Everything Else

I have a number of interests that I would like to create websites on. None of these are money making ventures just personal hobbies. I need to make a list of topics I want to cover and then decide the following:

1.) Does the subject need a blog, static site or a combination?

2.) If a blog, does the topic really need a stand alone blog or will a Category here at Everything Else do, or will a completely separate blog here on the Talmir.info domain work better? No sense in starting a separate blog if I am not able to think of something to post about regularly.

3.) Free host or paid hosting? As an example I can now point a domain at a Blogspot blog and I think I can point a domain at a Bravehost free account, since none of these are going to make money I really do not want to spend any more on hosting - with all my current paid hosting accounts it is starting to get expensive. One thing is I will have them all on domains that I own.

I figure if I start building these in my spare time they might be ready in a year or two. How do you decide on what you want to build websites about?

Off to make that list of topics.

UPDATE:

The List (beta) -

1. State and Regional (multi-county area) Politics Planning - there are things going on which require my commentary and guidance! heh. This could probably just be a category on Everything Else.

2. Living in a New Urbanist Community and New Urbanism - could also be a category on EE blog, or I might create a new folder on Talmir.info and publish a completely seperate blog so I don't have SEO stuff and New Urbanism stuff all sloshing around together. I can't see buying a new domain and hosting account for this.

3. Local Visitors Guide/Local Reviews/local commentary - I might start this one off on a free hosting account but on it's own domain. The idea being that if it builds a following I can move it to paid hosting. In the old days I would have started with a directory script but there already is a local yellow pages type directory and I don't see any reason to compete with that, but I might just run with a blog and some static pages and aim it at reviews and pointing out tourist destinations. That is gear it mainly at commentary/discussion etc. As I write this it sounds like a lot of work and maybe I'll think about this one further before jumping in.

4. Something on US Automibile Trails and Numbered Federal Hwys - could be two sites about historic preservation. These will probably be on free hosts with their own domains for the static pages. I might use a remotely hosted blog (Blogspot or Wordpress.com) so I can post on the road if I take an automobile tour along these routes.

I'm worried this could be me and I don't even know it. :rolleyes:

I just upgraded to StumbleUpon ver. 2.89 (seems to run well on my Flock browser). When I upgraded, StumbleUpon gave me the option of turning on a search engine enhancement feature which is supposed to work with both Google and Yahoo. I figured I'd try it, but after turning it on I could not see any difference on the toolbar or anywhere else, so I just sort of shrugged it off.

Today I did a search in Yahoo and noticed little stars next to some of the listings and when I moused over them they were a link. Clicking on this took me to the StumbleUpon page for that site showing who voted for it plus any reviews or comments about the site. This is very cool.

Unfortunately I'm not seeing anything from StumbleUpon when searching with Google. I don't know why. I am not even sure how they add the stars to the listings in the Yahoo SERP's, perhaps Greasemonkey? Anyway it is another reason for me to use Yahoo search.


Other conversations about StumbleUpon:
Cre8asiteforums
HighRankings Forums
Webmasterworld
Other Blogs

As you will see on the sidebar, I have joined MyBlogLog, which is a social networking platform. Thanks to NickW for pointing out the post which explains why MyBlogLog will work.

MyBlogLog allows me to “embed” their social network on my blog. That’s the cool part. Doesn’t seem like that big a deal, but it was the wow thing that tipped a point.

Source: Rexblog (read the whole post, it's worth it)


I don't understand online social networks very well as I have said before, but I see more benefit from this one because it is a good way to find new web sites and what pages are hot at the momment. This reminds me more of Stumbleupon, only embedded in your website rather than your browser.

What I like about MyBlogLog (and StumbleUpon and blogs in general) is that they are new wrinkles on old fashion web surfing, sorta like webrings for the 21st Century. So I joined because one of the things I started this blog for was to see how traffic develops without the search engines, which is one of the reasons I like blogs and RSS so much and I will see just how this develops as a traffic source. One thing I know from the old days: you need to place yourself at a "Web Crossroads" in order to get non-search engine traffic so understanding social networks like MyBlogLog is important.

A new social networking site: TickMe has launched. So I joined up and I don't see much difference in TickMe and what I remember of Google's ill fated Orkut, both seem to be a popularity circle jerk. Maybe there is some value for dating, but I don't see any other benefits besides ego strokes.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Source: Graywolf

I have been trying out NetVibes as a personal start page for the last couple of weeks. So far I like it and it seems to play well with all my Mac browsers. Mainly I use the Bookmarks, which I like having web based so that they are consistent on all my computers. I find I don't use the web search much because my browsers all have search fields. I prefer to use Bloglines to read news feeds although I may set Netvibes up with a couple of "Top Stories" feeds from Yahoo and BBC so I can track world events, but for heavy news reading I'll stick with Bloglines.
Netvibes was slow to load when I was using dialup, enough to be annoying, so it is definitely a broadband only service.
I used to use MyYahoo but I sorta out grew it. Netvibes is worth trying if you like having a start page that you can customize.

Let me preface this by saying I am a rotten web designer and barely know any HTML or XHTML and I have never used Dreamweaver and I think the last version of Frontpage I had was 2000. For all I know both programs may already do what I describe below.

