My sincerest thanks to everyone for being a part of Danifer Web Services this year. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to share it with so many wonderful people. Best wishes to our customers, colleagues, friends and family this holiday season, and I wish you a happy and prosperous New Year.

From everyone at Danifer Web Services, happy holidays!

Thank you,

Keeton

Last week I attended a meeting for a group called the Grapevine AMBUCS – a charitable organization of businessmen in the Grapevine area. My original goal in coming to the meeting was to get involved with a local charity organization that was laid back and would be fun and easy to attend. I was particularly pleased with the AMBUCS because they were extremely friendly, fairly well organized, and I already knew a few of the members from some of the business networking events I attend.

From the Grapevine AMBUCS web site:

The Grapevine Chapter of AMBUCS is comprised of businessmen from the Grapevine and surrounding communities dedicated to creating independence and opportunities for people with disabilities. AMBUCS meetings, community service projects and special events bring our members together as friends. Some of these friendships last a lifetime.AMBUCS service opportunities provide individuals with the resources to help their community when and if they are unable to do this as an individual. Working together as a group promotes fun, friendship and most of all, enpowers the community and individuals in need.

Creating Independence for People with Disabilities by:

• Performing Community Service
• Providing AmTrykes to Children with Disabilites
• Providing Scholarships for Therapists

As of this week, I am officially an AMBUCS member and am proud to be part of their organization. If you’re interested in becoming a member yourself, would like to volunteer, or have questions about one of the upcoming events, please feel free to drop me a line anytime.

For more information on the national organization, please visit their site at ambucs.com. For the Grapevine local chapter, please go to grapevineambucs.com.

Today I received a very exciting email from the team at SpamBully.

If you’ve read my previous article on updating to Windows Vista, you know that I wasn’t able to migrate the SpamBully software to the new system. I haven’t tested it out yet, but this email suggests that the software is now ready to go!

Their Email

Dear SpamBully user,
We are excited to announce the release of SpamBully 4 for Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail in Vista!

We are offering a FREE 1 year upgrade to users of SpamBully 1, 2, and 3.

SpamBully 4 has many exciting new features and enhancements to help you continue to keep the upper hand against spammers.

New Features and Enhancements Include……..

Auto-Delete – Now you can save time by setting SpamBully to immediately delete emails from known spammers on your Block list.

Review Window – Easily review emails SpamBully has categorized as spam and unsure from one simple window.

Fraudulent Link Detection – Detect links in phishing email messages that are from potentially fraudulent sources so you don’t accidentally give out your valuable financial information to thieves.

One Click Empty – Now with one mouse click you can instantly delete all of the spam in your Spam folder.

SpamBully 4 has also made even more improvements to the core features you have come to depend on daily……

Enhanced Allow/Block List – Allow or block email addresses, IP’s and words/phrases you choose from your Inbox from one simple location. From here you also have the option of auto-deleting emails from known spammers on your Block list.

Fight Back – Easily turn spammers in to their ISP’s and the FTC with the click of your mouse. You can also bounce spam back to the spammers who sent it.

Unsure Folder – SpamBully now can place messages it is unable to properly classify as good email or spam into a special folder. This saves you extra time from having to review your Spam folder.

Cellphone Forwarding – Forward only good emails to your cellphone.

Auto-Delete – Delete spam emails automatically as they download.

Bayesian Filter – Cutting edge artificial intelligence that knows which emails you’ve received are good or spam. Makes sure good emails make it to your Inbox.

Multi-Language Interface – Lets you easily convert the SpamBully toolbar into English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, and other popular languages.

Statistics – Comprehensive graphing and statistics shows you how well SpamBully is performing for you.

Challenge Emails – Email a special password to an unfamiliar sender that they must type in before the email is allowed to your Inbox.

Try the new SpamBully 4 for 14 days.

Download your copy from:

http://www.spambully.com/download.php

The first time you open Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail with SpamBully 4, it will easily allow you to import all of your SpamBully 3 settings.

We are offering users of SpamBully 1, 2, and 3 a FREE 1 year upgrade to SpamBully 4.

You can instantly get your SpamBully 4 code at:

http://www.spambully.com/upgrade4.php

We truly appreciate your continued support!

————————————————————————–

You are being emailed this announcement because you have purchased either SpamBully 1,2 or 3.

If you do not wish to be notified by SpamBully when new versions or upgrades are available, please click the link at bottom and you will be instantly removed fromour updates email database. SpamBully does respect your privacy and your wishes, we do not sell our customer lists and we will not email you with SpamBully updates that you do not want.

Axaware, LLC
2153 Wealthy
#150
Grand Rapids, MI
49506

If you haven’t been in a while check out import-duty.com, one of my import/export related web sites. I recently redesigned this one with a new WordPress template and added in an email collection utility and some saleable products.

This site has excellent page rank and has generated a steady stream of traffic for import duty and import tax related terms. I’ve decided to develop it a bit further and try to help importers answer that all important question, “how much is import duty?”

What is a Link Exchange?

In order to promote web site visitors to their sites, many web site owners choose to participate in link exchanges. A link exchange is an agreement between two web site owners wherein they agree to add a click-able link to each of their sites in order to promote each other and share traffic.

What are the Benefits of a Link Exchange?

The primary benefit of a link exchange is for unpaid search engine positioning. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are believed to count the number of incoming links a site has from other web sites in order to determine it’s relevance when returning search engine results. It is widely believed that the more incoming links a site has, the higher it will rank for a given search term.

The secondary benefit of a link exchange is an exchange of traffic from one web site to another. By participating in a link exchange, web site owners actively promote their web site elsewhere on the internet in order to gain more visitors from incoming links.

Although generally overlooked, link exchanges also provide value to your web site’s visitors. Assuming that you are planning on linking to sites that have content related to yours, you are providing your visitors with additional resources.

What are the Problems with Link Exchanges?

The link exchange system is prone to abuse. Many sites automate link exchanges with other web masters to generate thousands of incoming links. These incoming links are less a “vote of confidence” from another site and are generally annoying to visitors looking for real information. Here’s a sample automated link exchange request from Merchant Service Group

How can I get the most out of link exchanges?

