Site Stuff

CodeMyPantsOff offering Web Portals based on DNN

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:56:43 GMT

I am taking the plunge and offering Web Portals using the DotNetNuke framework. After years of working on DNN portals for others I want to help my clients build value on the web to become more successful. I know I can take care of clients the way they deserve and not the way some boss or marketing rep thinks they should be treated. Check it out here http://www.codemypantsoff.com/WebPortals.aspx

CodeMyPantsOff Offering Service Plans

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:45:20 GMT

I am taking the plunge and offering service plans for supporting DotNetNuke and other types of web sites. Many levels of support available. After years of helping people out and working for others looking at moving forward into building my own business where I can take care of those clients the way they deserve and not the way some boss or marketing rep thinks they deserve to be treated. Check it out here http://www.codemypantsoff.com/ServicePlans.aspx.

Alexa – why do we suffer its ranking system?

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:26:05 GMT

Usually I stay away from posts like this because I end up with my foot in my mouth but its starting to get to me more and more. Many people and sites try to gauge how popular a site is by where its rank is on Alexa.com. If you haven’t used or looked at Alexa please do so you can see what I am talking about, I’ll wait for you.

Back? Okay!

‘What’s the problem?’ Alexa uses a browser toolbar to track what sites are visited and for how long. Supposedly they don’t collect personal information but that a different discussion. Using this information they rank your site against other sites. Now the hilarious thing is computer technical sites rank consistently lower than comparable non technical sites. I suppose one reason is that computer techies and geeks don’t install these tool bars all that much (too many problems and increases load times for the browser). The main demographic for these type of sites is totally ignored and discounted or at least skewed to the low end. So the ranking is totally unfounded. How many other demographic specific type of sites are ignored because of this?

‘So what? Just ignore Alexa.’ I would love to, but if you are trying to buy, sell, or even value a site everyone looks at Alexa rankings as one of the factors in determining the value of a domain. BuySellAds.com won’t really consider a site as a publisher unless its rank is under 500,000 on Alexa*. I don’t blame BuySellAds for having standards it just seems the standard is skewed.

*BuySellAds.com has other criteria but I have been told not to really bother unless my ranking is higher than 500K.

‘Whats the alternative?’ I don’t have an answer to this. In my opinion Google analytics is a much better gauge or real history and potential but it has to be set up on the site in question. As a developer and designer I have time and effort involved in my sites and I love them and think they are valuable. The thing I want other developers and web marketers to consider is that just because Alexa says you have little or no traffic doesn’t mean no one looks at the site or it has no value. Don't make Alexa the end of your research into a sites history or traffic potential.

Alexa.com is owned by Amazon.com.

Wordpress Hacks and Tricks

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:58:03 GMT

Since I have started doing more and more WordPress work (who would have thunk it :)). I have to start paying more attention to the things that make WordPress work the way people want it to work.

*For those WP people out there I don’t think WP is any easier than DNN to use or tweak to do things I want, it’s just different.

Here is a link to 40 WordPress Tricks and Hacks - http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/40-most-wanted-wordpress-tricks-and-hacks/

One thing I notice absent in a lot of these articles is reference to building a site map for Google and other engines to use to help crawl the site. So I am adding in my suggestion to always add the sitemap plug-in to your WordPress blog. The plug-in can be found at - http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/.

UPDATE: If you are using WordPress.com and not hosting your own they already supply an xml site map for you. (Thought I should add that.)

Site value – domain value

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 07:19:41 GMT

This last week I was looking at domains for a project and wouldn’t you know it some of the domain names were taken by cyber squatters, imagine that. After some looking around I found a few of the domain names I was looking for for sale on a variety of domain resellers. What these b******s were asking for these domain names is outrageous! No content, no traffic, no marketing just a name. This exercise got me to thinking what sites, and to a lesser extent domains, are worth and how they are valued.

