An ‘Independent Web Advice’ Blog

My new site is finally ready for public consumption (I think). It works in Firefox, IE7 and thanks to the Etomite forums at http://www.etomite.co.uk it now works in IE6 - Hurray!!

http://www.thewebsitemanager.co.uk

Now I do have plans for this site but I also want to keep it simple. It is a sales vehicle for my commercial services. Now I need to redesign this site to be more Independent. ie not trying to sell my services from here.

Comments welcomed and especially any ideas about how I can best present the information on this site in a more easily digestible format.

Speak soon,

Paul

I think I have finally worked out what is wrong with my own site. Why it doesn’t quite work. There has always been something slightly ‘up’ with the whole concept. What it was I did not know and Independent Web Advice has gone through eight total reworks in just 12 months.

The problem is that it serves two incompatible markets.

Offering Free help and advice for your website

To sell my business services and attract new customers

Why are they incompatible? Because if I am selling services, then how free and independent can the information on this web site be? If I am giving independent web advice for free, then how can I justify trying to sell you my services? Surely that would be somehow dishonest, a trait you do not want from some one whose opinion you are going to heed.

The Answer?

It seems simple now that I really know the problem. It dawned on me just today.  There are really two websites here. So I shall be creating a new site and splitting the content. Although not good for Google, getting the fundamental aims of a site right is more important.

This web site, Independent Web Advice, will become more what it says on the tin. Not a sneaky sale of my particular services, but a real resource for independent web advice.

I will also create a new site (name not decided), which will be my business site. It will be for the sale of my services. An unashamed ‘asking for the business’.

More soon, Goodnight,

Paul

This is Mike. The founder, owner and MD of a successful engineering company. After retirement and finally having the time to explore the Internet, Mike found himself wanting his own web site. Happier fixing huge industrial machines, Mike had avoided computers all his life. A few months later, he is now running his own affiliate site, editing content, adding pages and even starting to get to grips with HTML.

Take a look - www.egotrips.eu

Is Mike hooked? We think so. He has done a wonderful job with his new site and is now exploring design issues and interactivity. He wants, above all, to log his next road adventure online, as he goes, and we are exploring how to do that now.

Why is he hooked - because the internet is absorbing. The more you know, the more you want to know, the more the Internet provides. Now Mike wants a new site, based on the things he has learned from mistakes with egotrips. I can’t wait to hear the plans.

Speak soon

Paul

PS Mike - thanks for the Guiness, hope you got home ok

Akismet is amazing. Since I installed it with a FREE key supplied by Akismet my life is almost entirely SPAM FREE!!!

If you have a blog, you need Akismet.

Before Akismet I had over 500 spams a day! Can you imagine what a pain that was for me to sort through. On one record day I had nearly 1500 spams to moderate. That means me scrolling down through all the messages to see which were from humans.

Mostly I gave up and just deleted everything. (If you lost a post - I apologise!).

Now Akismet has changed my life forever. Thank you to WordPress for making it a default add on. Thank you to Akismet for a wonderful service. It works, it is free, and it is POWERFUL.

I love Akismet

Try it now if you run a blog. It will change you life and save you hours and hours of spam trawling!

Paul.

http://akismet.com/

Sometimes you come across a piece of software that is so powerful, yet simple and easy to use, that ideas start popping into your head immediately. Ideas about useful applications, great web sites that could be built as well as wondering why not more people are using it. They are called Killer Aps.

93 Photo Street is one such piece of software. This piece of open source software is a gem. The user experience is incredible. I cannot wait to deploy my first (of many) maps. (Many commercial programmes could do with employing the creator to consult on their own user interfaces, such as Photoshop, Microsoft and even Google.)

I love this little programme. BUT it has happened before. Until I get a live map running I can’t be sure there are no drawbacks. You can see my ’silly’ attempt while I play here.

This is a Killer AP.  Try it.

Paul

Changes to this site are ‘nearing’ (ha)  completion.

Each major section is supposed to have it’s very own Dragon on it. However, apart from this blog, I still have not found the time.

My 3 year old son, Adam, had conjunctivitis and was off from nursery for a while. Then just as he went back to Nursery my 8 year old son, Rowan, caught some virus from school and was off for ‘a few days’. Then it was a bank holiday, then family gatherings to attend on Saturday (when I should be in the office building web sites) and finally I begin to feel under the weather myself!

I have been told (by a female of course) that it is because I am male that I think I work harder than Julie, my female partner. So how does any ‘normal’ mum manage to run a business AND raise children? All the men I speak to about it, who are in the same situation as me, agree that we have a difficult and terrible time doing both at once. Yet I meet women doing the same thing every week, and they all seem to agree that I am just a ‘bloke’ bemoaning the loss of my freedom.