This part can be time consuming, but it’s definitely worthwhile. Stick to the following for best results:

• Have a web site worth linking to. Fill your site with useful content for your readers and for those sites who would link to you.
• Don’t automate your linking process. Instead, hand pick sites that compliment yours and contact the owner in a personal way. Mention who you are and what you like about their web site. I always write an individual email to each potential link exchange partner. It’s definitely more time consuming, but in the long run it has better results.
• Contact sites that are relevant to your area of expertise, but not direct competitors. An example would be a veterinarian’s web site linking to one for a pet groomer.
• Don’t go overboard. A few choice links from the right people will get great results.

Is there any terminology I should know?

This is not a comprehensive list, but should get you started:

• URL: the address in your address bar. It normally looks something like http://www.danifer.com/blog/what-is-a-link-exchange.html.
• Anchor text: You can use any text to link to another web site. What you use for anchor text is believed to have an impact on search results. This is an example of anchor text. This is a good place to insert keywords relevant to the site you’re linking to.
• One way link: Not a true link exchange, but rather an incoming link to a site that is not reciprocated.
• Banner/Image: You can use an image to link to a site rather than anchor text.
• Alt Text: When an image is used, alt text can be added to signify what the image is about to visually impaired or graphics disabled browsers. This is a good place to insert keywords relevant to the image you’re using and the site you’re linking to.

What about buying links?

The jury is still out on this one. It definitely makes the process easier, but it might not achieve the results you’re looking for. If you’re going to buy links, do so in moderation and don’t blow your budget. There are more proven ways you can spend money to improve your traffic.

I’m ready. What do I do now?

Here’s how the link exchange would normally work:

• Contact the site you would like to exchange links with.
• The two of you agree where you would like the links placed and what you will be linking to.
• Communicate with your web master where the link should be placed, what it should point to and any other information you worked out with the link exchange partner.
• Confirm that your link exchange partner has posted your link.
• Check back occasionally to make sure nothing has been changed.

Best of luck to would-be link exchangers! I hope you found some of this worthwhile.

Keeton

Here’s an example of an automated link exchange request. Although written in a generically personable way, this is obviously an automated program or bulk distribution email.

As a web site owner I find this kind of thing annoying. Not only is it spam mail, but I believe bulk link requests like this are actually harmful to both the originating site as well as those that link to it.

If you’re not sure what all this is about, please check out this related article: What is a link exchange?

Here’s the email:

I came across your website http://www.itintl.com, and would like to propose a link exchange between our sites. *company name removed* provides an array of *service description removed* to retail*potential clients removed* . *service description removed*

Please consider adding our link to your site on your page: http://www.itintl.com/rss/itintl.xml.

Here is our linking information:

Title: *Anchor Text Removed*
Description: *description removed*
URL: *URL removed*

========== Begin HTML Code ================

<a href=”*URL removed*” Target=”_blank”><b>*Anchor Text Removed*</b></a> *description removed*

========== End HTML Code ================

Let us know when our link is placed and we will post your link in the proper category of our resources page listed here: *description removed* .

Please be sure to include your desired title and description. Your link will be posted within hours, however, in some rare cases it may take longer. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you for your consideration,

*contact information removed*

If you would like not to receive any further communications from *company name removed* , please respond to this email with “Remove” in the subject line.

One of my customers received this notice from ICANN and had some questions. Read the email from GoDaddy, his question, and my response below.

Email from GoDaddy/ICANN

From: accountupdate@godaddy.com
Sent: Saturday, September 29, 2007 9:18 PM
To:
Subject: Important ICANN Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)

***********
Important ICANN Notice Regarding Your Domain Name(s)
***********

Dear Name,

It’s that time of year again. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers) annually requires that all accredited registrars (like Go
Daddy) ask their domain administrators/registrants to review domain name
contact data, and make any changes necessary to ensure accuracy.

To review/update your contact data, simply:
+ Go to www.godaddy.com/?isc=
+ Click on the “ICANN Domain Confirmation” icon at the top of the page
+ You will be taken to a landing page and asked to enter your Domain
Information Key: XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXXXXXXXXXX
+ Enter your key and click “Go.”

Next, simply review the contact information for each domain name. To make a
correction, log in to “My Account” with your customer number or log in name
and password. Click “Manage Domains,” select the domain to update, then
click “Contact.” If you find that your domain contact data is accurate,
there’s no need to take action.

If, however, your domain contact information is inaccurate, you must correct
it. (Under ICANN rules and the terms of your registration agreement,
providing false contact information can be grounds for domain name
cancellation.) To review the ICANN policy, visit:
http://www.icann.org/whois/wdrp-registrant-faq.htm

Should you have any questions, please email us at mailto:support@godaddy.com
or call our customer support line at (480) 505-8877.

Thanks for your attention and thank you for being a GoDaddy.com customer.

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com Domain Support

If you are the domain administrator of more than one GoDaddy.com domain
account, you may receive this notice multiple times.

The Question

Hi Keeton,

Is this something I should worry about or just a clever marketing thing?

Thanks,

Name

My Response

Hi Name,

This is not clever marketing – ICANN is actually an official organization that regulates domains. All they are asking you to do is log into your account and make sure your contact details are up to date. If they haven’t changed since last year, no updates will be needed.

Hope that helps,

Keeton

I recently purchased and installed an ssl security certificate on my private web server that hosts nearly 40 of my own web sites. Since more than one of those sites sells products, I need to use the ssl certificate on multiple sites. Rather than buy certificates for each one, I instead opted to process transactions on a secure subdomain of this site (secure.danifer.com) and alias the other web sites to subdirectories of the secure subdomain.

For example, instead of making https://howtoadvertise.net/shop I’ll use https://secure.danifer.com/~howtoadvertise.net/shop to accept encrypted data for credit card transactions. This way I won’t have to buy a separate security certificate for each site.

The problem

I couldn’t figure out how to configure the Apache2 virtualhost file to match both the fully qualified domain name as well as a sub-directory of the secure domain. I’ve worked with hosting reseller programs using the common Cpanel setup and I know it’s possible, I just didn’t know how to do it myself.

The solution

As it turns out, all I needed to do was make use of the Apache2 ServerAlias directive. Here’s the line that makes it work:

AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1

Which matches https://secure.danifer.com/~username to the public_html directory for any username on the system. Pretty slick!