In my opinion a going concern of a site should be worth more than a domain name but looking around that doesn’t seem to be the case. If you are curious here are five of the better sites I found to value a going domain. Of course like all things in the business world what something is worth depends on if you can get someone to buy it.

Site Value Check – uses Google page rank, Alexa traffic ranking, back links depth, average popularity of related web sites, age of search engine presence, web page load times.
Stimator – uses top-level domain, market fluctuations, inbound links, popularity, social presence.
ValueMyWeb – uses Google page rank, Alexa traffic ranking, organic keywords value, social media mentions.
URL Appraisal – uses domain age, Google page rank, Alexa traffic rankings, Google inbound links, Yahoo! inbound links, URL marketability.
WebsiteValued –uses Daily visitors, advertising revenue, sales revenue, active subscribers.

P.S. I would love to know what other people think about all the domain names that just sit and sit and no one can do anything with them cause someone wants $10,000 for it. How do we solve that problem?

Time vs. Money – What did I really save?

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:46:10 GMT

Normally I would post aimed at developers and designers here but this issue really comes on both sides of the development world, the developers and the consumers or clients. Most developers and designers will hate this statement but its true and I really believe it, “Anyone can build a website or web application.”

*Okay before the flames start read on!

Well there goes my job right? Wrong! Just because I can do a thing doesn’t mean I should. Change that statement around for any other profession, “Anyone can do surgery or be a doctor.” Again this is a true statement but everyone realizes that to do this takes a lot of time and schooling to be a doctor. Hey, I know I can stitch up a big gash in my leg, I had to do that once, but I know if I went to a doctor not only would it not hurt but very possibly I wouldn’t have the hideous scar. I know all the developers and designers out there have seen sites that are a big scar.

The same applies to building a website, developing applications, or any other endeavor in real life. Lot of times this discussion comes up in my full time job when we start talking about allowing users to upload files. The discussion goes something like this:

Boss: Company X want to be able to upload videos and stream them.

Me: Well videos are huge and we aren’t really geared towards streaming those to them.

Boss: What would it take to do this?

Me: Well I can look at it but, if I buy some prebuilt stuff then maybe a few days.

Boss: How much is that going to be?

Me: More than a dollar!

Boss: What other options are there?

Me: We build it ourselves.

Boss: How long will that take?

Me: I’ll tell you how long when I get it done.

Boss: We don’t have that much time.

……and on and on ………

As you can see the real option here is to maximize my time as a developer geared towards our client needs and not reinventing the wheel or rediscovering fire. That way we can maximize our usefulness to our clients and return solutions to them in a reasonable amount of time.

Could I build an upload component to handle 100’s of megabytes? Sure, it would take a few weeks to build and test and make sure it doesn't cause denial of service problems (common with upload controls in ASP.NET). Could I build video streaming into our site? Sure, again it would take time to learn about and build a solution and test it and load balance it etc etc etc. But by pushing off that job to people, companies, or products that know how to do those things I can focus on the real issues my clients care about, the site giving up videos on demand.

Okay all that makes sense but so what? A lot of time I read of developers saying “I need a component to do x and have no budget how can I build one?” These developers really need to reflect if they can afford to spend the time it takes to build a solid component or if maybe the budget can support a little money to do this and move the project along. I also see this with clients sometimes “Yeah I want to x but can’t afford it.” or “I can’t afford for you to buy that and integrate it into my site.” Really? Is it worth it to add three weeks to the development time of your site just so you can save a few dozen bucks a month? How much did you lose from your site not being active during that time?

So time not only equals money on the front end but lack of sales for a product can cost just as much if not more.

An old proverb makes sense to wrap this one up ‘Penny wise and pound foolish!’

DNNDownload.com – lets throw this out there now!

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:24:00 GMT

Been working on a new project based on one little tweet (http://twitter.com/Salaro/statuses/1416775586) on Twitter.com from Solaro(http://twitter.com/Salaro). If you build DNN skins or are interested in skins and great designs you might want to follow him he’s good!