So my own website, which takes a lower priority than my customers, and my children, and my family commitments, is not finished yet

This should not be a surprise really, as a site is never ‘finished’. A website is not a brochure, job and finish. It is a labour of love, in an ever changing medium.

Perhaps I should get on with the Dragons as opposed to writing these posts. Who knows.

I only really wanted to say ‘try out the new help desk‘, it is fantastic IMHO.

Speak soon,

Paul

After completing my first year in business I am now finalising my accounts.

There is a NEED FOR CHANGE.

I need;

A new car

A new Kitchen

A new Bathroom

A holiday

Roof Repairs

Furniture, clothes,  a new laptop, more gadgets, a bigger office, an assistant and an apprentice

It is only when you see your profits written down in Black and White, covering an entire year, that you realise how well or not you are doing. I need to do better in the coming 12 months so am altering my charge scales and charging arrangements.

When I finalise the details I will publish them, but if you care to make a donation towards the above list please feel free to do so.

Paul

I am really excited by this new community site. I am tying in lots of open source systems, some of which are amazing.

Now this site is due for Initial Completion in Late July or Early August. At the moment it is too raw to reveal but I cant resist popping in a link here, although many dead links and bits and bobs in raw form. Your suggestions are welcome.

Currently I am installing infrastructure but can’t resist implementing a few templates on some systems. However, this is wrong. I am concentrating on functionality only at the moment and then finalising structural design. Then comes the prettying up with the design, and unifying all the sections. Much later I will try uniting all the password systems but that is for another day, is very tricky and probably beyond me.

I am really pleased with the online chat but we shall see how that turns out. There are better/bigger chat systems out there but this little program is ‘nifty’. The site is entirely free for Lutterworth users.

So far I have spent three days (on and off) on it and about 20 hours in total. I have spent about £100 on various items, licences, templates, etc etc. It is my new ‘Pet’!! I will give a breakdown of all the elements later.

Speak soon,

Paul

Wordpress is amazing. Powerful yet simple to use.  Similar to my favourite CMS, Etomite.

I am taking a gamble but I am really excited. After ranking in the top 2 on Google for ‘web advice’ for some time now I have decided to abandon my keyword rankings for the sake of my users. Now I am following the Golden Rule.

If you do not know the Golden Rule I am sorry, I shall describe it in detail later, but for now I have a mountain of work to do. Rewriting sections, converting wiki’s and other 3rd party systems back to Etomite. My site is now returning to it’s roots in order ‘cut the chaff from the wheat’. (I think that is the phrase?)

But it is a risk. The vast majority of my traffic came from obscure searches, not my target keywords. The recent changes in Google have seen our search results improve, but for SEO’s some popular techniques have been caught up on.

How much the PR of 5 affected those search results is hard to tell. Will all the obscure listings disappear dramatically reducing my traffic. Does it actually matter?

Without going into too much detail I saw my site with new eyes. Doctor - heal thyself.

In the meantime, you will have to put up with jumping templates. I hope to have this all done by Saturday. We shall see, we shall see.

Paul

Google has updated it’s map of the web one more time and my site has dropped from a PR5 to a PR4. I must admit that I am personally ‘gutted’. But is it Google’s fault or mine. I suspect it is mine.

The truth is that my site does not deserve a PR5 ranking. I have seen much bigger web sites with a PR of 5. Mine has been a PR5 for some months now and that has been reflected in my traffic stats. But since it dropped to a PR4 there has been a noticeable drop in traffic.

Unfortunately it is all my fault! Busy with other projects and to a certain degree disgruntled with this web site, I have failed to write regular new articles, failed to write regular blog posts and failed to promote my own site. Google is actually being very fair not dropping me to a PR3.

So what can I do? Well I am actually toying with the idea of dropping ALL the unneccessary clutter from my site. The repeated links, multiple navigation tabs, plus clearing out all the less than excellent articles. ie all the rubbish. Time for a spring clean.

This time I shall not be considering Google in my design. I shall try to rebuild the site for the user. I shall also try to stick to the one theme of the web site that is the most important. FREE WEB ADVICE. I shall remove all the sales pitches for my services and all the dead links. I shall bring up to date all the articles and organise them in a much more methodical way.

This will take a long time, perhaps six weeks. I will also be going pure - pure ETOMITE and no other third party programmes. I will miss wordpress, perhaps I will make an exception for wordpress, perhaps not.

Google is remarkably accurate. Once again the old chestnut, don’t try to fool Google.

Speak soon,

Paul Drewett