Here’s my complete virtualhost file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName danifer.com
DocumentRoot /home/public_html/danifer.com
ServerAlias www.danifer.com
AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1
ErrorLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-error.log”
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-access.log” combined
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/server_logs/%Y-%m-%d-server-access.log” combined

#Redirect non-existing requests to the homepage
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName secure.danifer.com
DocumentRoot /home/public_html/danifer.com
AliasMatch ^/~(.*) /home/public_html/$1
ErrorLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-error.log”
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/%Y-%m-%d-danifer.com-access.log” combined
CustomLog “|/usr/bin/cronolog /home/apache_logs/server_logs/%Y-%m-%d-server-access.log” combined

SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.key
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/apache2/ssl/ssl.crt

#Redirect non-existing requests to the homepage
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
ErrorDocument 500 /index.php
ErrorDocument 403 /index.php
</VirtualHost>

As part of our company identity project, we’ve added a logo to the Danifer Web Services portfolio! See it on our homepage or check it out below.

This is a follow up post to my earlier report on the Domain Listing Service mailers my customers have been receiving. Looks like they’ve modified their product a bit, but are still using the same deceptive, high pressure bulk mail to sell it. I can’t speak to the quality of the Search Engine Submission product they’re promoting, but I’m again disappointed in the sales strategy.

Thanks to Linda for alerting me to this issue with her email:

Recently I received a bill from the above-referenced company for $75.00. It was not for domain name registration so much as for a website address listing for search engine submissions. When I looked them up on the internet, your website with the correspondence regarding the bogus bill to one of your clients popped up. Thought you might like to know of their latest scam.

Sincerely,

Linda

Another email, this time from Heather:

We were sent an invoice for $75 to renew our domain and unfortunately we sent the check to Domain Listing Service Corp. Would you happen to have a telephone number for them.

Thank you,

Heather

Here’s one from Patricia:

Thankyou soooo much!!!

I was this…… close to sending in my payment of $65 to this ‘domain listing service’ when I got suspicious of no phone#, and found your site. If you need my help in getting these guys, let me know! Thanks again.

It looks authentic and it does say ‘NOT A BILL’, but a solicitation and I’m not under any obligation to pay the amount (?).

This one from Shelley:

Thank you for confirming my suspicions about this company. Their solicitation looks like a real bill and I was almost ready to pay it. Luckily I read the statement and realized it was only a solicitation and not a bill. I am sure that many, many people just send them the $75.00 thinking that this is their domain server. When I went on their website to complain there was no link to customer service to complain.

While searching for info on this company, I came across your website. Thank you again for the heads up.

Shelley

This one from Jane:

Appreciate your putting out this message. It is too late for us. We are a small organization, and were in between treasurers when this arrived. It got passed from one treausrer to the other, and none of us thought to research it. I am the one who would know if the charge were out of line, or sounded fishy, and I did not even see the letter. We got charged $65. We have since received a similar letter from another service, Liberty Names of America. They may or may not be legit, but it is a much higher rate than we pay. My treasurer is looking to see if the letter survived from DLS. If he can’t find it, I would be interested in having a copy from someone. I plan to make a police report.

This one from Stan:

Here it is January 15, 2008. Just received what looks like an invoice for $75 from Domain Listing Service. Since I never heard of them I went to Google. When I google the name I get your blog. Nowhere does it say “this is not a bill” What a scam!

A much requested feature from our customers, Danifer Web Services is now accepting credit cards online for invoice payments! There’s still a button if you prefer to use Paypal, but we expect to see the majority of our customers will opt for the Credit Card option.

The payment link is: http://www.danifer.com/payments and will be referenced at the bottom of new invoices. You do not need an invoice number to make a payment, just please provide a brief description of what you’re paying for in the space provided.

Ecommerce and online shopping are expanding at a phenomenal rate and small and independent retailers are poised to reap many of the rewards. At Danifer Web Services, ecommerce applications are one of our most commonly requested web site services and we see a lot of small retailers breaking into the market.

Our clients realize that with less than the cost of one month’s rent in a retail store, they can setup their own web site to market or test a new product line or simply reduce the upfront costs of launching a retail outlet.

With an online ecommerce web site, they reduce their risk from long term leases and inventory warehousing while gauging the effectiveness of their product. Rather than start a retail store and build a web site as a secondary marketing outlet, many of our customers choose to launch their web sites first and then build retail locations once the products and the marketing methods have been proven.

One of our recent ecommerce customers, Very Texas (www.verytexas.com), is an online retail store specializing in Texas style wrought iron furniture. After only a few weeks in development we were able to help this customer launch an online retail outlet while she established relationships with vendors and clients. She was able to open her doors to the public with minimal investment and minimal risk in a very short amount of time.

I received an email this week from my favorite payment processing gateway, PayPal, notifying users of a scheduled outage. If you are using PayPal to process transactions, this is definitely something to be aware of:

We’re planning to upgrade the PayPal data center on Monday the 18th of June. The upgrade is scheduled to begin at 9 PM PDT and last for approximately two hours. During this time, there will be a PayPal system-wide service interruption. The PayPal site will be unavailable and the majority of PayPal features will not be functioning. You will not be able to process payments during this time.

You do not need to do anything during the data center upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, you will be able to conduct business as you normally would. However, a small number of merchants may need to reconfigure PayPal’s IP address if was previously hard-coded into their API calls and/or firewall settings. Please see instructions below.

Here’s what you should expect during the service interruption:

If customers attempt to pay you with PayPal during the upgrade they will get the following message:

“The PayPal website is currently unavailable. We are working actively to restore access to the site as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please check the PayPal System Board for possible updates.”
Note: The PayPal System Board can be found at http://announcements.paypal.com/us/ and this will be accessible through the message above.

If your customers click on the PayPal System Board link they will see the following message:

“PayPal is currently performing a data center upgrade. This upgrade began at 9:00 PM PDT and is scheduled to run for approximately 2 hours. The PayPal site and a majority of our features will be unavailable during this time.”
Note: We will be updating the PayPal System Board with additional information as we monitor the upgrade.

eBay sellers will see little impact on their auctions as the eBay website will be unaffected during the upgrade. Auctions will continue as normal. However, your buyers will be unable to process a payment through PayPal during this time.

If you elect to list your item(s) with the “Immediate Payment Required” option there will some inconvenience as the buyer will be unable to process their payment until after the upgrade has been completed.

You will be unable to log into the PayPal system to check your PayPal account status, including verification of payments received.

We will also be upgrading our internal tools, so we will be unable to access your account information during this time.

You will be unable to receive funds through any website buttons or through the PayPal site directly.