Anyway in the spirit of Download.com, one of the big successful commercial download sites on the web, I registered and have been working on DNNDownload.com (http://dnndownload.com). The site is built all on, you guessed it, DotNetNuke. With a few hundred more hours of work and some custom modules hopefully it will be a good place for DNN module builders to share demo modules, skin builders to share free skins, and for site builders to find and evaluate modules without having to hunt down a thousand different sites. Hopefully the site will become big enough to make a difference but of course that will depend on the DNN community. If you want to see a feature, tell me! If you want to see something done better, tell me! If you want to help, tell me!

Module Editors

In the next few weeks I will be looking for some editors to help review modules and provide useful and meaningful feedback to visitors.

DNN Developers / Skinners

If you are module developers or skinners feel free to signup now. I should have all the upload and product pages done this week! Start giving me feedback on what I need to do to make this better for you.

Advertisers

Of course the site will be supported by advertisers, I have to keep the servers running somehow, so if you are an advertiser register as hopefully I’ll have the advertising module up and running in another two weeks.

Wordpress? What the h***!!

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:51:15 GMT

Okay if you are a reader, follower, or stumble upon this blog and actually read it, you would know I am a DotNetNuke and ASP.NET guy. Well it never hurts to learn new things right? So after my coworker installed Wordpress for his blog (http://zacuke.com) and showed me what it took I was impressed with how fast and easy it appeared. I asked him for a demo of the backend and the features and literally we learned a bunch of it together, neither of us had really touched Wordpress before that! I was impressed that with very little knowledge of PHP and mySQL he got it running on a Windows server in less than an hour and was blogging as soon as he was done.

Now, I still think DNN is a lot more flexible for applications and membership type of sites, but I will admit for a blog engine I couldn’t beat the time or simplicity of Wordpress. So after talking to him I emailed a few people I know who are Wordpress gurus (at least they say they are) and for the last 5 days I have been spending a lot of free time going through the things they told me were the most important. I still don’t consider myself an expert but definitely not a total novice either. I still don’t like PHP or its wrapped up in presentation way of doing things but Wordpress nicely insulates users and even administrators from a lot of that. The template engine is very robust and fast and I would love to have DNN learn a thing or two from it but that's for the future. For now I can at least say to clients “Yes I can help you manage your Wordpress site, and by the way let me tell you about DNN if you want to do more!”

Testing the look of your pages without 96 computers

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:21:45 GMT

A great tool for testing the look of your pages without spending the time installing and maintaining a bunch of different computers is Browser Shots (http://www.browsershots.org). It not automated or as complete as Browser Cam (http://www.browsercam.com) but its free. I like using it for quick tests of pages. I say quick, but you sort of have to babysit the site if you pick more than a few browsers and the pictures are deleted about 30 minutes after being created so if you miss them you may have to resubmit them to see the screen shots.

Little animals can teach us a lot!

dylan.barber@embarqmail.com — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:51:20 GMT

I remember my Grandmother telling me this story with different animals but the parable was the same idea. Just sort of rediscovered this in catching up on some reading last night. If have never thought that focus and knowledge were important you might want to read this short page and the pages from Chapter 5 of his book that Jim Collins makes available.

The Hedgehog Concept

Chapter 5, Pages 90-91 of Good to Great

I bring up the whole thing as I find myself distracted everyday from the things I know well (.NET) to the things I don’t know very well and don’t have lots of experience in (PHP, Perl). Simply because a client may hire me based on the right words. After rereading this parable of the Fox and the Hedgehog I am reinvigorated to not try and do PHP or Perl sites, I hate it anyways, and stick with what I know ASP.NET and DotNetNuke. Potential clients who may want PHP I am happy to talk with them and give them ideas and alternatives but when it gets to the programming I’ll help them find a Hedgehog who knows PHP and knows PHP and not a Fox who knows every strategy, or programming language, but cant see the simplicity of what the client needs.