I discovered that I had uploaded a work-in-progress page to the PC App Store site. I had begun to rework the site some time back. When I started the work I renamed the original home page and the WIP page with the proper name. I recently added some Google code to most pages to gather some additional information for Google Analytics. I did this with a find and replace function of a text editor, so I did not actually view any of the pages. I then uploaded the modified pages, wholesale. When I selected the files for the PC App Store site, the WIP page had the right name, so it is the one that I selected for upload. This site has been getting a little search engine traffic recently, and I knew that it was not in the best format, so I stuck my nose in there today. I was amazed to see the wrong page displayed, and it took me a minute to realize why that could be. I renamed pages and uploaded my old home page to the site. It is not a good page, but it is much better than the work-in-progress page at this point. I have a lot to do on that site!!

Oh, I do still have the itch to put up some new sites. Good, available domain names keep coming to me. It would be easy to get distracted from the maintenance and updating that needs to be done on the current crop of sites. Then there is the matter of site promotion that needs to be addressed if all of the work that I put in on the sites is to pay off.

The rebuild of I Built My Computer is up on the server. There are nine news feeds available including one on the homepage. There are two new galleries of cartoons. There is a joke of a joke page. There is left nav on each page. There are some new banners to look at in various places.

My hope is that some of the people that come to the site via Google image search will look around a bit more. We shall see, it could happen. Of course, the site could use a lot more articles. Those will come as the spirit moves me.

Check out what I have done and see if you can find something that doesn’t work. I did a fairly thorough test run this evening and I think that I caught everything, but more eyes are better for that sort of thing. If you find a problem just come back here and leave me a comment. Thanks.

I got distracted from my rebuild of the I Built My Computer site. There were two things that distracted me in addition to my real business. The first was learning how to display a news feed on my sites. The second, also a result of the first, was that I worked on the Number One Pictures site rebuild to include several camera news and reviews feeds.

I mentioned the feeds that I have put up in the previous post, so I don’t need to reiterate here. For most of the feeds locating appropriate material takes a bit of time. There are many feeds available. The all have to be checked to see if they will display with my online reader. I also need to check the content to see if it is right for the site on which I am placing the reader. The content for the I Built site was the easiest. I have a folder full of Tech News sites because I have long been interested in computer tech. Nearly all of them have a feed, and all but one of the feeds that I tried worked in the reader.

I had checked for Camera and Photography News and Reviews to put up on the gallery site. There were several good options readily available. I had done some preliminary improvement to the site, but incorporating the news feeds means that the full rebuild should take priority. This is a much bigger undertaking than the rebuild of I Built because of all the galleries presented there. I spent much more time working on it than the rest of the rebuild on I Built will take, and it is still not finished.

I will now complete the rebuild of I Built and then get back to the work on Number One. I hope to upload the new I Built site this evening and the new Number One site by the weekend. Of course, I will trumpet these events here, so subscribe to the posts RSS feed to keep up with my latest adventures!!

I am in the process of updating many of my sites. I suspect that my natural tendency to explain about my sites on the home page has not helped in keeping visitors on the site. With my updates I am attempting to engage the visitor as soon as they land on the home page. I am moving almost all of the boring details to various boring detail pages for the insomniacs of the world (or those truly interested in details).

I am also attempting to make the site navigation more user friendly. I am installing a left nav box and trying to populate it with the things that the visitor will want to access. On some sites this will vary depending on the section, but I am using php includes so it will be relatively easy to make changes down the road.

I have completed the rebuild of the Web Pickups site using this philosophy and am now working on my background image site, Symmetrical Backgrounds. With Symmetrical Backgrounds I get some search traffic, but it does not stick as well as it might. With Web Pickups much of the traffic is deep linked but in the past people had to look around to find anything else of interest to them. By making the nav more intuitive I hope to hold the traffic that I do get a bit better.

The results will take a while to manifest, but I will be watching my traffic reports for indications that the design philosophy is working. My money is on the fact that it will work but only time will tell. You can check out Web PickUps (a comedy site) now and keep your eye out for the grand unveiling of the new Symmetrical Backgrounds (a web page background image site). If you check SB now and then keep your eye on it you will have no problem knowing when the update is on the web.

Post a comment to tell me what you think of the new designs. Please let me know if you find something that doesn’t work. There are a lot of pages on both of these sites (hundreds – not thousands) so getting all the linking right is a feat in itself. Thanks!