Blog Not Needed

Last night after fixing a weird database connectivity problem to the blog systems, and looking at the Google Analytics for Diysearch, it has dawned on me that we need to re-examine a few things around here. Not that anyone is reading, or cares… this is just here as a way to document the process of re-examination.

What struck me, aside from the flat-line traffic growth, is the huge “bounce rate” as it is called in GA. Basically, that’s the rate at which visitors  “bounce” off the site. Its a staggering 62 percent.

I asked our editor about this, and she had a pretty firm grasp of the problem. Here’s how it breaks down:

1. The home page needs a serious re-design. New visitors have NO IDEA what the site is about, what’s purpose is. This is my bad. I thought the re-design from last year, to make it lighter and simpler, ala Google, was the key, because prior versions were just too cluttered. This doesn’t mean we’ll clutter up the home page, but we’ll come up with a way to make it more inviting, more welcoming, more instructive.
2. We need more content. Plain and simple. After the great purge of last year, we’ve skimmed down the database about 93 percent from its original size. We simply need more links, but that’s not all. It can’t just be about links. I’ve known this all along. There just has to be more utility to the site.
3. More time. If this is ever going to amount to anything, it requires more of my time. That’s probably the toughest thing. What with my hectic day job, going to the gym, this fall we are taking a Japanese language course, spending time with friends, and just relaxing, and all in there i need to figure out a way to budget more time for this.

So, that is it. I sure hope this comes to something.

Anyone want to help?

I know its been forever and a day since I’ve posted. I feel bad about that. But life, work, more life has gotten in the way of this project, yet again. Heh, if some kind soul who loved diysearch, and had a massive amount of money and resources would be kind enough to pay the bill, I’d happily do this as my day job. But alas, that is as likely to happen as I am to become a world renowned theoretical physicist.

I know I was supposed to have finished work on a lot of projects, but those efforts took a seriously back seat to my ridiculously busy job (I run the development/engineering team for a highly visible public website that shall remain namelss).

So, that’s the score. I, like every apologist post, want to get back into making things work around here. Thanks if you are still around.

Full disclosure. I am, and have been, straight edge, for close to 20 years. I’m in my early 30’s, have a career, earn good money, live in a very nice place, drive a nice new car and basically all of the trappings of a young upwardly mobile type person, but I have never forgotten from where I come from, and straight edge has been something I live by (so much so that I do have a few straight edge tattoos, I tell you this not to engage in a “I’m cooler than everyone” contest, just as an illustrated of the level of committment I have for the philosophy).

Having said all of that I generally leave my life choices out of Diysearch and out of most of my life. Being “straight edge” is a personal choice of mine, and one I do not use as a measuring stick with  which to judge the rest of the world, but there are instances where straight edge does serve as a compass.

This is one of those cases. Someone decided to post links to “cheap cigarettes” sites. They were, of course, deleted from the link queue (and never saw the light of day) but it got me thinking. The reason they were deleted, primarily, is that, being straight edge, I will not promote a behavior I find self-destructive, foolish and unhealthy. I don’t have a problem with people who smoke. One of my best friends smokes. I do not think any less of him for that, sure I may, on occassion chide him for his habbit, but it is all done in jest.

The principle here is that through including links to something like this, to me, is something I cannot do. So, the long and short of it is, don’t bother trying to submit links of this nature. They will never be included. Its that simple.

It has been a remarkably long time since I’ve posted anything here. I have my excuses, like my day job completely sucking every last bit of energy I have, and only have just enough left over for my real life. I work as a software engineer and consultant for a fast growing consultancy in Boston, and the work has just been coming in fast and furious, and the deadlines have been, well let me just say that they haven’t been entirely realistic (and usually sprung on me while the project is rolling, not before).

Anyway, here I am. I have some breathing room right now, which is why I’m posting. Diysearch has been churning a long quite nicely, no problems, well except for the email server lost all of its account information. So, if you tried to email me or the editor, you most likely got your message bounced back. I’m sorry about that. I fixed the problem last night. I just had to restart the SMTP service, restore the old user database and got it back to a working state.

There are a bunch of new features that I want to get working on, like the ability to watch categories, so that you can get notifications if a particular category you are interested in gets any new links, or links get updated. I want to get the content management system rolled into production. You won’t notice anything with this, it’ll just make life easier on us when we want to modify the “static” content on the site. There are also a bunch of other administration features I need to get implemented to make life easier on the editor (she has a hard enough job, I don’t have to make it harder by not having tools in place to add/remove categories for example).

Diyshare. Ugh. I haven’t touched the code in 3 weeks. Man, I feel really terrible about that. I want so badly to finish that project and get it rolled out in that there really aren’t any shared news/social-networking sights available just for those of us who participate in DIY projects. Yeah, you can do similar things on other sites, but again, its about the focus, not getting lost in the shuffle.

Well, I should be posting more, and actually getting back to working on this project, now that I’ve finished a high-tension project here at work and will have some more energy left over for this stuff. One can hope.

Well, the server move is all done, and everything is up and ready. Aside from the fact that I completely slept in and our editor let me know by asking “uh, do you know the site’s down?” Something had happened in one of the more obscure apache settings (that I wasn’t even using at the time) that wasn’t letting the HTTP server from coming up completely, so it was unable to server requests. That’s why if you were trying to look at the site earlier this morning you couldn’t get the darn page to load. Sorry about that… my fault.

Anyway, the move is complete, we are on the new “phat pipe” and hopefully you should notice an improvement in performance (not that performance was bad, because it wasn’t) but improvements are always good.

Next time something like this happens, I’ll set an alarm and get my lazy bum out of bed to make sure everything is working right, immediately, now 4 hours after the fact.