After the upgrade, buyers and sellers will be able to interact with PayPal as they normally would.
Here’s what you need to do if you hard-coded PayPal’s IP address:

If you have hard-coded PayPal’s IP addresses into your API calls and/or firewall settings, you may need to reconfigure these settings after the upgrade. Here is the new IP address you will need to upgrade to:
https://ppmts.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ppdts.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=92

If you need assistance in reconfiguring the IP address change, please contact PayPal Merchant Technical Support at http://www.paypal.com/mts

Rest assured, we will be monitoring the scheduled upgrade very closely to ensure that we return to normal functionality as soon as possible. Again, after the upgrade, you will be able to conduct business as you normally would.

PayPal continually makes improvements to our systems and platforms so we may continue to provide you with the best online payment processing solution.

You are a valued PayPal customer and we appreciate your business.

Best regards,

PayPal Merchant Support

Update: If you found this page while searching for Domain Listing Service you might want to know that we get a few dozen hits every day from people just like you trying to find out more about this company. You guys might consider getting together to do something about this. Email me if you have the chance and I’ll start posting your stories on this blog.

http://www.danifer.com/blog/domain-listing-service-search-engine-submission.html

I got an email from one of my clients today regarding what looks like someone trying to scam her out of a couple of bucks based on her domain name information.

Here’s what she said:

Hi Keeton –

Okay – here’s a tech-y question that I need help with. I registered my domain name in November with domainregistry.com. I have the confirmation, etc. that states the registration date, expiration date, etc.

Today I received in the mail a very official looking bill for $65 from a company called Domain Listing Service Corp. It has the listing date as June 18 – June 18. It also tells me all of the inclusions with the website address listing, which I think I have anyway.

I think this is some sort of domain name registry trickery. LOL. Could I fax both the legitimate registration and this suspicious bill and maybe you could tell me what you think?? Don’t want to be “taken” but if I owe this I don’t want to be negligent either.

My response:

That sounds really scammy to me. Send me a copy and I’ll look it over, but definitely don’t pay anything in the meantime. Domain names usually cost between $9 and $15/year and yours is registered through xxx.

Thanks,

Keeton

I hate seeing this kind of thing, but it happens all the time. Essentially, this company pulled my customer’s domain name registration information (the name and address she used to register her domain name) from the publicly available whois information. They then sent out this mailer to try and convince her to send in a check for $65.

You may have seen similar scams for home mortgages, credit cards, etc. Unscrupulous companies will pull information from a publicly available database and send out official looking letters trying to convince people to buy something they don’t need.

It costs a lot to do a physical bulk mailing, so it makes me sick to think how much money they must be making off this. If you get something like this, check with your web developer or just read the fine print to see if it applies to you.

I recently had the misfortune of working with a client who had registered a domain name and signed up for web hosting through smallbusiness.yahoo.com.

Although the domain name control panel was pretty standard and not bad at all, the web hosting starter package that the client had purchased was clunky and achieving the desired results proved very difficult. This client requested a basic WordPress installation with a modified skin that they could use for basic blogging needs.

The only way to install the WordPress Software with the Yahoo! small business starter package was to go through the prepackaged installation process. This resulted in the installation of an out of date piece of software that was shamelessly rebranded by Yahoo! and represented as their own.

WordPress requires a Mysql database to operate, so there was obviously at least one available for use. The database was set up automatically during the WordPress installation process, and included an automated username, password, and access level user permissions. The big issue with this is that when I tried to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress (2.1.3 I think) the account didn’t have the privileges to make all of the necessary changes to the database. The result was a partially upgraded database that caused errors in the program. If this were not a fresh installation I would have needed a backup of the database in order to recover to a more usable state.

That said, I think there are a lot better options when it comes to web hosting than the larger companies like Yahoo!. I think this is still an industry where bigger is not necessarily better. When you choose a provider I would definitely recommend someone who’s been in business a while and has a good track record, but would steer clear of the big guys like Yahoo!, GoDaddy, etc. They’re great for domain names, but there’s really no reason to put all your eggs into the same basket.

I find I get very little work done on Mondays and Fridays. On Mondays I’m answering e-mail and messages that built up over the weekend, and on Fridays I watch the clock all day.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the opposite. I program, work on customer issues, coordinate projects, etc. sometimes until late in the evening. I get more done on these two days than I would in twice as many Mondays and Fridays.

Wednesdays also seem to be very productive for me, but in a social way. I schedule most of my meetings on Wednesday for two reasons:

1. I’m already out for my weekly BNI meeting,
2. I find potential clients more agreeable and ready to commit in the middle of the week.

No real point to this post other than what I’ve written. It made for a good discussion with a colleague earlier today, so I thought I’d write it up.

I’ve recently taken on a new customer who commissioned Danifer Web Services to build three web sites for his fledgling business. They came out particularly well, and I’m excited to see where he takes them.

Tipton Enterprises (tiptonenterprises.com)
Sort of a home-base to promote projects and yak about stuff. Pretty much the same thing I do here.

Laptops for School (laptopsforschool.com)
A laptop review site, presumably for individuals looking to use them for eductional purposes (this is a really good example of niche marketing).

Guardian Domains (guardiandomains.com)
For all your domain name registration needs.

As you can see, this customer is an internet entrepreneur similar to myself, so wish him the best of luck and check out his projects when you have some time.

Being as dedicated to my customers as I am, I tend to put off my own projects while I while I work for other people. The danifer.com web site is no exception. It’s been in bad need of a face-lift for quite some time now. For those of you who don’t remember, here’s what the old site looked like:

I think the new revision offers a little cleaner and more professional look. I know my customers come here before they hire me, so I definitely want to make a good impression. If this isn’t your first time here, I’ve added some good resources and some discount offers sprinkled about. Feel free to have a look and let me know what you think.

Free stuff: Get a Free WordPress Skin now. This changes occasionally, so check back.

In the past I’ve relied on designers to modify the default WordPress template to fit a specific need, but lately I’ve been searching for pre-packaged themes that I can download at a reduced price.

One thing I noticed in my search was the surprising lack of quality/availability of WordPress skins. The free ones are not impossible to find, but are a clear cut case of getting what you pay for so far as design, creativity, and functionality are concerned. The pay sites are the exact opposite – decent quality, but extremely overpriced.

One of the few sites that made my bookmark list was Skinetti.com.

