High Fuel Prices: Do bad things ever cause good things?
July 14th, 2008
First off, I want to tell you that the high cost of fuel, primarily gasoline, but also propane, and the natural gas used to make electricity, are putting a hurt on me!
I have a pickup that I now drive only twice a week, just to haul off the trash, and to visit a buddy down the street! Why? well, I also have a car, a little one that is good on gas! Here is the biggie, I am now spending about 75 bucks on gasoline a month, just on that truck, the car, which takes me everywhere else, I am spending about $160 a month! I have another buddy spending like $350, so yes, we all feel that, but….
Something that I have had to do a lot of in the past, just because I live in the sticks, is order what I need online! Yes, shipping has gone up, but it beats driving across the country!
If there is anything at all positive in this, it is that business owners with websites, have an advantage over those that don’t. This world wide web can offer opportunities to those that use it, and use it wisely. I’m not saying that every Mom and Pop should go crazy getting a website, but, for those that need an advantage in competitive markets, the Internet can be a major tool.
As you have seen, my nickname is CarpetGuy, why? I am a flooring consultant. As we speak, I have a couple of flooring sites that are about to be completely overhauled! These two sites are in the very first group of sites that I built, so it is just time anyway, but, I have already noticed more traffic, and contacts from the websites. This tells me that instead of driving around looking for flooring, people are shopping on the Internet! Now is the time to make these sites stand out so that when the people finish looking on the web, and get in their car to go get a closer look, I will have a better chance of getting that customer!
Now is a good time to get a Web Presence, even if it is just a basic site with your business info and phone number, if it is set up right, it can help you, especially if you are in an industry that has avoided getting a website in the past. If you need a tip or two, just keep checking out this site, or use the contact us form and drop me a note, maybe I can help?
Tags: advantage, buddy, business, car, flooring, Fuel, gas, gasoline, Internet, month, past, spending, time, web, website
Posted in Tips Tricks and Opinions | Comments (0)
WildWebDesigner: Site updates and Changes, the Pirates are gone!
July 13th, 2008
You may nave noticed that WildWebDesigner has changed, and yes, there are 2 blogs! The old WildWebDesigner.com/blog/ is not going anywhere, this blog is for the articles and such written by others, that some may still find useful, but, the main site, WildWebDesigner.com, will be the focal point of this domain. The sample sites are all gone, well almost all, there is actually a site I built to help out a buddy, that is still part of this domain, Kenny’s Small Engine Repair, and a Blog for Kenny’s as well, this is kind of how it all got started here.
In the beginning, I had all of my sites hosted with Yahoo, and, for the beginner, that is definitely the way to go, but, as times have changed, and the days of the old “Static” website are over! Yes, Yahoo’s Sitebuilder is the easiest of it’s kind and very functional, allowing you to do things that others won’t, I miss using it for simple pages that will always be needed for some things, and yes, you can install a WordPress Blog in the root of your domain with Yahoo, but, Yahoo is very restrictive on what they allow, so modifying that site gets problematic, and, that is what I do, so, by by Yahoo!
There could be some confusion right now, I hope to clear that all up. When this site was first put together, the main focus was on helping DIY webmasters to get the job done, therefore, I had samples of the various things that one could do when building a website. Yes, that was a mistake, I had an old phpBB 2.3 forum, now I know why that has been replaced by 3.0!
This forum got hijacked, by Pirates! Since it was completely empty, only the sample post that is created when installing the new board, I never expected anyone to even look at it, but I was sure wrong!
As I was deleting the pages that I didn’t want to use anymore, the samples had to go, and while determining which database went to those samples, I noticed that the one for this old forum was huge! I’ll put it this way, I have a lot of Domains on my host’s server, and when I removed that database, the amount of space I was using, got practically cut in half! I had to see why, so I went to that site, I almost fainted! I logged in to the admin area and it had almost 40,000 members and like 78,600 posts! While looking at the admin control panel, I saw that there were over 200 people logging in at that moment! I didn’t even try to see what all of the posts were, but let me put it this way,the nicest ones were SPAM! Needless to say, that kind of stuff is definitely not what this site, or any of my sites is about, so, I deleted that mess as fast as I could!
I used to have a lot of problems with SPAMMERS on my old phpBB boards, but nothing like that! Even though it is gone, I am still getting hundreds of visitors that are obviously still looking for that mess, sorry folks, you have to go someplace else for that now! The reason I am telling you about this, is that if you have an old phpBB Message board, UPGRADE IT!
If you accidentally stumbled across that mess and were as shocked as I was, I am sorry I didn’t find it sooner, but I had no idea that it was happening!
Tags: Blog, domain, forum, Kenny, kind, mess, phpBB, Pirates, sample, site, website, WildWebDesigner, Yahoo
Posted in What's New? | Comments (0)
