Sebbie on the Webbie

Why you shouldn’t be TOO concerned about ranks

Sebastyne — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:45:26 +0000

As bloggers, we’re constantly being told that we should be keeping a keen eye on our Google Page rank as well as Alexa ranking. While it is very fulfilling to see your site ranks go up, there’s more to the story than that. As you know, both of these ranks compare your site to Every Single Website On The Web. It is hard to even comprehend how many websites that is. Even if you knew the exact number of different websites on the planet, it would still be hard to understand. It’s like knowing that Australia is a bloody big country, but you don’t really get HOW BIG until you fly over it and realise that just because you just passed Darwin doesn’t mean you’ll be home in Hobart any time soon.

It would be a lot better if there was a way to compare your site’s popularity In Your Niche, but there isn’t, at the moment anyway. That is to say that your site’s influence where it counts has little to do with your page ranks. I must give my husband’s blog as an example. He writes a blog for people who use exergaming in professional health and fitness purposes. Professional exergamers, that is. (I bet you didn’t even know there were such thing as a professional exergamer!) His blog, Exergaming Australia has a modest page rank of 2 (oh, he’s gone up!) and his Alexa ranking is around 4,600,000. Not too impressive if you just look at the numbers. However, everyone who is anyone in the field of exergaming knows who he is and what he does and his influence in the field is world wide and instant. When you google “exergaming” his blog comes up as the second result, right after Wikipedia and Nintendo Wii doesn’t even make the first page! This is because his niche is so small, that even though EVERYONE of any importance knows him, the vast majority of the web is quite unaware of what a brilliant blog he runs.

On the other hand, I run a Barbie community site, as you know, with a page rank of 4 and Alexa ranking of about 476,000, which is pretty impressive for any site, BUT, I make no money (or very little) and the English speaking world is pretty much unaware that my site exists. Put “Barbie” on Google and you won’t see my site anywhere near the top of the results, I quit searching after page 6. And that is because there are a gazillion Barbie sites out there, collectors, articles written about the doll and so forth and so forth, and not even refining the search to “Barbie community” help me much. Yes, I am bad at SEO, but my husband there is even worse.

I checked a few Barbie-sites that I know of and who are very well known amongst collectors, to see how they rank. I kicked their butt so bad, I couldn’t find an unofficial Barbie-site (non-Mattel) that would have had better rankings than I have, not even my biggest direct competitor. How much good does the rankings do for me? Not much, other than I get to pat myself in the back for beating the other sites in the numbers game, but that’s it.

So what to do? Make sure you introduce yourself to all the right people and get the word out. Do the best you can do to produce high quality content and people who do find your site may spread the word where it counts. Focusing on your page ranks is not going to bring your fame and fortune they are there just to report to you how much you’ve improved, not where you should be.

Does that make sense to you?

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Newsletter magic

Sebastyne — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:19:08 +0000

If you are running an active community online, you might have considered writing a regular newsletter, then debunked the idea thinking “Everyone is here already, what possible reason would I have for a newsletter?” Check out your statistics. How many of your members have logged in since they first found your site? Quite a chunk, I would imagine. Life happens, sites are found and sites are forgotten. A newsletter is a great way to remind your non-readers that you and your community exist.

I started writing a newsletter for my community site theBdoll.com at the beginning this year. First I thought I would just write a normal email and be done with it, but a silly thing happened – I run a bilingual site, so I would need to write in two languages and the other would have to scroll down to read the email in their language. That is when I decided to make two pdf’s, one in each language. And while I was doing the pdf, I thought why not put a couple more pages into it, and ended up writing a full blown e-newsletter, as in a little magazine. My members LOVED IT. They went absolutely ballistic over it, and I was blown away by the reactions. I got email from people who hadn’t visited the site for a while saying what a great idea that was and a lot of people raised their hands saying they’d like to help me with the newsletter in the future.

The whole project has brought the community closer together and as close knit as we were, the newsletter has made us even closer – I feel.

In each of the issues I introduce two of my members. Hopefully that will make all of us look more approachable as well as interesting to the non-returners – there is a lot of different types to go around, and I’m sure eventually everyone will find someone they’ll relate to and feel safe with if they’re more quiet type. In addition to that, the newsletter, or ezine rather, contains news, the latest hot stuff and a humorous gossip column of or members dolls – we’re Barbie collectors.