They bill themselves as an independently owned and operated, small time developer of WordPress skins. Although the selection is somewhat limited (they seem to be adding new content periodically) the quality is extremely high for the price.

If you’re in the market for a decent WordPress skin but don’t want to go too cheap, I highly recommend them. And, if you need help installing the software please let me know.

As you may have already read, I’m in need of a new computer and have had some difficulty with Windows Vista. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to buy a computer pre-loaded with XP anymore, and my lagging computer issues still have not changed. This post is fueled by the purchase of a new computer, pre-loaded with Windows Vista and is going to be an informal analysis of the problems (and solutions) that have come up.

The hardware

The new computer is an HP.

HP Pavilion PC Model a6030n
Prod ID#RX88/7AA-ABA
Windows Vista Home Premium OEM

Purchased for $799.99 plus $60.80 in tax from Best Buy on 04/19/07

From the Computer: Properties Menu
Rating: 3.0 (Windows Experience Index)
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4800+ 2.5Ghz
Memory (RAM): 1918 MB
System Type: 32-bit Operating System

This system comes with a 320 gigabyte hard drive.

Email issues

I’m going to break out software issues in a category below, but email is so vital a communication tool for me that I wanted to address it separately.

If you don’t know already, Microsoft has replaced Outlook Express with a new email client name Microsoft Mail. The ease of use and simplicity that separated Microsoft Express from Microsoft Outlook are now gone. Microsoft has taken it’s most popular email program and merged it with its most unpopular one, creating one that is awkward, sluggish, and pushy. I screwed around with it for about four hours before I started looking for an alternative email program.

The result of my search has left me thrilled and giddy. I’ve now officially switched my main email client to Mozilla Thunderbird and I couldn’t be happier. It provides all of the ease of use that Outlook Express had to offer with additional options and features for the core components. Things like fine-tunable spam filtering, account separation, message flagging, easy to use find features and more.

I’m extremely disappointed with Microsoft’s attempt to rule the email world by programming an application that refuses to play nicely with others. I’m reminded of Princess Leia’s quote from Star Wars “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Software Issues

Some of my legacy Windows XP Software applications that are giving me problems (as of the time of this post) are:

• World of Warcraft – Running, but not up to standard.
• Adobe Distiller Version 5.0 – Agreed, it’s pretty outdated but was working fine before the “upgrade.” I’ve heard rumor that Vista will not support any kind of .pdf printing and I’m anxious to verify this.
• Power Chute Personal Edition v1.3.1 from APC – This is the reporting software produced by APC for my uninterruptible power suppy. The hardware still works, but no nifty reporting gadget. I have not checked with APC for a Vista version.
• ScanSnap Manager v3.1, ScanSnap Organizer v1.0, and Cardminder v2.0 – These all came bundled with my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner (a high speed document scanner used in my paperless office). Although the drivers installed properly, the software isn’t functioning and without it the scanner is $400 worth of useless.

  According to Fujitsu, there’s an update scheduled for June 2007, but none available now. For those interested, my Fujitsu ScanSnap model number is fi-5110E0X2.

• SpamBully, an inexpensive and highly effective add-on to Outlook Express (I wrote a very positive review about this product earlier this year).

  Although SpamBully has released a Vista version of their product for Microsoft Mail, I couldn’t get it to work.

Stuff that worked

It hasn’t been all bad, so here are some of the things I’ve got working and working well:

• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• My Dymo LabelWrtiter Turbo 330 with original software
• Adobe Reader 8.0
• My copy of Microsoft Office XP
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Trillian, my IM client
• FeedReader, my RSS feed program
• HTML-kit, my HTML editor
• Ventrilo, a VOIP client I use for World of Warcraft
• Putty, my SSH client
• Google toolbar

My impressions

Windows Vista still isn’t ready for the mainstream. Avoid an upgrade until they’ve released at least the first major service pack.

As an operating system it’s got a lot of nice features, but these are far overshadowed by the Microsoft mentality that “there can be only one.” I bought a new system because my programs were running slowly and I have not resolved this issue as thoroughly as I would have liked.

I’m looking forward to the first real consumer ready operating system from Google or Mozilla. They’ve done such fantastic work with Firefox and Thunderbird that I’d like to see them succeed there as well. I don’t think we’re that far away.

How I’ll approach this in the future

One thing I noticed from this whole ordeal is that the programs that suffered the least were my web applications. I’m currently using Google Calendar for my scheduling as well as an online address book I built myself. I’m not a fan of being over-reliant on web services, but I don’t mind them if I own them myself.

I’ll be looking for more operating system features I can convert to web based utilities in the future.

I recently had the opportunity to contact Google Adwords customer service regarding what I suspected might be fraudulent clicks on my account. I got a pretty generic answer to both of my inquiries, so I thought I would post them for reference. Here they are along with my replies cut and paste directly from my email program:

Hello Keeton,

Thank you for your email regarding your AdWords reports. I understand that
your website logs are reporting less advertising traffic than your AdWords
reports. This discrepancy may occur if clicks to your ad aren’t detected
by your web tracking software. The information below should help you to
reconcile your weblogs to the statistics reported within your account.

HOW OUR SYSTEM WORKS

All clicks on your ads are directly tracked by our system. Some
third-party web tracking systems may provide inaccurate reports. Many
users have found that the weblogs from their own server are more reliable
for comparisons with our reports.

Additionally, Google’s reporting technology may record clicks that other
web tracking programs may miss. Some tracking programs may not register
clicks that occur while the destination site is down, or they may have
limitations on the kinds and sources of clicks that they detect.

To view numerical data on invalid clicks automatically filtered out by our
system (and therefore not charged to your account), you can run a Campaign
Performance or Account Performance report. Please see our FAQ about how to
run these reports:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=44008&hl=en_US.

RECONCILE YOUR WEB LOGS

The following variables are the most common for those advertisers who are
concerned about a discrepancy between their reporting statistics and those
reported by Google AdWords:

– Google Network statistics: Google displays ads on a growing network of
search and content sites and products. Typically, web tracking software is
not able to recognize clicks from Google Network sites as being Google’s
clicks. These are generally labeled with the third party site name and
they will not be labeled as clicks from Google. If your ads are currently,
or have ever been, distributed to Google Network sites such as About.com,
AOL, Netscape, etc., we recommend that you visit our Google Network FAQ at
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=25 to determine
whether some of the referrers to your site were Google Network sites.

