132 replies to this topic

[visiblesoul]

I thought we might give the general chat thread a break from the tech talk. Maybe we'll be called nerds less frequently over here.

This is a place for general chat about html, graphics, web applications, web hosting, search engines, and all web related subjects.

[visiblesoul]

I'll start.

Hey Owl-
I checked out the new site design. I like it. I like that green color so much that I just might have to plagiarize it for something.

[visiblesoul]

From the general chat thread:

Quote

I only submit tickets for things that are beyond my control, not stuff that just takes figuring out. I haven't had to submit very many tickets.

I rarely submitted tickets at my last host but this one has been different. There is only one instance in which it was possible that the problem was my fault and that was my board disappearing the other day. But it happened when they set up my .org domain alias so I'm still a bit suspicious.

An example of one of my tickets was the one I submitted about site applications not installing properly via my control panel. I gave up waiting for a response and searched out the sites, downloaded the freeware , and manually installed them. Since then a customer on the hosts forum has told me a trick to make the control panel work.

[icedowl]

Have at that color. I didn't invent it. I often wonder if there are colors we haven't yet seen. Hmmm....

I tend to know something is up when I can't get in with a bookmark that contains the 'www.' - especially when I haven't been doing anything out of the usual. I have two other sites hosted with the same hosting company, one is on the same server and the other one is on a different server. Neither of the other two has had this latest trouble. A week or so I had some trouble with my email for this same site, the tech said he'd found something messed up with the DNS settings at the server's end of things. My email is fixed, but then this hoohaw cropped up last night out of the blue. I'm still not sure it's cured, only time will tell.

[icedowl]

Oh, by the way, we have the Fantastico installer. I've looked at it, but haven't used it nor do I think I will. The things I want to install have always had more current versions than what it would install. Besides, I learn more by doing manual installations.

[icedowl]

It's looking like my troubles might be caused by a bug in my control panel. The one site that is experiencing the strangeness is the only one with the latest version. I was perusing the forums of the people that wrote the software, someone else was experiencing the same thing.

[visiblesoul]

Owlie-
You're not on a "virtual dedicated server" are you. That's what my host is switching all accounts to and they are having all kinds of issues. Fortunately my problems have been minor. And this isn't some big money making site for me anyway...yet.

[icedowl]

Nope. I don't have 'dedicated' nor do I need it. I'm on the pixelLove plan, shared between 3 domains. My space is an even split, bandwidth split 3-3-4 GB/mo. My recipe site gets the most traffic so it has the most bandwidth allocated to it, but it usually doesn't go much over 1 GB in a month.

[visiblesoul]

I don't need a dedicated server either but my hosting company is switching all clients to VDS technology. It's not a true dedicated server, it's a "virtual" dedicated server which I am guessing is a fancy word for partitioning. Each account has their own operating system and static IP address. My sql databases, email, and everything else counts against my disc space and it adds up quickly. The best thing about it so far was the other day when I was able to restart my own server to restore my sql files.

The bad thing about it is there are so many files that I can't identify on my server that it is hard to locate files when I need to edit something.

[icedowl]

Yeah, I have some files that I don't know if I can get rid of. I do know what they are - old analog & webalyzer (sp?) html pages. I just don't want to raise any havoc by getting rid of them. I really don't care much about stats.

[visiblesoul]

Actually I just started using webalizer. Not really too fond of the program but it is kinda fun to see what countries everyone is coming from. I didn't have that particular stat at my last host.

In the last 2 months, besides coming from the US, visitors have come from:

New Zealand
Argentina
Italy
Canada
United Kingdom
Germany
Netherlands
Brazil
France
El Salvador
Austria
Australia
Mexico
Seychelles

And that's without even being listed with Google. I plan to do a little research on search engine optimization today and begin to rework my pages accordingly. I would also like to make them valid xhtml if I can still get the look I want.

Owl-
Besides Google itself do you know, off the top of your head, any good sites that talk about how to get your pages ranked with major search engines.

It's funny but AltaVista loves me. I come up ranked very highly in almost every relevant search there. But who uses AltaVista? Also Owlie, have you seen this site?

http://www.keysub.co...er/seranker.cgi

[icedowl]

I've had visitors from all sorts of places too. Places I've never heard of, and even one I suspect came directly from our White House. I've even seen where someone was still using the old Arpanet to get around. Everyone eats and many people love to try different recipes so I get a huge variety of visitors to my recipe site.

As far as Google goes, you don't need to do diddly-squat to get listed in it. Google is out to crawl every last blinking website that exists on the planet. I no longer submit my sites to search engines but they get there anyway. IMHO there are only a few places to bother with submitting to:
* Google
* DMOZ
* Yahoo!
* About.com

Given time, all the rest will have you listed, and I do mean All. Search Engine Watch is the best place to find information about such things.

