Web site news

Web Site Update, one week in

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ZendURL has begun attracting some not-so-favorable responses over on free-webhosts.com. That makes me a lot more skeptical of them. I can’t really wait to find out if they’re going to fix their problems.

Scroll down to the “Web Site Update” post to learn more about the poll(s) on the right side of the screen. I need to get more votes than I have. If I get no responses on the web site host poll I’m probably going to be choosing between Freehostia and 50Webs. If I get no responses on the future-of-Da-Blog poll I’ll reissue it in broader terms.

A Short Term Plan for Da Blog

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I recently decided to go hunting for ways to increase traffic, considering my anemic numbers on the polls. (I have started to receive a small trickle of hits since the post below, but you haven’t been voting!) This was the first hit on MSN Search. Point 5 reads:

Post often when you first start your blog. As time goes on you don’t have to post everyday but try not to ever go longer than a week without posting. Your blog will start looking like a ghost town and your visitors won’t want to come back if you don’t update it on a regular basis.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve taken some big breaks in new posts in the past. That, in retrospect, was a no-no.

Looking back on some recent hits, I’ve noticed that a significant number of recent hits have come on my Upfront series, thanks to Google hits. You’d be surprised how high Da Blog can rank on Google’s blog search service. Suppose someone heard that Patricia Heaton was appearing in a new Fox show and wanted to learn what the blogosphere was saying about it. A Technorati search for “fox upfront patricia heaton” turns up 35 results and Da Blog’s own upfront coverage isn’t among them. But Google produces about 73 – and Da Blog places 40th.

Obviously I need to get Technorati to start paying attention to Da Blog beyond having a meaningless listing for it. Technorati says that they’ll automatically update their records every time I post since I’m with Blogger. But they also say that I last updated three months ago. Considering that was before March Madness, that’s a problem. But surely I have “blog news” posts older than three months, right?

But this also hints at a way to continue to get Google traffic. So you’ll see me make more “comments on the news” at semi-random intervals based on whatever strikes me. There will be some biases (sports, TV business, politcs) that will become evident fast. This will be a short-term solution and it’s quite likely that I’ll burn out, but I suspect this will become a stalwart feature of Da Blog for a long time to come.

And it starts… tomorrow (today as you’re likely to read this).

Web Site Update

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“I think getting your own website would be awesome! I am all for unconfined Morgan greatness.” -Anonymous

I’ve begun making considerations for potentially creating a web site. When I first got the idea long ago, I thought about potentially starting on GeoCities, but there are plenty of sites that are in many ways better. After checking free-webhosts.com and several free hosting sites, I’ve decided that if I’m going to start a web site, I’ve narrowed it down to four options, which each have pluses and minuses:

FreeHostia
The Good: 250 MB of space, 5 GB of bandwidth, scripting support, superfast web servers.
The Bad: Only “basic” editor with FrontPage being the main alternative supported; 500 KB filesize limit; some scripts are outdated; blocks IP addresses outside the United States every so often due to DDoS attacks; I don’t like “morganwick.freehostia.com” as a web address.

50Webs
The Good: Unlimited bandwidth; “advanced” and WYSWYG editors; VERY rave reviews.
The Bad: Only 60 MB of space; no scripting or SQL support on free plan; 500 KB filesize limit except for zipped files (limit there is 8 MB); no site stats.

AwardSpace
The Good: 200 MB of space, 5 GB of bandwidth, scripting support.
The Bad: Very similar to FreeHostia, which I had better than AwardSpace for sure at one point; “basic” editor only; 500 KB filesize limit; has a bad reputation for censoring web pages with words on their banned list; some PHP functions do not work; blocks IP addresses due to DDoS attacks (and I’m not as certain the US isn’t included).

ZendURL
The Good: 500 MB of space makes FreeHostia and AwardSpace look like 50Webs; 15 GB of bandwidth; “advanced” and WYSIWYG editors; scripting support; further upgrades typically work on a points system, no directly paying extra; no known filesize restriction, possibly as high as 20 MB if it does exist; they’re still working on it, so the kinks will eventually go away.
The Bad: Confusion on whether subdomains (morganwick.zendurl.com) are really allowed; restricts or blocks many add-ons (important because any web site would have to become the new home of Da Blog); buggy and restrictive FTP; they’re still working on it, so there are bugs; they’re still working on it, so the stuff that makes it really good might get toned down as it grows/ages.

You can learn more by clicking the links above, or by going to the free-webhosts review pages for FreeHostia, 50Webs, AwardSpace, and ZendURL. I will have a poll going for the next week, but it’ll be non-binding; you could choose ZendURL and I might end up going with FreeHostia.

