The Hobby Webmaster Blog

I have had family in town for the holidays, so some time was cut from the pursuit of my hobby. I did put up one more marketing blog on The Closet Online site. This will announce sales and promotions for the advertisers represented on that site. You can view the ‘What’s in the Closet‘ blog by clicking on the title link.

I have one or two freeware apps that I have modified for my personal use. I am planning to offer those modifications through pages on this blog space. There is the gallery software that comes bundled with IrfranView photo editor software. I have set it up with css styling and I plan to make those modifications available through a page.

I also am using a php random rotator that I found on the web. The instructions that are available there are more suited to experienced developers. I plan on producing a users manual for this script. I found this script while searching for a banner rotator for some of my niche sites, but I am also using it to provide random tips (text files) and random pictures in various places. Watch the pages category in the left column for these pages to show up. I will post an announcement when I put these pages up, so subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with my latest news.

The pace has got to slow soon, but I put up one more blog today (it is still early). The latest addition to the blog stable (or litter) is in connection with the Before You Buy a Website site. I am calling this one Money from the Web – The Reality Show. I am going to look at a few sales pages and promotions for money making ideas available on the web. I will offer opinions as to weather the promoted program will work.

I invite you to stop by and check out the new installation.

In web development the file path is very important. If the file path is not right the expected results will not appear. On a simple site this could mean that a picture does not appear on a webpage or a link is broken and returns a 404 error.

I may have mentioned that I have been putting up a few blogs. My hosting company makes a SimpleScripts one click install available, but each installation uses a separate database. My databases are limited to 100 with my hosting plan. So I put a copy of the master file  on the server so that I would not have to upload it each time. If I do the install I can use a shared database for several (unlimited??) instances of the blogging software. One just uses a unique prefix for each instance of the blog using the database.

Where this all leads is: The hosting company provides a file manager through the site cPanel. There is supposed to be a drag and drop function to copy files. I had no success in getting this to work. The alternative is to input the file path. I made several attempts in conjunction with a couple of blog installs yesterday. Because I did not have the file path clearly visualized I ended up with several instances of the blog software file in places that I did not expect on the server, including as a sub-directory in my master file. I can move files easily with drag and drop so this worked, if not as expected. This morning, when I reflected on the situation with a more or less clear head, the correct file path was apparent to me. I have one more blog that is needed (for now, probably several soon) so I went back and tested the theory. Sure enough, if you input the correct file path things happen as expected.

As an added benefit, copying on the server happens almost instantly. I have pretty good broadband service, 2Mb per second upstream advertised, and it still takes about 5 minutes to upload the 620 files for this software. I doubt that it takes 5 seconds to copy it on the server.

My webspace is becoming littered with blogs. I put one up on The World SoapBox and then I put one up on Selling on your Website. I may put a couple more up before it is all over, but I now have a total of 5 including this blog.

I really need to get on to other things for a while though. I keep adding things to my ideas list. I have explored a few of those things a little further and I think that most of the ideas are good. But there are a lot of mechanical things that need to be done. In addition to the blogs I started another site upgrade. You can’t see that one yet, though, because it is not on the server, only on my local disk. All in good time . . .

I did not put up any more store windows for the window shoppers to look into. When I checked CJ today there had been a couple of clicks.  If I get a few more clicks I could have double the AdSense income than I have in any previous month. Amazon had a good Christmas selling season, why shouldn’t I??

I have most of my skinning figured out for the WordPress blogging software I think. I will put up one more blog as a test and if all goes well I will put up a few more. If  I am where I think I am, installing a new blog on one of my sites will be quick and easy. I will let you know via post here if and when new blogs are installed (so attach to my post RSS feed).

The blogging software automatically notifies one of the blog indexes when there is a new post. Anybody that keeps an eye on this index can tell that there is a new post. I suspect much of the key to picking up new traffic from the index depends on catchy names both for the blog and for the posts. I have seen some traffic to this blog that I suspect is the result of listings on this index. The software also generates a notification by RSS feed when there is a new post.