– Time discrepancies: Time discrepancies between different tracking
programs can throw off estimates of clicks. Be sure to compare the
appropriate time periods. All your account statistics are measured and
reported based on the local time zone you have chosen for your account. To
ensure the highest level of accuracy, there is a delay between the moment
when a user actually clicks on your ad and when that click is reported as
a statistic within your account. This delay represents the time required
to evaluate and report the click as a valid one.

– IP selection: Your system may filter out visits from your IP address;
however, AdWords does not. Also, if you currently use a shared ISP (such
as AOL or Earthlink) you may be sharing one or more IP addresses with
other users. Therefore multiple clicks from the same IP address could be
legitimate clicks from multiple users, and each one would be reported as
an individual, valid click within your account.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at
https://adwords.google.com/support to find answers to many frequently
asked questions. Or, try our Learning Center at
http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ for self-paced lessons that
cover the scope of AdWords.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising
available.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

—————-
To access your AdWords account, please log in at:
https://adwords.google.com

Original Message Follows:
————————
Subject: Re: [#xxxxxx] Google AdWords Phone Support Follow Up
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 17:41:15 -0500

Hi Elissa,

I’m not having any problems distinguishing between traffic from Google
Adwords and traffic from other sources.

My concern is that the total amount of traffic I received to that website
(from Google, organic search, bookmarks, and all other sources of traffic)

is less than what Adwords is reporting.

Do you have another explanation? This is starting to look like an error
of
about $1000/month, so I really would appreciate a second look.

Thank you,

Keeton

—– Original Message —–
From: “AdWords Support”
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 4:32 PM
Subject: [#xxxxxx] Google AdWords Phone Support Follow Up

> Hello Keeton,
>
> I just left you a voicemail regarding your question about the
discrepancy
> between the clicks on your campaign management tab and your web server
> logs.
>
> Unfortunately it is very difficult for us to troubleshoot this issue
> because our team cannot be sure that you are looking at the same data
that
> AdWords displays and we do not have the bandwidth to analyze your web
> server logs. I apologize for this and in the future I would highly
suggest
> implementing Tracking URLs and Referrer Headers to have more insight
into
> your web server logs and how they relate to your AdWords account. I will
> explain both in more depth below.
>
> I. Tracking URLs
>
> In many web server logs, a page visit entry would be identical whether a
> user clicked your AdWords ad on a Google search result page or your
> website’s listing in the Google free search results. In order to
> distinguish which clicks come from your AdWords ads, you can give your
ad
> a tracking URL.
>
> To take advantage of tracking URLs, place a parameter at the end of your
> destination URL. For example, if your URL is www.yourdomain.com, your
> tracking URL would be www.yourdomain.com/?source=googleadwords.
>
> It’s important to test each new tracking URL in your own web browser to
> verify that it’s linking properly to its specified page. If you find
that
> a tracking URL isn’t linking properly, you might want to eliminate the
> forward slash after the domain. For example, instead of
> www.yourdomain.com/?referrer=googleadwords, try using
> www.yourdomain.com?source=googleadwords.
>
> Once you’ve created your tracking URLs, you can look in your web server
> logs or your third party tracking software to get traffic data for your
> ads. If you’re using your web server logs, look for the tracking URL in
> the GET entry to identify which website visits came from your Google
> AdWords ads.
>
> II. Referrer Headers
>
> After distinguishing in your web server logs which website visits came
> from your AdWords ads, you can use your web server logs’ referrer
headers
> to see where the ads were when they were clicked on.
>
> Referrer headers show the last page the browser loaded before loading
your
> website and usually indicate the site users were on when they clicked on
> your ad. For example, if a user searches on your keyword on Google.com
and
> then clicks on your AdWords ad, the referrer header would most likely
read
> ‘http://www.google.com/…’ Conversely, if the clickthrough had come
while
> your ad was appearing on AOL, the referrer header would read
> ‘http://www.aol.com…’
>
> Keeton, please let me know if you have additional questions. Have a nice
> evening.
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> The Google AdWords Team
>
> —————-
> Learn from other AdWords users. Ask questions, share answers, and post
> your favorite AdWords tips. Find out more at
> http://groups.google.com/group/adwords-help
>

This week we continue to launch our series of web-based services. Following in the footsteps of our online contract utility, we’ve also released DeliveryConfirm.com, a web based email delivery notification service.

The idea behind the site is to address the flawed read receipt feature of Outlook, Outlook Express and other message programs that allow the message recipient to decline sending the receipt. This is done by storing the message online and emailing a password to the recipient. When the password is used, voila! The original sender is notified that their message has been read.

It’s shockingly simple, and I’m hoping it will take off. Since it’s just been released, please let me know if you find any bugs.

There’s been a lot of response to our post regarding the web page visit notification script that we talked about last October. We’ve had so many requests for it that we’ve finally made it available for download.

This is the first time we’ve offered a downloadable product on danifer.com (although we do it on lots of other sites) and is the first script we’ve made commercially available. If you use the page visit notification script on your site, please let us know how it worked for you.

Over the weekend, I attended a free workshop put on by the Texas Wesleyan University School of Business entitled How to Start or Run a Small Business. The workshop was led by a gentleman named James Johnson and was located at the Best Western Inn & Suites at 2000 Beach Street in Fort Worth.

This is the first workshop of its kind that I’ve been too, and overall it was a positive experience. The workshop was offered last Saturday at either 9:30AM or 1:00PM. I attended the morning session along with a hundred or so other quests and we received a pamphlet of information and a lecture from Professor Johnson regarding the ins and outs of business start-ups.

I went to the workshop with three goals in mind. Although I wasn’t entirely successful, I took away enough to make the experience positive, and to make my next attempt more worthwhile. My goals in attending the small business workshop were:

• Get some free advice on running a small business (duh);
• Network with a group of individuals interested in starting their own businesses (who may need websites);
• Introduce my visiting cousin Emily to the Texas Wesleyan School of Business as a potential major when she goes to college.

As far as the free business advice is concerned, you get what you pay for. The speaker at the seminar was very knowledgeable about starting a running a business, but with limited time was only able to speak in generalities. The positive side of this was that I took away a list of topics (some of which I had not considered before) that I could research on my own. In addition to the generalities there was enough time for some specific and helpful information that included (from my notes):

• Some of the major tax benefits of owning your own business,
• The five most popular business start-ups (importing is on the list, FYI),
• How to mathematically price your product,
• An introduction to the most common types of business arrangements (sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations).