I’ll also be returning to a much older post on Da Blog. Any new web site will likely contain things that wouldn’t be entirely appropriate for Da Blog. Earlier I asked what, of a list of potential projects, you would want me to feature on Da Blog. That list will now return in poll form and will potentially direct the future course of any web site, or of Da Blog. You can, of course, propose alternatives by commenting on this post.

The two questions will appear randomly on the right side; you’ll either see one or the other, chosen at random. This is because Bravenet does not allow me to have multiple poll questions showing at once without going for a more robust but more complicated service which would be most useful if I… had a full-fledged web site.

Update

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I’m seriously considering taking Da Blog off of Blogger.

My roundup of how the networks came out of upfronts will not be posted. At some point along the way, line returns got inserted in the HTML of the post, and no matter what the circumstance, Blogger converts all line returns into
tags, and that means that a table gets shoved down the page for no reason whatsoever.

Most of the time that functionality is great. (I can turn it off but that would adversely affect ALL of my posts. Until this week I used no tables at all and all of my posts prior to last weekend benefit from this function.) But since Blogger makes no distinction on context – doesn’t disregard or automatically remove line returns in table code, despite NO ONE having a use for the actual results in this context – it is too frustrating. The line returns in this instance were probably added by either IE 6 (but still show up when I try to edit in IE 7) or Blogger itself (which is just plain idiotic).

Since TONS – DOZENS – of line returns need to be removed, it’s simply not worth it to try to get rid of them all, so I’m withholding the post entirely and probably will not post it at all. But if I can find something smarter, I will probably flock to it in a heartbeat.

One benefit to going with Blogger that could prevent me from flocking too quickly is that it provides free, instant hosting. Most other places I could go to would likely either charge me to set up shop there or not be as good as Blogger in certain ways.

That said, given the correct circumstances I could easily decide to set up a full-fledged web site, which would end any hosting concerns I might have…

If you have any advice feel free to reply to this post.

Notice

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Please be advised that I will be making some tweaks to the layout of Da Blog for the next few minutes, so posts may temporarily look freaky. I ultimately want to make the tweaks not matter.

Quick notice

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Later today I’ll issue my upfront roundups for Fox and the CW, but I haven’t started on them yet. Checkers who have looked at Da Blog at the posted time of 4:02 each day may have noticed that the roundups generally aren’t actually up until significantly after that, but they’re going to be even later. They were going to be later than others anyway because they’re two networks, but still…

Sports Watcher’s coming back. Deal with it.

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I have made exactly three posts in the month-and-a-half since leaving the residence halls, all on college basketball. Unless I get some ideas on how to proceed on any other topic, I’m going to revive this feature and start moving towards a sports-centric blog. Past posts have offered other ideas as well as first introduced the concept of Sports Watcher. I’m thinking of putting up a poll on potential projects to be featured on Da Blog but most of the time college is probably going to be too much of a pressure on my time. You may still direct Da Blog towards any topic you wish by leaving a comment to this post.

Update on the below "Update"

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I never did get around to writing up any sort of defense. I’m going to be leaving the Seattle University residence halls over the weekend and will likely not really bother much with Da Blog until the summer, because of restrictions on my Internet access.

About the only thing I’m certain to take on for Da Blog is a project that I’ll provide more details on before too long.

Update on my current situation

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I’ve gotten into big trouble, which could be an understatement. I may be forced to move out of on-campus housing soon. I intend to write up an impassioned defense over the weekend and intend to post it on Da Blog after presenting it on Monday.

If I do get kicked out, it may hamper my ability to work on Da Blog at all.

Although the poll got more responses in one week than comments have produced over the entire time I’ve solicited for them to pick a blog topic or project to post, it still seemed pretty pathetic. In any event, right now I’m not really in the mood for trying to focus on Da Blog, so I won’t be putting up a more serious poll or really paying close attention to what people are saying until this blows over, whatever outcome it may have.

An almost three-year-old poem and the by-now-weekly update on Da Blog

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Here’s a poem I wrote in Summer 2004:

45 Degrees on Port

It is sunny.
Several families watch
For the cargo to approach.
A boat rocks
Over the horizon.

It is rainy.
There will be no sailing today.
Far beneath the waters,
A school of fish waits
For their catch for a change.

It is cloudy.
Sailors don’t know what to make
Of the white sky,
For the old saying about red skies
Never said a thing about white.

It is snowy.
No sailor has been here
For two months.
Beautiful patterns appear
On the water.

Gripping, isn’t it?

Well, since I’ve only gotten a smattering of responses, it’s not as though I’m really catering to very many people. In fact, while I’m extending my request to find out what projects you’re interested in (two posts down) for another week, I’m also taking a special sample poll, available on the right side of Da Blog, to find out if I’m even going about this the right way.

I’m a root beer guy, myself…