BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

While looking at this web site stats (and I can see many web sites stats) I can’t help but notice - the top search keyword turns out to have absolutely nothing to do with this blog. The search term is - SITCOMTV.COM. Apparently, the first result leads to the post on this very blog describing the work on sitcom community. This was my own personal idea and initiative, that people who like sitcoms (especially discontinued ones, like Cheers, Three’s Company, Married… With Children) would gather around the forum and share their experiences. The idea was mostly inspired by the work that fans of the Friends sitcom have done - there are numerous fanfic episodes with names ranging from mimicking originals (like The One With Ross And Rachel) to absolutely fantastic (The One Where Aliens Visit The Earth or something like that).

The initiative have failed so miserably, I didn’t even park the domain anywhere until today. I’d be lying to myself if I would say I have time to start-up the community again. After all, the Zealus’s own community is underway for way too long. I am, however, willing to sell the domain name (possibly with some hosting space on Netfirms, if you don’t know any better) for some considerable amount. Alternatively, I may consider some offer of investment to make me want to free up some time to start the community.

Popularity: 26%

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• Yahoo clicks aren`t clicking (March 12, 2007): Today I got a call from one of my clients asking me to check stats with him as he is seeing certain discrepancies in Overture reports. We went in and figured that the number of clicks reported by Overture roughly 3 times larger then what is being reported by AWstats. Upon contact, Yahoo/Overture issued a [...]
• Post Halloween Web Trends (November 7, 2008): After Halloween long gone and other holidays coming on, I went through Google Trends to see what the trends say. Turns out - Halloween is the most important costume and party holiday. As you can see from the picture above, there is a very strong spike on each Halloween for all three words: "halloween" [...]
• More fun with Alexa and stats (January 10, 2008): As any blogger I can't help but look at the stats now and then. At certain moment I realized that I don't see Alexa in list of visiting search engines. I also realized it's wrong. So I ventured in depths of my memory and just before hopelessly sinking there I remembered someone posting about Alexa [...]
• Blog year-end stats recap (December 26, 2007): The blog is, of course, much older. It's just that I a) start taking it seriously and b) moved it to the WordPress on a separate domain from Blogger around May. And, obviously, started blogging more often. I dropped Hits from the chart because it doesn't really give an idea of how traffic is flowing [...]

There’s a confession I would like to make: I love reading paper magazines and books. So much so that I, on occasion, go out and buy those outrageously expensive magazines from UK on web design, computer arts and photography.

Now, I am not sure if there are any decent magazines on web design in USA, but judging by photography magazines, UK publishing wins hands down. Their magazines are just… tastier. Not in a sense of good and bad taste, but in a sense how gourmet food looks and tastes better then your average Brooklyn McDonald’s. Don’t know how they get to do it, but for me it’s a proven fact.

Unless you are one of those “I know everything already” gurus - I would like to suggest a Web Designer magazine by Imagine Publishing. And while you are at it - their Photoshop magazines are quite helpful, too.

In addition to that, last week at Barnes and Noble I picked up an interesting magazine, called hakin9 - hardcore IT security magazine. It is a bi-monthly Polish publication, specifically targeted at security professionals. Some reviews of popular anti-virus software, some hard-core Linux breaching techniques, even some commercial software included with magazine’s CD. However, the most interesting article in the picked issue was one on rootkit deployment techniques. That’s right, not how to protect yourself or how to recover from security breach, but how to break into someone else’s system - in plain English with screenshots and commentary.

So far, I enjoy my reading. Keep ‘em coming!

Popularity: 13%

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• Protecting WordPress (January 18, 2008): In order to protect your WordPress installation the following steps are mandatory. Step 1: Read this post from Matt Cutts on protecting your WordPress installation. If you don't know what the .htaccess file is or does - read this or this. Step 2: If you have access t0 cPanel or any other hosting management script installed - [...]
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Yesterday the lock on my apartment door broke. I went to a hardware store and got myself one of the new Mul-T-Lock locks. Then I asked my father to team up with me and install the lock.

Not so much to my amazement, but just to prove the point, the 3.5 hour installation (including steel plate on the exterior of the door and other minor parts) went exactly the way any web project goes - with tests, beta versions and live releases. We measured the holes and distance between them, we put the lock on the door to see how it would look like (created a mash-up), we drilled the holes and installed parts of the lock without fully tightening screws (there’s your beta version) to see if key is able to rotate and the lock is, indeed functioning, then we tightened the screws and moved on to a next part of installation (there is your milestone).

The point I am trying to make here is no matter what you do - there is always a little project management going on.

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