Because the seminar was free, I expected to receive sales pitch and was not disappointed. Throughout the presentation, the speaker referred to materials and services produced by the university that you could buy or register for in the hallway. He also encouraged attendees to sign up for various classes the university offered throughout the presentation. Again, since the workshop is free, I expect the university to push their own agenda and do not fault them for it. Some of the materials and classes would probably be very useful to many of the audience members.

In trying to turn the event into a networking opportunity, my own mistakes led to failure. I was afraid that going to the early class on Saturday morning would mean fewer network opportunities, but I was incorrect. The room was filled with a hundred or so individuals (although the speaker alluded to a slightly larger afternoon class).

My mistake, and one that I will not repeat, was failing to arrive early. By the time we got there, the room was full, and there were no opportunities to talk to the people around us before the presentation started. In addition, the structure of the facility was such that at the end of workshop there was no reason for people to mill around and network. I did meet one individual in the parking lot, but I think I would have done better by arriving 20 or 30 minutes early so I could talk to people as they arrived. I feel like the potential was there, but I did not make the best use of it.

The only real drawback to this event, and one that I can not find a silver lining for, was the facility. The Best Western hosting the event was definitely past its prime in need of maintenance. Large rainstorms earlier in the week meant buckets in the hallway to catch water and dirty brown ceiling tiles which lent an atmosphere of depression that was directly counter to the positivity the speaker was trying to produce. The audio system was non-functional and technical difficulties ate into the class time. Coffee service was not provided, but there was a water cooler. This last part was not as much a concern for me because I brought my own from Starbucks and recommend others do the same.

I do understand that the university can only afford a certain quality of facility in order to make such workshops profitable, but I feel they did themselves a disservice by not choosing a cleaner and more presentable location to represent themselves. I personally would have shrugged it off, but I had to explain to my visiting cousin afterwards that she should expect more from a college facility and that this was not typical.

One a scale of 1-10, I rate this experience a 6. I think with more effort on my part, I could have turned it into a 7 or an 8. I did learn some new things, and I did generate one new lead, so I feel it was worth my time. If you have a free Saturday morning and you can handle some of the negatives I mentioned, I recommend it – either for potential business owners, or as a possible networking event.

At Danifer Web Services, we strive to invest half of our time into building websites for clients and the other half into our own projects. The latest project of ours to come off the line is SignatureConfirm.com. It’s a free, online signature utility that individuals can use to create and send their own contracts and agreements to be signed online.

This site was developed after we realized the countless number of online documents, terms of service, etc. we’ve signed for other larger online service companies like MSN, Google, Yahoo!, Buy.com and more. The idea behind SignatureConfirm.com is to bring the same benefits of online signatures and electronic contracts to individuals who may not have the resources to incorporate them into their websites.

We think this kind of thing might be useful for:

• Web designers writing client agreements and non-compete contracts,
• Home inspectors who require a signed customer agreement to meet insurance requirements,
• Larger online transactions for ebay and craigslist users,
• personal loan agreements,
• and more!

If you have a unique way to use the service, please let us know and we’ll add it to the list. Thanks for checking it out and as always feedback is appreciated!

Things over at Danifer Web Services have been ticking along nicely, so we decided to reward the office with a round of new computers. The machine I picked out for myself was a Gateway GT5405E. Things were running well on my old system, but you never can have too much computing power at your disposal.

Now I’m a pretty technical person – I operate this business and have built the last three systems I’ve owned, but Windows Vista is beyond me.

To start with, I’m not a huge fan of graphics and fade effects etc. unless they have some sort of purpose. Vista comes with all sorts of fly-in windows and whatnot that make it really cool looking for the first three hours. After that, you’ve got all your programs installed and you wonder why your brand new system is running slower than your old one!

Not to mention the fact that Vista is a really bloated operating system, here’s a list of stuff that broke or that I had a problem with:

• Adobe Distiller (which I use to print .pdf documents) is no longer supported.
• Outlook Express has been replaced with Windows Mail. Microsoft seems to have overlooked the simplicity aspect that has made Outlook Express so popular and added in lots and lots of features that I will never use.
• Since Outlook Express is discontinued, my recommended spam solution is also out of service. This means I have to rely on the Micorsoft built in spam filter which doesn’t work as well and by it’s own mass-market nature will be thwarted by spammers within weeks.
• My hobby game, Warcraft makes the video driver report an error.
• When I tried to downgrade to Windows XP from my existing copy, I find out that the XP CD doesn’t contain the drivers it needs to recognize the newer SATA hard drives. There’s a workaround to this, but I’m not going to pay $700+ for so I can stand on my head and dance in a circle and pray for a working computer.

Long story short, I took the machine back to Costco and I’m on old reliable now. Since you can’t buy a pre-loaded Windows XP machine at any major retailer (thanks again Microsoft) I’ll be combing ebay for my new box.

Windows Vista might turn out to be a fantastic operating system. Windows 98 did it, Windows XP did it, so why not? The problem is it’s going to take a while.

If you’re considering an upgrade you might want to hold off for six months. Let the rest of the computer buying public take the hit and work out the kinks for you. That said, you might not want to share this article with anyone ;)

DieselEarth, my diesel/vegetable oil alternative fuels blog has recently undergone a redesign. I still haven’t updated it to the new WordPress 2.1, but at least for now it looks a little more professional.

This little website is one of about 30 or so that I own and operate. It’s getting between 50 and 100 visitors a day, mostly concerned with the areas of diesel engines, vegetable oil as an alternative fuel, bulk vegetable oil, and more often than not asking themselves “how much does vegetable oil weigh?”

I’m hoping with the new redesign to attract a little more ad revenue and possibly a writer who’s willing to contribute for free. This site has a lot of potential, and I’d like to see it developed a little more.

This week, I teamed up with Kate Barlow of KGB Planning & Research which is a marketing strategy consultant from one of my networking groups.

Kate and I hit it off swimmingly, and found that our different skills complimented each other very well. I think she’s going to be a good source of local referrals for me, and I hope to reciprocate in kind.

In addition to being a swell person, Kate has also signed on to be a member of our SiteShare program. She’s already writing and sending out a monthly marketing newsletter, and liked the idea of posting the same information on a website she could refer her clients to.

