Why Do I Bother?

I have been working on a new look for my wordpress blog for some time now and believe me it has been no easy task. I want to have 3 columns because I have so much going on in the sidebars on this site and many things get lost in the long list. This is still a work in progress, but I think I am getting pretty close to what I want here. Feel free to offer me some feedback.

The hardest part in all this has been to find or create a layout that will work in all browsers. A three column theme that functions well in Internet Explorer seems to be a very difficult thing to accomplish. I have finally come to the conclusion that Internet Explorer is broken. This is hardly breaking news, others on the web are saying the same thing. I won’t attempt to explain how it is broken since I am not an expert, but the problem is basically that IE is unable to display some CSS code in the way that it is designed to be displayed. ***Update*** With some monkey business and a little luck I have been able to fix the 3 column display in IE. There are still some problems but they seem more reasonable now.

Fortunately for me Firefox by Mozilla is a much smarter browser. Fortunately for you, you can download it for free.

At the risk of offending or alienating some of my readers I have given up trying to please the Internet Explorer gods for now. This site will work in IE, but it will work much better in Firefox. Give it a try. If you simply must use Internet Explorer you will have to scroll down the page to see the 3rd column. All of the navigation links are in the column on the left.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, blog, browsers, Internet Explorer, CSS, Mozilla, Firefox

Tags: Announcements, Computers and The Internet by Jeffrey
6 Comments »

I am amazed at the increase of traffic to this site with nothing more than the addition of regular technorati tags. Yesterday’s traffic total was 78% above the average Thursday in January.

How many other tricks am I missing?

Technorati Tags: traffic, technorati, tags

Tags: Blog Help, Computers and The Internet by Jeffrey
5 Comments »

After posting my story yesterday about utilizing Technorati tags in an attempt to increase traffic on my site I saw immediate results! According to awstats my average traffic on a friday for the month of January has been about 101 unique visitors. Yesterdays traffic was 186 unique visitors. You do the math.

I knew it would bring in more visitors, but I was surprised at how many and how quickly. The problem is that now I have to write more interesting posts. Hah. It also seems that I am slowly crossing into the “tech blog” arena which is not what I had in mind when I started this, and not what I am really qualified for. The more I work at this, the more qualified I become though.

Thanks for visiting and please keep coming back!

Technorati Tags: Technorati, tags, traffic, immediate results, awstats, unique visitors, visitors, tech, blog

Tags: Blog Help, Computers and The Internet by Jeffrey
1 Comment »

While searching for help on increasing my traffic on this site I came across this article at ProBlogger.net. He gave 3 suggestions and I have implimented 2 of them in this very post. Here’s what he says”

1. First, I made the most of Technorati tags. I tagged every key word in each of my posts. Initially I did this manually but them I discovered a WordPress plugin called SimpleTags that made the job a whole lot easier.

I found that by tagging my post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site!

2. I leveraged my existing website. I’ve been running my business website for a few years and that was getting modest levels of traffic that was relevant to my blog - so why not try to drive some of that to my new blog! I placed a few FeedBurner headline animator blocks on some of my most popular pages and after a day or so I noticed a significant increase in traffic for 5 minutes worth of work on my part.

3. Finally, I made effective use of trackback links to popular sites. If I commented on a post on another site I would make sure that I set up the appropriate trackback for it. The results from this are varied depending on the site and post that you are linking to but since I liked to comment and interact with the wider blogosphere anyway, it was free traffic!

Pro Blogger is a great source of information. I encourage you to read it often and add it to your blogroll. While your at it … add me too!

Blogroll Me!

Technorati Tags: traffic, ProBlogger, Technorati, WordPress, tagging, blog, trackback

Tags: Blog Help, Computers and The Internet by Jeffrey
5 Comments »

I got a new toy the other day, a web cam. It’s a logitech QuickCam Orbit MS and it’s pretty fun so far.  My old cam was good when we bought it, but it had difficulty in low light situations and the image quality was pretty poor.  This new one is much much better.  It also has cool, if annoying, graphic features that allow you to add cartoon images to your face as in the image to the right.  I’m thinking about adding a webcam feature to this site.  We’ll see.

Tags: Computers and The Internet, Just For Fun by Jeffrey
2 Comments »

For fun, go take a look at the advertising slogan generator on The Surrealist web site. Have some fun! Here are a few that came up for me … (Nuts is my nickname)

Leave a comment with a funny one if you like.

Tags: Computers and The Internet, Just For Fun by Jeffrey
2 Comments »