The primary thing to do for ranking is to have all of the terms that you think people might search for in the text of your pages. In other words, talk a lot about what is on your site and what you want to sell. Don't try to hide the text either, like white text on a white background - the search engines are wise to that trick and will penalize you for that, if they list you at all when they find that happening. Metatags may still be useful, but I think the jury is out on that one now. I don't have any metatags on icyowl.com, but I do have a robots.txt sitting on my server.

Being linked to from another site helps too. It seems to speed up the process of the search engines finding your site but really little else. Of course you will get some visitors through those links, but most likely they'll just be curious surfers. It still is a way of getting found and gaining popularity.

Well, I've given you a few things to mull over. I'll add more if I think of it, or if you ask another question. It's noon here and I'm still waking up!

Oh, and no I hadn't seen that site but I've seen similar ones.

[visiblesoul]

Owl-
Thanks for the site. I've read alot of those things before and have incorporated them into my site. When I first built this site Google had it listed within a week. Since the first month it appears and disappears from the rankings. I am starting to suspect that it is directly related to whether or not I am running eBay auctions when the bot is out there. I think that the links from eBay are probably the only links to my site that exist at this point and when I'm not running auctions the bot can't find me. Just a theory.

The think that really bugs me is I have a friend whose page is always ranked very high at Google and the only actual text he has on it is "contact us", nothing else. So I'm a little confused by that because I have many keywords. Go figure!

[icedowl]

Well, I'll add a link to your site from icyowl.com - not that it's highly visited, but every little bit helps.

Editing to add: I've "blogrolled" your site since that is next-to-instant to do. You're in the "See Something" section on my blog. I've got other things I can also do.

[visiblesoul]

That's mighty kind of you Owlie. It would be interesting if all of the sudden I was listed because the bots found me through that link. I'm also going to do my best to get some auctions up this weekend also.

[icedowl]

I just took a peek at the .org version. It looks nice. Did you do all the graphics? I need to just lock myself up with my graphics programs for at least a week, breaking only to eat & sleep, and learn them well. I can find my way around in Paintshop Pro pretty well, but I get mind-boggled when I go into Fireworks, Photoshop or Corel Draw. There are similarities, but they have so many more toys!

After that, I need to do the same thing with Dreamweaver, Go-Live, QuarkExpress and Flash.

So much to do, so little time.

[visiblesoul]

Hi Owl-
That's my problem. I'm trying to learn so many different programs and technologies at once I'm close to having a total meltdown!

I did all the .org graphics in Photoshop & ImageReady. You don't even need to know html to do pages in ImageReady as long as you don't mind fixed tables. I sliced it all up in such a way that I could have tables that resize. The only thing that I'm really dissatisfied with are the sun's rays. They look a bit amateurish to me but then again I did draw them freehand with the mouse. I'll go back in and work on them eventually. I am learning Photoshop slowly. Too bad I won't read the manual.

I have never played with the other programs you mentioned. I think I really would have a meltdown if I tried to learn all that!

[visiblesoul]

P.S. Owlie-
How do you like the way I put the Web Design forum under "Arts & Crafts"? I think it's an art like any other. Just an electronic medium. he he. Beads, Watercolor, and html!

[icedowl]

Well, it is an art if you don't want just a simple page of text. I don't know how long you've been on the internet, but I first got on about 10 years ago. Many of the first webpages were little more than black text on a gray or white background. That progressed and I started seeing the background color change to just about any color imaginable, then some of the text was no longer just black. I really fell in love with the internet when I started to see graphics appear.

It wasn't until 1997 or so when I bought Corel Draw 7, so I then had more than Windows Paint. I never did figure out how to do anything in Draw, except I do remember printing out a little yellow duckie. I think it came with the package. When Paintshop Pro 6 came out I got it, then with help from online tutorials found I could actually do something with it. Somewhere along the line I got the rest of the programs, as well as a few books to help me learn them. I just really need to sit down isolated for a while and tackle them one by one.

[visiblesoul]

I think I've had a computer for about a year and a half. I've been on the web about that long. Before that I literally couldn't turn on a computer without assistance. I injured myself surfing last winter and so I bought a book about html and went through it like a college course. Since then I've learned a few things but I feel like I'm just scratching the surface. I'm starting to see why a lot of web designers hire other people to do the actual coding for them. After learning html I learned that everything is moving toward xml. And I need to learn graphics, Perl, php, Miva, and a million other things. Now I need to learn some shell commands for my Linux/Apache server.

While I have your ear Owl, do you know how to copy & paste on a remote server? That would really come in handy but I don't see away to do it with ftp.