the geology on other earth-like worlds might have developed.
  6. geologynews.com – taken
  7. geologyviews.com – Dang. I just thought of this one and I think I would have liked it.

I think I might be a little too tired after an overly stressful day. I now have 2 domains for the same site that I’m probably never going to build. :-o

Listening to: Cyndi Lauper – I Drove All Night; Blake Shelton – Some Beach

Site Focus Redux

Lynn2 Comments

LOL. I wrote this… And of course, I immediately started thinking about what topic I would pursue if I could honestly make money from anything I enjoyed learning about. Geology popped into my head immediately. That’s one of my few regrets in life, changing my major in college from geology to accounting. I mean, what the heck was I thinking at the time?

I’m not obsessed with geology, but I am fascinated by natural disasters of a geological nature like earthquakes and volcanoes. In fact, I once started writing a novel of fiction about the possibility of a super-eruption at Yellowstone. I even did some research. LOL. Famous author Harry Turtledove has officially beat me to the punch though, so I guess that’s okay. The world doesn’t need two. ;-)

I could devote some time to writing about and collecting news around the topic of geology and natural disasters without much effort spent to motivate myself.

And that IS a problem I have with a lot of the stuff I write currently. It’s just plain drudgery, not much better than the job I have that I’m no longer happy working.

I swear, I almost bought a domain for this before I came up on the brick wall of having to pick a domain name for this unnamed, insane project that would suck up too much of my time when I need not another 10 year website project, but something that would pay dividends much more quickly. Oops.

Sometimes I hate inspiration.

Listening to: Gary Allan – Life Ain’t Always Beautiful; “Weird Al” Yankovic – Party in the CIA (Parody of Party in the USA); George Strait – Fool Hearted Memory

Looks Like Storms

Lynn

The wind is picking up outside, and thunder is rumbling. The rain has started and weather.gov shows tornado warnings nearby. The school where my children attend has announced that it will be dismissing today at 12 noon.

That doesn’t matter for the moment though. I am writing content for my websites and trying to decide what my next move will be. I have decisions to make and things to think about. I still have time to work without interruption even if it’s just for another hour. A lot can be done in an hour. :)

WordPress 3.3 – Woohoo! Much Improved

Lynn

I like it. I’ve only had it up for a few minutes on one of my sites and I am already loving the improvements. I can’t say that I won’t find something I won’t like at some point but so far, the admin area is much faster and cleaner. I especially like the fly out menus, the new permalink settings (same old but now no performance hit for the one I really like best (the post name and nothing but the post name)).

WordPress vs Static HTML vs Database Driven PHP vs My Serious Lack of Mad Design Skilz

Lynn

I’m not gifted with mad design skills. I’m not blessed with any design skills at all, frankly.

That’s not to say I’ve never designed a website that I didn’t like, or that I’ve never managed to be satisfied with something I’ve created from scratch. However, those sites are few and far between and I don’t hesitate to admit, the designs for those sites took at a minimum a month apiece after reworking the designs until I was sick of them.

These days I try to use templates and themes to help out, but I struggle with the idea that I should be able to create my own designs and code my own sites, because that’s where the fun is for me when it comes to working with my websites. Knowing my sites are exclusively my work is where I get the most satisfaction.

This is one of the core reasons why I struggle over the WordPress, static html, or custom dynamic database site issue. I want the ease of updating the content that comes with WordPress, the simplicity of picking a pre-designed theme, and the security of a frequently updated software, but I also prefer not having to update WordPress and that only comes with static html or a custom database site.

With all that in mind, I’ve finally decided how I want to use this website. I want it to be a place where I can discuss the things I learn about web design that other ordinary people like me might find useful.

This site isn’t for the graphically gifted, nor for those who won’t hesitate to buy or borrow graphic work from talented friends. This site is for people who want to do it themselves, all of it, from coding their html pages, creating their own WordPress themes, to designing crappy graphics for their sites even though they know their work is never going to be good enough for some.

It’s good enough for us, and if we work at it long enough, we do end up with presentable web sites. And we don’t care if any one else agrees. :)

Finally, I also plan to continue to update about the progress I’m making toward my goals of doing some kind of web work to make a living. Although I’m still working my part-time job, I’ve recently been pushed into a situation where it has become important for me to make some real progress.

Abandoning Akismet for Privacy and Control

Lynn5 Comments

I’ve recently switched the particular anti-spam plugin that I use on my websites (those I run on WordPress anyway). I deleted Akismet when I discovered that I was having some of my own comments deleted before I ever saw them, because Akismet was treating them as spam.

Not all comments were deleted or treated as spam, mind you, but any comments where I had tried to use a URL that didn’t lead directly to my homepage.

There are instances where not linking to the homepage makes more sense, for example, when I am posting on a topic specific blog but my blog is more general in nature. In those cases, I prefer to link to a relevant category or tag page (because I use categories and tags in VERY specific ways on several sites, so I can better organize and share my content). Occasionally, I like to link to a specific page on WordPress too, when that seems more logical.