Most forums scripts generally automatically create "printer friendly" versions of the forums. These are usually graphics-lite versions of the forum threads. So that got me thinking - why couldn't Dreamweaver or Frontpage be programmed to pretty much automatically make a mobile friendly version of a web page? Or perhaps convert and mirror the whole site. Any such conversion might need some hand tweaking but on a static site that would not be too bad.

This is a checklist of things I need to remember to have my friend do in preparation for establishing and doing business on the web. This will be a running list.



General:

1.) Free Web Based Email Address - This is the very first step. Use this for all fan contact on the web. no sense in exposing one's ISP email to spammers by posting it on the web. Encrypting the email address will only slow things down. Recommend Yahoo email or Gmail, because both have excellent spam filters and antivirus built in. Both free. Also use this email for signing up for webmasters services since one tends to get put on mailing lists.



If Using Pro (Paid) Hosting:

1.) Find Easy to use Domain Registrar - At least Easier than Godaddy, which I think is confusing at checkout with all the special offers they make you jump over before purchasing a domain. Also the control panel is so-so for user friendly.

I have this project coming up: I need to advise a writer (novelist type) friend of mine about starting his very first web site, so I figured I would blog about it as I go along. We have not discussed what exactly he wants to do with this first site, but it is good practice for him because he is going to (does) need some sort of web presence from a marketing standpoint even if he gets published by a big publisher.

I want to encourage him to use this first site to learn. So that when he goes on to make his official author site later he will have learned a bit about web design. I think for this first site he wants to serialize a story (which can be a great marketing ploy.)

Now this writer nows zero about HTML, but he can make MSWord word processor do anything he wants it to so a good WYSIWYG web builder for Mac would be handy and he should have no trouble learning to use it. I publish this site with Rapidweaver, a client based CMS, which uses premade templates and is as easy to use as any full featured word processor and has the added advantage of providing consistent navigation. Better, it's only $35 - writers are very poor so that is important.

I wanted to see if Rapidweaver would work with a free web host so I signed up to Tripod which allows direct FTP access. Short answer is No: something stops the FTP upload process when Rapidweaver tried to upload CSS stuff. I'm not sure what all that is about. You can see the results. Rapidweaver has some sort of "smart ftp" setting, I might try to set that differently and see if that works.

A Blogger blog would work fine if this is a serialized story project, but then he would not be learning how to use Rapidweaver. Well I have time to think of something.

This post at TW about designing websites for multiple browsers by DianeV, made me check out this news item about Apple's Safari browser making significant market gains.

Apple's Safari browser enjoyed a highly successful 2005 as the only browser to gain market share each and every month of the year. Safari ended 2004 in fourth place with 1.56% market share. Safari gained steadily to end 2005, and leaped past Netscape to grab the third leading browser spot at 3.07% market share.

The browser market is fragmenting fast and it looks like the forthcoming IE7 will render web pages differently from IE6 so that will further fragment the market.

This morning Bloglines was down and I was like a junkie needing a fix. It really showed me how much I rely on Bloglines for my news and blog reading. It made me start thinking that I should try one of the other online aggregators and perhaps split my subscriptions between Bloglines and another reader.

First up, I tried Rojo.com. Rojo is pretty with a nice clean bright and shiny look to it. It imported my OPML file from Bloglines in a flash. Everything seems to work okay on it once you get it set up the way you like in Account settings. Rojo was also quite fast and signup was simple. It was all more user friendly that Bloglines.

But there are several things that really bothered me when using Rojo:

1.) No Frames: Bloglines uses a frame to show all your subscriptions on the left and then display the posts on the right. I like that arrangment, it means I don't have to scroll around to click on another blog I have subscribed to. Rojo has these all in one window and I was having to do way to much scrolling. It made me unhappy very rapidly.

2.) Eye Wander.: Bloglines is good about alternating each post in a blog with a dark gray background and a light gray background so each post stands out as distinct and you can tell where one ends and another begins. Rojo does not do this and I found my eye wandering all over the place.

Bottom Line: I might come back to Rojo, but I think I will try another.

LibraryThing. I like the idea. I joined to try it out. Somebody should do something similar for DVD's.

A post and conversation with DianeV about Macromedia/Adobe products got me thinking about Flash again. I have always wanted to build a site with Flash, just to play. It always looked like a neat technology and I think it would be fun to build a site with.

But there is always a gotcha: all the cheap Flash clones, that I know about, like Swish, are all on Windows OS only while I use a Mac. That means I would be limited to the "real thing" from Macromedia, and that ain't cheap. (Gosh, I think I could buy a Windows laptop and buy the clone: Swish and I would still pay less than buying Flash from Macromedia.) That is a lot of money just to play around.

If anyone knows of an inexpensive Flash builder for Mac OS X, let me know.

Today I received a letter through the solicitors for a company, demanding removal of material from the Platinax forums, after people claiming to be customers posted complaints about the company’s sales procedure.

So says Brian Turner on his blog post.

I am no lawyer and do not know UK law but if every forum operator or website owner is liable for every negative review that might be posted on their website/forums then we are in a mess. One defense is to make the world know about lawyer and corporate bullying and threats of legal action they may find the negative publicity engendered by the legal threats worse than the original complaint. Good luck to you Brian. There is a good discussion of this at Cre8asite forums

Source: Threadwatch