Most people that are driven to put up a website hope to see some traffic to the site. The best traffic is the ‘free’ traffic. Blogging is one of several free options. The best free traffic is the search engine traffic. The path to search engine traffic is quality unique content. Blogs, for the most part, by their nature have unique content. Search engines are able to index the content in the blog so this should generate some traffic to the site.

I have just completed the installation of a blog on my Pennies For Wink site. I called it the Save a Penny blog. I put this one up myself so that I can put several blogs in one database. If I use the SimpleScripts installation I burn a database for each blog. WordPress is perfectly happy to share a database between several blogs.

This is more or less a commercial effort. There will probably be an affiliate text link in most of the posts on the site. I will probably look for coupons and special deals to include in the blog.

I did put up a couple of PepperJam affiliate stores last evening. PepperJam is an affiliate network that makes it easy to put up a store. The web is probably already littered with these, but no one can say that I am not doing my part. Now if I can just join with some advertisers that have products of interest to those visiting my higher traffic sites I may see some business in the stores that I put up there.

I played with the rotator script in conjunction with my home page background image. It is now working very smoothly. I will probably put it up even before I do the full update to the site. I may change the header image or put another rotator in there, although there would be no way to control what color combinations showed up (unless I made partial internal style sheets, food for thought!!).

In other news, a question on the KompoZer forum started me thinking about other keyboard shortcuts. I have never been a big word processor user, so some of the tricks of the trade are foreign to me. There are a lot of things that can be done with the alt key plus a letter key. Keyboard shortcuts are a great time saver because you don’t keep switching between the keyboard and the mouse. Those that were into computers early on were used to using the keyboard for navigation as it took them a while to harness the mouse. Word processor users are often used to keyboard shortcuts, too. Us in the general population are often very mouse oriented. Learning and using keyboard shortcuts can be a great time saver if you are inputting a lot of data with the keyboard. ‘Copy’ and ‘Paste’ operations are also available on the keyboard as well as ’save’.

I did a minor update to the MC Rally site this evening. I had been accepted into another affiliate program and wanted to put their banner up. While I was there I made a ‘more info’ page. I made my css updates for the more info page and then had to go through the other pages and make some changes so that they work with the new css scheme. Luckily the galleries use a different css sheet than the main pages. I was able to make them work with only one small addition to the style sheet. This was a very good thing since there are three or four hundred gallery pages. I would  probably been able to devise a search and replace for the changes I needed to make, but just being able to change the one style sheet saved a lot of time.

The elements that I am using are evolving a bit as I go. I like the more recent pages better than the earlier ones, although I am not sure that the decorations are final at this point. The style sheets make this sort of thing quick and painless, so changes can be made easily.

I also played with a background image rotator for Symmetrical Backgrounds this afternoon. There is a major site reorganization due. I get a small but steady traffic to the site. The reorganization might help keep people on the site longer. A gimmick could not hurt, the rotator might make the place a bit more exciting.  I have a thing or two more to try to make it the best that it can be, but what I have now would work.

I noticed in my travels last evening that those interested in web design are much more likely to have the Alexia ToolBar installed on their browser. This is indicated by the fact that my site Symmetrical Backgrounds, a free background image site, is ranked by Alexia in the five millions while my Live Sound niche site, with nearly four times the traffic, is ranked in the thirteen millions. Alexia does not claim that their representation is accurate for the big picture and this is a good indication of how skewed their results can be. When you see a high traffic rank from Alexia on a page you must understand that the real meaning is that the content on the site appeals to the demographic of Alexia ToolBar users.

I spent the day updating the home page for Number One Pictures. I  went with the three column layout that I have begun to use. On the left I put a QuickPic box to get to the galleries directly from the home page. I will use this format for any articles that I write. On the left I put the ubiquitous ad rotator, although I only have three ads in the rotation at the present time. I set my gallery QuickPic data in a php file so that I can include it on any pages easily.

I had been declined by a couple of camera shops so I appealed the rejections. I also signed up at a couple more affiliate sites. I want more ads in the rotation to keep things fresh. I don’t have enough in the music department either so I have applied for several more programs. I have over 70 programs that have declined my application and around 50 that are pending.