Posted: 02:31 am
For as long as I've had this domain its run on a custom CMS, but I'm thinking of porting the content and design over to Wordpress.
I've been using Wordpress on a few projects recently, and I've been very impressed with how easy its been to extend it past a raw blogging CMS.
Add in the hundreds of plugins that have been written for Wordpress and maybe I'm just lazy but you can get a website to do just about anything in minutes.
Posted: 09:13 am
As part of my daily ritual I visit a lot of sites to see if they would be appropriate for one of my many design galleries. I'm sick and tired of my browser being resized, and it is a sure fire way to make me leave your site without even considering it.
If a website doesn't fit into my current browser I know how to scroll, and even know how to resize my browser, you don't have to do it for me. What makes thing even worse is that most time my browser is large enough to fit the website, but my browser gets messed with anyway.
I know I can use Firefox to stop the Javascript that allows the browser to be resized, but I use that feature myself when testing to see how designs will look at different screen resolutions.
Posted: 02:48 pm
No I'm not getting committed! Today AOL launched a new blog for Men called Asylum.
The website was designed by Area17, and I integrated the design into AOL's blogging platform called BlogSmith.
The design is beautiful, and content sure to be right up your alley, so click around and enjoy.
Posted: 09:12 am
I was recently contacted by Ross Hill for an interview about my Every 5 Weeks project.
The interview was posted today on Hatch That.
Hatch That is a weekly entrepreneurial conversation, delivered every wednesday fresh to your inbox.
We interview entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries to get insight into how they do their thing.
Posted: 09:05 am
One of the reasons I like to use FeedBurner is that it helps to save a little (or depending on your site a lot) of bandwidth.
In some cases though Feedburner doesn't fit with your needs, and these tips from Pete Freitag could save you some bandwidth headaches.
Posted: 09:08 am
The official announcement came today, PHP4 will be discontinued at the end of the year, a good 3 years after the release of PHP5.
This is a much needed move in the PHP world, something to get all the hosting companies to finally upgrade servers. Everyone has had ample time to upgrade their software and still have til the end of year.
There may still be some critical security patches released until August of next year, but come on everyone lets make the move to a better place ... PHP5!
Posted: 01:24 pm
I thought I was doing well with my Every 5 Weeks deal, but Marchex recently announced they launched 100,000+ new websites.
OK, so it's not really the same thing, since the sites are almost identical, just providing local or focused business data, based on the domain name, but impressive non-the-less.
Posted: 09:24 am
It has been a while since the finale of Sopranos, and I resisted the urge to blog about it immediately.
I let the finale percolate for a while, in-case I was missing something amazing that would come up and slap me in the face a few days later. If you haven't seen it, and want too, you should probably stop reading now.
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Alas, I still have a bad taste in my mouth. Series finales are supposed to give closure, and its not like this finale was a surprise, sprung by a network pulling the plug, no the whole world has known about this finale for years. This finale provided no closure at all, and just made me think my cable went out.
I'm not saying that the Soprano family all had to get whacked for a grand finale, I just want to know what happened. Did Meadow ever learn to parallel park? Did AJ ever grow a pair of balls? If life went on that's fine, but don't let make me make up my own ending while you leave yourself an opening for a movie or bringing back the series when the well runs dry.
Imagine if in the final episode of ABC's Lost we see a boat off the coast of the Island, everyone cheering on the beach they are going to get rescued and then fade to black. WTF?!? Well did they actually get off the island, was the boat full of rescuers, or was it Others plotting a massacre. Well we'll leave that up to your interpretation. Maybe they all got killed, maybe they all lived happily ever after, you decide.
If the writers, directors, or producers of a show can't complete a story arc what is the point of watching a show? I can make up my own stories thank you very much. I'm watching to be entertained by you. Sure along they way I want to be misled, surprised and amazed, but I want you to tell your story, and that means, a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
Posted: 08:32 pm
I know domains name are big business, even having the right typo domain can make you big money, but the practice of sniffing what people are searching, and jumping in and registering it before they can is just down right wrong!
This happened to me 3 times now (luckily I've managed to the domains name each time, but that's not the point).
It has been happening for a while, but for those of you that don't know, here's the nitty gritty.
My Every 5 Weeks project has expanded my domain portfolio somewhat, but trying to decide on a name for the latest site involves checking what is available, before picking the winner.
I'll often grab the thesaurus, and try some alternative words, as the popular one are usually taken. I'll make a list of the domains that sound good, then give it a day or two to see if one jumps out at me, or just begins to feel right.
It seems though, that someone is watching what I (and I assume others) are searching for, and if you don't jump in and register the domain right away before you know it the domain is registered by someone else. You might think it was just a coincidence, after all there are many many people registering domains everyday, they might just have been searching for the same domain as you. The first time this happened that was exactly what I thought, and give myself a big kick on the backside for letting a great domain get away.
Imagine my surprise 5 days later, when the domain that had seemingly slipped thru my fingers was mysteriously available once again! You see there is a little loop hole in the domain registration process that is being exploited more and more each day. It's called "Domain Tasting". Buyers are allowed a five day trial of their domain, intended to allow mistaken purchases to be returned, but is being used by the smart or unscrupulous (I'll let you decide) to test the value of a domain. Basically they automate the process of registering domains (made up of random, and apparently not so random words), put up an ad filled site, and check the traffic and any advertising revenue. If they deem the domain worthwhile they keep it, and if not they cancel the purchase and owe nothing. To make matters worse there is nothing in the system that stops them doing this repeatedly with the same domains.
I put it down to coincidence though, that one of the domains that I was looking at was tasted just as I was looking to buy it, but it happened, again and again.
I guess the moral of the story here, is watch where you check the availability of domain names. I'm not going to name names, as I don't know for sure they are to blame, but I've written my own app to helping my domain registration process, cutting out the middle man and possible sniffing.
I wonder if coming upon a site registered in the past 5 days (there must be browser plug in that can tell me that) with no real website, if it's worth reloading the page a few times, just to give the impression that the site might be worth more than it actually is. Wasting a little money might get these scammers out of the system.
Posted: 02:55 pm
Given the number of sites I have, and number of online tools I use it can be difficult to stay abreast of everything I'm doing online. No more!
My latest Every 5 Weeks site released this week, aims to solve just this problem. You can now see Me In One -- all my web activity in one handy dandy web page, and RSS feed.
Me In One aggregates all and any RSS feeds you point it too, combining all your online activity for easy access. Sure you could add all those feeds into your favorite RSS reader, but what if you add a new feed, or change feeds, now you and all your friends have to update their subscriptions. With Me In One you manage the feed list, so after just one account update, everything is up-to-date.
