Billy Fire LLC

Joost de Valk has posted a video about making your Wordpress blog SEO friendly. He makes a lot of useful suggestions in the 50 minute video filmed at A4U Expo in London, including recommended plugins.

At Yoost’s suggestion, I have installed RSS-footer, available at Yoost’s site. The plugin automatically adds a link back to one’s site within the RSS feed. The idea being that if anyone scrapes your content, at least you get a link out of it.

I just remembered that I was a big fan of Van De Valk, the Dutch detective series, when I was … Continue Reading

I recently decided to create a popup on our home page to promote our monthly newsletter.

The industry seems to be divided on whether popups are a good idea. I suspect this is because they have been misused and abused by some sites. This has lead to the creation of popup blockers.

In our case we decided to use a popup (written using jQuery) but to restrict it (using a cookie) to make sure that it does not reappear for a site visitor for 20 days. In other words, if a new visitor came to billyfire.com today, and then visited every day … Continue Reading

I recently started using Tweetlater to automatically respond to Tweeters who follow me; and to schedule future tweets.

I read an article about someone who scheduled, way in advance, a whole bunch of Tweets, and did so using Tweetlater. It seems like a good idea, if not really in the spirit of Twitter. In the process I set up an automated response to those who follow me. I had already tied it into my blog and so all my welcome to #dafsfj and #tytewty appeared as blog posts.

In retrospect , I think this is a bad idea. My blog … Continue Reading

Allowing Twitter to update my Facebook status

Working on marketing planning proposal.

I just set up an account with BudURL. Like some similar services it takes a long URL and shortens it.

The twist with BudURL is that is includes analytics behind each link that you create. So, for example, you could include a BudURL link in a Twitter Tweet and then see analytics on any clicks on that link.

I will post more when I have examples of the analytics.

BudURL includes free and paid services based on the number of links you create.

Learning about Nutch & creating new search engine

Those of you who are familiar with the nuts and bolts of administering a Web server will know that it is a complex business. For this reason most people tend to use some form of administration software, for example WHM/cPanel or Plesk. This makes it a lot easier to add new virtual domains to server, modify e-mail users, check disk space usage and regulate bandwidth used.

I have used cPanel for some time and it serves its purpose well, however, if you are managing you own server it is not cheap.

I have recently been experimenting with Webmin and Virtualmin … Continue Reading