Akimet seems not to care about logic, only controlling the web and who and how we comment on blogs.

Apparently, it doesn’t matter how grammatically correct you are (most spam fails a grammar test), how coherent you try to be (again most spam completely fails in this regard), or how relevant you make your comment. Akismet doesn’t like links that don’t go either directly to your homepage or your /blog/ index.

I found this out the hard way when a friend and I (who often exchange comments because we have the same interests and find each others’ material comment-worthy) were penalized because we had not linked directly to our homepages in the Author website field. My comments ended up in her spam box, and her comments ended up in mine.

So, as someone who isn’t above holding a grudge, I deleted Akisment and went looking for a better alternative.

I found Growmap’s Anti-Spam Plugin, installed it, and haven’t had a “spambot” comment make it through yet. GASP put me back in control of comments and I like that.

Check it out if you’re interested in an Akismet alternative.

I use Simple Trackback Validation (with Topsy Blocker) to handle trackback spam.

CSS Stuff that I Needed to Know but Didn’t

Lynn

Ran across this CSS tip today, when I was researching an issue. I wanted to override a width in an element but the element already had a lot of styles applied to it and I didn’t want to create an entirely new ID.

Creating a new ID was my first instinct just because I don’t work with CSS nearly as much as I did when I first discovered it. I’m comfortable with the layout of most of my designs and just haven’t felt the need to more than tweak in years.

Really useful info, so check it out if you like to play with your CSS sometimes but want to keep it as streamlined as possible. http://css-tricks.com/multiple-class-id-selectors/

What I Want is What I Get

Lynn

You know how when you have a site and it’s your site you can do anything you want with it?

That’s what I have here.

What I don’t want to do is keep updating this crappy challenge thing. All right. Yes, I know. I sound like a quitter. But sometimes you’ve got to quit the things that are making it hard for you to stay focused and do what needs to be done.

I prefer to think of my website empire in the making as my own personal thing. Making it public was a bad idea in the way I’m making it public, and frankly, I’m not comfortable with it. I prefer to feel free to talk about my sites and not worry about all the crap that I’m worrying about with them.

This post might not ever see the light of day, but getting it down here is helping me to realize a few things.

I’m not cut out to publicize my life.

I like my privacy.

I like to make decisions and then reevaluate and having a “challenge” like this is interfering with my methods.

I’m bored with this site. :)

Sorry, if you’re reading this, this is the last post on this site before I gut it and do something else with it.

By the way, read You Are Not a Gadget if you have a few hours. It’s quite interesting. It’s unrelated to the topic of this post, sort of, but it did have something to do with my sudden desire to change things up.

Google books has pages available to read if you just want a taste of the book.

Tried Pligg On a Site But it Failed to Live Up to My Expectations

Lynn

Here’s the thing, I’m always first in line to call others out for complaining too loudly about the limitations and bugs you find in free software. Don’t get me wrong, though, because I love using open source software for my websites and on my own computer. The thing is, however, there are a lot of times when I get all excited about what a piece of software is promising to do for me and I go to the trouble of installing it and playing around with it and discover to my disappointment that the software just doesn’t work well at all for what I want it to do.

I should say now that I’m a controlling, exacting webmaster. :) I know what I want and I want software that’s reliable, fast, secure, and relatively easy to work with.

So, on that note, I read a lot of good things about Pligg and thought some of its features would be perfect for a site I’m developing (or trying to develop). I installed the software on a test directory, and after it looked promising, gave it a whirl on a domain of its own over a 48 hour time period during which I spent ENTIRELY too much time at my computer.

What I discovered was that the concept of Pligg is wonderful, but the actual software, not so much.

I found the Category Administration extremely buggy. I found the modules lacking, unless you want to buy some, but even those didn’t look like anything I was interested in. I found the customization of the default templates to be awkward.

In summary, I found that it just didn’t meet my expectations. All this really means though, is that I have to move on to something else that might work better for me in the long run. It’s like my trial run with Joomla a few years ago, except this time I didn’t build 3 complete websites before I discovered that I and Joomla didn’t get along. This time I only built one and a half. :)

Here’s my toast to figuring things out in a hurry.

Finally, have I completely abandoned Pligg? Probably.

Safari has found a new user

Lynn

This weekend, I began playing around with Safari. I’ve had it installed on both my computers for months but I’ve never used it for anything more than to check the usability of my websites in the browser. Friday, I decided to really give it a test run, and I was very surprised to find that I really liked the way it made websites and fonts look.

I’ve been using Firefox for years and for a while, I was using a lot of plugins. That isn’t the case these days, though, so there isn’t really much I’m missing from just the basic install of the Safari browser as compared to Firefox. 

Now, I admit, my decision to keep using Safari is at the moment based entirely on how things look. :) Maybe that’s not the best reason to switch browsers, but it works for me right now.

Have you used Safari lately? What do you think of it? Is there anything I should know about it?

