New navigation template system completed

I just finished last night the new navigation and template system for this site. It is coded from scratch for the navigation style above — a main level and sub navigation links below.

The template for the site is now also all controlled by one file, so making updates should be easy. Adding a new page means copying a new PHP file, adding the new content, then updating the navigation template to include a reference to the page.

I’ll probably post the PHP code for this soon. It doesn’t require any database or special functionality, other than a familiarity with how PHP works.

October 26th, 2003

Google Adwords Article

Just finished writing an article on Google Adwords for Midwest Technology Journal for the November issue. It is mostly a friendly introduction to how to use their system to get ads up on Google in five minutes.

October 24th, 2003

Now using mod_rewrite for blog urls

After reading a number of sites that discussed the use of Apache mod_rewrite I finally decided that it was time to try implementing this powerful technology.

I found the simple explanation given at www.scribbling.net was very helpful. I used the supplied rules to implement mod_rewrite for this blog.

Here is the .htaccess file currently being used:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^posts/(.*)/(.*)$ index.php?p=$1&c=$2
RewriteRule ^posts/(.*)$ index.php?p=$1
RewriteRule ^topics/(.*)$ index.php?cat=$1
RewriteRule ^archives/(.*)$ index.php?m=$1

I did end up hacking WordPress a bit to get it to write out my desired url format on its links. It looks like the current code has the option to do “search engine friendly” urls, but it is currently commented out. So I did a bit of searching for the places where the tags are written out and made some changes. 🙂

Eventually maybe I’ll work on the code some more so that the urls can turn into https://www.serafinistudios.com/blog/this-post-is-titled-something format (even more search-engine-friendly).

Update
Just upgraded to the latest version in CVS of WordPress, and thanks to Matt have this functionality now built in. See this post for more details.

October 12th, 2003

New version of WordPress released.

The final .72 version of WordPress has been released and is now available for download.

October 11th, 2003

Google Adwords Rock.

Google Adwords logo

We’ve been using Google Adwords since August 24, 2003 to advertise author visits for Kristin and have been thrilled with the results.

Advertising results (as of October 10, 2003) for XyzAnt.com
Total clicks: 304
Total impressions: 77,045
Click-through rate: 0.3%
Average cost per click: $0.23
Total Cost: $71.17

Kristin’s gotten a lot of author visit requests as a result of this advertising, and it seems that this is really going to help develop her speaking career as well as help promote her books.

October 10th, 2003

Work on NoraLarimer.com continues to progress

I’m happy to report that work on NoraLarimer.com is progressing rapidly. The biggest driving factor for the quick improvements is the addition of Hal Martin to my team of developers. He is a recent graduate of Principia College and is an excellent resource — skilled in computers, Macintosh as well as PC, has done programming in the past, and has picked up HTML very quickly. It’s not like HTML is that complicated, but attention to detail in a project is very important. Hal brings an excellent work ethic and great attitude to the team. He’s picked up grep really well (using BBEdit under Macintosh OS X) and has used the technique to make lots of the changes.

We’re adding ecommerce to the site using PayPal for both her originals and reproductions. We’re also taking the opportunity to make aesthetic improvements as well as we add the requested additional content. Once we’re finished with this current project her site will be in great shape for taking orders over the Internet and will be even more funtional.

October 10th, 2003

Vibephone.com Rebuild

Old navigation tabs (Flash)New navigation tabs (gifs)
We recently finished rebuilding Vibephone.com to not use iframes or the flash navigation. The old site loaded into a single page that had an iframe for the top navigation and an iframe for the individual page content. The navigation was Flash coded and used transparency to achieve an integrated look. The pages did not function correctly in browsers other than IE 5.5+ on Windows. We rebuilt the header graphics from scratch, creating a much cleaner, crisper look (although most people don’t see the difference at first). The rebuilt site loads better, is much more search engine friendly (actually the reason the site was redone was to improve search engine optimization (SEO)) and is now cross-browser cross-platform friendly. Also note the text on each tab is much easier to read now. Sometimes an overall design doesn’t need to be ditched, but the implementation needs improvement.

www.vibephone.com

July 27th, 2003

Midwest Technology Journal Site Upgraded

Upgraded the Midwest Technology Journal website from php-nuke 6.0 to 6.8 to fix some security problems. Also installed NuCalendar module to allow scheduling of events.

www.mwtechjournal.com

July 24th, 2003

CordKeep'r Prototype Packaging Completed

A four color / black and white insert card was prepared for the Variety pack of CordKeep’rs in time for a guest appearance on TechTV.

July 7th, 2003