The domain registered is FocusedMarketing.info and is my first attempt at marketing a .info domain. Until now, I’ve mostly stuck to .com, .net, and one .org, but marketing is a pretty high-demand keyword in a domain name and it was tough even to get one that was easy to remember and made sense ending .info.

FocusedMarketing.info will be a free online resource for DFW business to business marketing tips and strategy.

Just a heads up for anyone working with a shared linux hosting account hosted by GoDaddy. I’m trying to view a client’s web site before the DNS kicks using some sort of IP address/username combination like I’m used to with my other vendors.

Usually you can access the client’s website pre-DNS by going to http://192.168.1.1/~username/ and preview the site before the DNS propagates.

This is especially handy because you can move files from one server to another, configure them and view them via the IP address/username combination and move the DNS after you’re confident the new server is properly setup. If executed properly, this prevents downtime and no one knows you’ve made any changes.

The problem? You can’t do this on GoDaddy. Without DNS setup, you can’t preview your site in a new location. Right now I’m not sure why. The answer is simply to add a new A Name record pointing to a subdomain, but it’s just one extra step you have to take.

Configure your A Name records so that

old IP address points to sampledomain.com
new IP address points to temporary.sampledomain.com hosted at GoDaddy.

and work under the subdomain until you’re ready to make your move.

Sometimes I stay up all weekend to finish client projects and to work on my own. This weekend’s Mountain Dew rush resulted in HomeCareHow.com, which is authored by a long-time member of our SiteShare program. The focus of the site is as a how to guide for caring for elderly and invalid in their homes. I’m pretty excited about it as this author’s other SiteShare projects have all done very well.

Paypal is fast becoming one of my favorite vendors. They’re trying to stay ahead of the game with Google fresh on their heels and keep the bulk of highly profitable online payment market.

And they’re doing a good job!

More and more I find myself using their services. Here’s why:

• They’re good for online invoicing of customers. Their online invoicing tool lets my customers pay bills with their credit card (a must for most) and makes a paper invoice unnecessary. As an added bonus, the credit card processing fee is competitive and the turnaround on customer payments is generally only a day or so.
• They’ve integrated efficiently with the post office if you have to ship a hundred or so packages.
• They offer a debit card like my bank.
• Their newest tool allows me to randomly generate credit card numbers good for a short period of time which not only cuts down on fraud, but can also keep unscrupulous merchants (Bally’s total fitness – I’m looking at you) from billing me month after month.
• Any accountant would be thrilled with the automated reports and Quickbooks compatibility.
• And to top it all off, my balance is currently earning 5% through their money market program.

Not to sound too much like a shill for Paypal, I’m just very impressed! Definitely blog worthy.

An interesting email from the guys at Google regarding 1km1kt.net:

Dear Publisher,

After a recent review of your site, we would like to include 1km1kt.net in our custom placement packs program. Custom placement packs are selections of individually-reviewed sites designed for our largest brand advertisers.

We would like to feature your site more frequently in these advertiser packages, but to do so, we need you to place more image and text-enabled medium rectangle ad units (300×250) on your site. Visit https://www.google.com/adsense/adformats to see a sample of the medium rectangle unit.

The medium rectangle is the most demanded size among our brand advertisers that utilize these packages for both text and image ads. These advertisers want to ensure they reach visitors on high quality sites like yours, and are willing to bid more for ads prominently displayed on these sites. They require that the units be placed “above the fold” on a page so that the ads are immediately visible to your site’s visitors without scrolling down.

If you decide to add medium rectangle units to your site, please notify us by replying to this email so that we can begin featuring your site in more of our advertiser packages.

We also recommend you use the newly launched ad placements feature to define your ad slots to advertisers so they can bid on specific placements on your site. For instructions on how to create ad placements, please visit https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=50691 .

Sincerely,

Name Removed

AdSense Support

I wonder if this is a general push for the AdSense program, or if I’ve crossed some sort of threshold. If you have any insight, please let me know.

When I’m not posting to the blog it’s a good thing. Not so much for my readers, but for me. It means I’m busy building websites, working with clients and generally shaking my tail feather to make ends meet. Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:

Import Growth – Sourcing and Strategy for Small Businesses
This is a website I setup for one of the subscribers to my international trade newsletter. I put the call out for individuals who would be interested in a no fee website which they could use to establish themselves in the international trade arena and to promote their own projects. They get a no-cost, custom website that they can manage on the condition that they post on topic on a regular basis. The individual who claimed this one runs a tea import business out of the San Diego area. I highly recommend checking out the site to hear about some of the trials and tribulations smaller importers face on a daily basis.

The Scrapbook Pad – Colleyville’s Largest Scrapbook Store
A new customer and owner of The Scrapbook Pad, this website was fun to make and the owner a joy to work with. I hope I get a thousand more customers like this one! If you’re in the area, check out their store at:

5611 Colleyville Blvd. #140
Colleyville, TX 76034

Mulgore Armailte Society – a World of Warcraft Horde Guild
Because I don’t work all the time, this is a website designed for my latest obsession – World of Warcraft. The website is run by my wife who is far better at community building than myself and is something of an online meeting place for MAS guild members.

A really fantastic article regarding eye motion and web page layout. The article states that users perceive a web page in an “F” Pattern, first and second in a horizontal movement across the top two paragraphs of a page and then in a vertical movement down the left hand side.

This means it’s extremely important to place your most important content near the top, while your secondary points are clearly delineated by headers or bullet points.

On my site, dieselearth.com, I place my Google Ads where they will get the maximum amount of attention (because more clicks on those ads means more money for me). Compare this article to that site’s homepage to see why that position is worth more money.

I run more than 20 web sites, and consequently I get a lot of spam mail.

Tip: if you publish your email address in plain text on a website, you can expect to triple your incoming spam.

The solution I’ve been testing over the last few days is Spam Bully and I have to say I’m very pleased!

Along with a variety of filters including a Bayesian flter (a learning filter that adapts itself to your user preferences), it comes packed with some really cool stastical analysis reports for your incoming mail. It’s reduced my morning email time from 30 minutes down to less than five, and it integrates seamlessly with Outlook Express. It doesn’t hog memory like some of the other client side spam filters, and virtually ever option I can think of is configurable to my preferences to reduce the chances it will trash something I need.

Spam is becoming a real problem and unfortunately there are more spammers than there are ways to combat it. I don’t expect we’ll win the war, but tools like Spam Bully are certainly worth $29.95 to make my life a little easier.