Update: One problem I’ve discovered is the inability to right-click on an image and see the properties for it. Is there some other way easy way to find that info in Safari?I actually use this quite a lot with bookcovers I get from publishers!

Looking for a blogging application for my Palm OS phone

Lynn

I don’t have cell phone service at my home. I have service about a mile in either direction from my home, but I sit in a lovely little dead zone that refuses to disappear as phones get fancier. However, I do love my new data service for accessing my websites and email when I’m away from home. I would love to be able to blog while I’m out and about too, but so far I haven’t found a blogging application that I’m comfortable using to actually post to my blog, not just create drafts–although drafts are nice!

If you know of a good blogging application I can use with my Palm OS device, I would love to know about it. Just leave a comment here and I thank you greatly for your help!

Testing ScribeFire because someone recommended it to me

Lynn

ScribeFire is an in-browser blogging tool that lets you write posts, edit posts, and post posts to your blog. Too many posts? Maybe so, but the tool seems promising. I’ve installed it in the past, but never did get round to really using it. At that time I had only a few blogs. I still had a lot of domains, but I hadn’t discovered what a perfect combination blogging was for me. Writing, designing, coding—I get to do it all with blogs, and much quicker than with my static websites.

I’m going to try out many more of the features of ScribeFire before I decide if I want to make it my blogging tool of choice. Although I really liked Windows Live Writer, which I previously blogged about, I haven’t found myself favoring it over the plain ol’ administrator interface in WordPress. WordPress’s admin interface is good—really good and about the only thing I can complain about in it is how not-easy it is to work with images.

See the screenshot? That’s me writing this post. The interface splits the browser window with whatever you happen to have open in the window. Any links you make will default to the address of the open page, although you can overwrite that link.

Truthfully, though, adding that image wasn’t really any easier than doing it in the admin interface, and the image editing capabilities of ScribeFire don’t seem to be even as nice as those in the WordPress admin.

So, back to WordPress for my posts!

Islands and links

Lynn

I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting ideas I can work with. Today I ran across this post on reader engagement and linking out. The article, interestingly enough, touched on something I’ve been thinking about lately–or maybe that’s simply why the article caught my attention.

I have several older websites that still get email. Those emails are usually nice comments about the usefulness of the site and I always smile a little when I get one. I wonder too, why some of my newer sites don’t see those kinds of comments.

The differences between these sites is simply this: The older site has tons of links that link out to other useful sites I’ve found over the years. The newer sites have fewer links out, and are more heavily populated with my own “original” content. Now, I realize original content is important, but sometimes I know there’s someone out there that’s better able to say what it is I want said. These are the times when link outs make the most sense and when I should be linking out.

Come to think of it, many of the sites I visit aren’t spectacular in and of themselves, but they are able to pull together stuff on the web and make it useful in a way that it wasn’t before.

That’s why I like social bookmark sites. Articles and blogs are all pulled together by tags. It makes browsing easier and more useful.

Aggregators are important tools when it comes to the web, because there’s just so much data available and that makes for some serious information overload. I use up a lot of time online.

I’ve been thinking of doing more aggregation sites like those older sites I still have. I love them and I’ve always thought they served a great purpose. These days you see fewer and fewer niche aggregators–or maybe I’m just not looking in the right places!–but there’s a bigger need than ever for them. Even the small social bookmark sites get overrun with so much content that narrowing it down to a very specific topic is difficult.

In essence I’ve created my own aggregated links within Google Reader. But I’ve still ended up with so much stuff to sift through that I feel a little like I’m going to go crazy sometimes with the speed reading that I have to practice to get through all the headlines.

I’ve also noticed how stingy some sites are about linking out, and I admit I’ve caught myself being that way too sometimes.  Is this really the way I want to be?

I can make this stuff easier for others to digest by pulling it together on some of my sites. Frankly, I’m tired of trying to be an island of content. I’ve said before I have too many domain names and I might have just found a better use for some of them.

If my site is good enough, any visitors I send away will eventually make their way back.

Testing Windows Live Writer Because I Love Trying Software

Lynn

Live Writer Screenshot I’ve decided I would like to try out a couple of different programs that might help me spend more time writing on my blog and less time logging in to the different admin panels. One of my favorite pieces of software was w.bloggar, but I stopped using it when I couldn’t add tags and stuff with it. Maybe I just didn’t know all the tricks but the software seemed to limit what I could do in a way that the WordPress admin interface didn’t.

I still like the idea of a consolidated area for my writing. I feel the same about my fiction. I tried out lots of different software, even writing a couple of books with different programs, but ultimately, I settled on one and imported all my fiction into it.

I’ve tried Live Writer before and I liked it, but I had a couple of weird issues with the particular blog I used it on. The categories disappeared from the WP admin where you add them to a post. They didn’t reappear until I upgraded to a new version after a complete deletion of the old files. Previous upgrades where I just overwrote the old files didn’t do anything to fix the problem.

Anyway, I’m being brave here and giving it another shot. :-) So, there you go. This post is coming directly from Live Writer.