Blog Not Needed

Well, it turns out that I’m an award-winning toadie. As all three of my readers know, I have this day job, being an software architect and a tech lead, and well, the client I work with, we just won a [voice mode=”the_old_man_from_a_christmas_story]major award![/voice]

Yep, picked up “Best Use of Technology” in the 2007 MITX awards show. Pretty snazzy. Oh well, done tooting my own horn. Carry on!

p.s. that’s me in the photo, NOT, wearing a suit.

So yesterday I decided to send out a newsletter to all those folks who signed up at Diysearch. The mailing went quite well, and I got some very friendly responses from some kind souls, because well, there is kindness out there.

As a good and responsible webmaster, I provided an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the newsletter, because well, that’s just the right thing to do. And that link actually WORKS and it does REMOVE folks. But I get this response, we’ll call him “Service”.

“Service” decides in his or her own obvious years and years of internet experience that I am a spammer. I mean clearly they recognized the fact that the email address as the “from” was my actual email address (dpalmer at diysearch dot com) or that in the email headers I didn’t bounce the message around a dozen or so zombie machines to hide where it originated from. I mean, clearly anyone who has been on the net for 4 or maybe 5 hours would know that the lack of these things means that the message is clearly from a real person and not a spammer, right?

I mean anyone with 2 maybe possibly 3 IQ points could recognized that? Yes?

Well, I think I found one of those rare few who can’t quite figure this stuff out. Too bad really. I’m glad they are gone. I don’t suffer fools lightly. Its not in my nature.

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.

I suppose it’s my own fault. Diysearch used to be in the top 3-5 results in google for the keyword: “DIY.” But now? Top of the second page, number 11. Grrr. I’m frustrated. I don’t even know why, this stupid project was never a popularity contest for me, but with the traffic to the site not increasing and in fact, continuing to slide, I’m just a bit stumped as to what is going on. Actually, I have a gut feeling I know what is going on.

Here’s my take. Diysearch has, in the eyes of many folks, especially new users, become irrelevant. I mean, why bother using a site like this when you’ve got Google. So, what I think I need to do is, make the case of why you should be using Diysearch and not Google. There are solid reasons, mostly having to do with control. With Diysearch control is put into the user’s hand. Links, relevance, ratings, all of that stuff is controlled by users. With Google you wait, hoping your site gets indexed and then hope you’ve done your homework right so that you don’t get burried into oblivion and hope that someone *else* thinks you’ve done your homework right so as to boost your page rank. No, here things are done differently. Here, you determin where you get listed, how you get listed and relevance is determined not by someone else, but by you. We can do that, because we are very particular who gets in in the first place… which while is counter to the “user in control” concept, actually better facilitates this through a selective process that ensures crap doesn’t end up polluting everything else.

Yeah, I do not have expectations of being serious competition to Google (duh), no in fact my expectations are rather pedestrian, I just want to be useful. I’ve invested nearly 20 years of my life in this DIY thing, I just want to make a difference.

I am reticent about filing this under “site news” because in reality it kinda isn’t. But in some weird tangential way it is. This is also me just trying to keep myself motivated and not let this thing get stale (as I often have a habit of doing), but the sad truth is, I don’t have a lot to report.

Yes, I’ve been doing some work here and there on the various new category functions (like “watch” feature, which is going to be really cool when I figure out how to make it so that any “object” in the site could be “watchable,” because the last thing I want to do is paint myself into a corner of hardcoding functionality like that) and the next big thing will be implementing a content management system for the non-database driven pages.

Our editor is always looking for opportunities to better present content within the site, and currently “static” pages are encapsulated as templates with embedded XHTML (for presentation). Well, this makes it difficult to edit. I decided on OpenCMS as the content management system. OpenCMS is a very mature, enterprise-class content management system more like an Interwoven TeamSite than say something like a Droopal or Joomla (which I didn’t like because if you choose one of those products, you are forced into doing things their way. I don’t like that). With OpenCMS I can define content types and elements using standard XML schema, and then transform XML-based content using JSP (Java Server Pages) into the presentation templates currently used within the site. So publishing is quite simple. There are a few odds and ends I need to finish up (like a batch job to push the managed content into the UAT and production sites).

What else? Oh yeah, development on DiyShare is grindingly slow, which brings me to the title of this entry. Instead of spending all of my waking spare time writing code, I’ve been playing the Warcraft. Actually I’ve been playing this game on and off for about 9 months, and have been sinking enormous amounts of time in leveling my main (a night elf druid, who is currently level 45, nearly 46). So, if you play and happen to play on Gilneas and happen across XBlinder, that’s me. Come tell me to stop with the Warcraft and get back to working on the site!