Of course, not all sites have topics that allow quite that elaborate ezines, and on the other hand, your topic might be even more open to ideas, I know that each issue I’ve made has brought in another idea. Have a look at our newsletter to get ideas for yours! http://www.thebdoll.com

Open Source – thinking outside the box

Sebastyne — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:08:47 +0000

When we’re reliant on open source scripts, we often find ourselves in a situation, that nothing that exists out there quite fits to what we need. The more specialised your needs are, the more certain it is that there’s no such thing developed for that exact use. Take my case for example. I wanted to create an identification database for Barbie-dolls, so that the users could use drop down menu’s to select the dolls eye colour hair colour and body parts used to find the doll they are looking for. (Makes sense to a collector, trust me.) You can bet that there was nothing like that available. I tried finding general collectors items databases, without luck. Then I looked into catalogues that were supposed to be perfect for collectors… At least if you collect DVD:s or books. I tested out a few shopping catalogues hoping to find a solution, but found that they weren’t really suitable for the job, even if some managed to do what I wanted, using them would be way too complicated as I wanted a database users could add to (as there are thousands of different kind of Barbie dolls out there!)

I found my solution with a Joomla! component called Sobi 2. It is a directory component, generally used as a business directory or a real estate database or a classifieds add system. It had all the features I needed, even though I had to change some words in the language files and disable some features that didn’t fit my needs and that sort. Even though it still doesn’t work quite like one would hope if it was a custom made site, it’s good enough given the fact I paid nothing for it.

To figure out if there is a solution for you, start by listing the features you need from your site, what are a MUST HAVE, what are the ones that would be really good and what you can live without if push comes to shove. Then start thinking what “normal” scripts do the same thing – ignore words and terms, they can (most often) be changed. If your idea is a complex one, I would start looking into Joomla sites and it’s extensions, which more often than not, provide a solution. For more simpler things, think of blog tools or photo galleries, maybe even a discussion forum system?

Another tip: Be patient, and remember, that even if you can’t find anything like what you’re thinking right now, in a couple of more months there might be something available. Also, don’t waste your time on scripts that don’t work the way they are, because there’s a very small chance that they’ll work for a use they’re not intended for.

This website is like gold to open source -users. You can test out different scripts without worrying about messing them up, as the installations are returned back to the default settings every two hours. Try out the scripts at Open Source CMS.

Good luck!

Tip: Kid’s web browsers

Sebastyne — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:04:22 +0000

If you are a parent, you might be interested to know, if you don’t already, that there are web browsers specially made for kids. (Web browser is the thing you watch web pages with, like Internet Explorer.) There are several, and as a childless by choice person I haven’t tried them, but you should! These browsers are designed to filter out inappropriate content to make the web a safer environment for your kid.

From a content producers point of view, I find it sometimes tiring having to watch my words so that kids won’t get bad influences. It’s good to know, that these products exist, and that it’s really up to the parent to utilise them and not just complain about the smut around the web. (I do enjoy my smut as in content not suitable for kids, so I like to have that option open. I also sometimes send out inappropriate content, like swearing, and whilst it might not be a lady like thing to do, I still consider it my right – and your right is to filter it out if you like.)

In addition to web browsers, there are filters that can filter the content on normal browsers. However, if I was a parent, I would get the browser, as many are brightly coloured fun looking things, that will probably be the preferred option for a kid if he or she has one available, so even if you forgot to turn your filter on after a long night at the computer… The kid would still choose to go with his own special browser.

So there’s the tip, see what’s available.

As for you who are producing adult content on your websites, have a look at this website, which will help you to self label your site to be suitable for adult audience only. Amongst other things, the filters and kids browsers look for these tags, and having one on your site will make their task easier.

A few steps to Keep Your Facebook account Safe

Sebastyne — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:20:57 +0000

Don't let the evil crim use your innocent face as his cover

Most of us have a Facebook account, and the more popular Facebook gets, the more attractive it is for hackers, who want to use your squeaky clean profile as their cover when doing something you would never do. Hacking these days is not too difficult. I’ve tried it once, (with a test account) and without any experience got through CAPTCHA image verification using nothing but an automated program, which some people still think is impossible for a computer to do. It’s not – it will take a computer more time and more attempts than it does for a human, but it can do it through it on trial and error basis. Back to Facebook then.

Picking a strong password

Facebook hacking is done simply by finding out someone’s login (your email) and then testing out a series of letter combinations, actual words to start with, then continuing randomly, until the correct one is found. If your password is a clear English word, it’ll be amongst the first ones to be cracked. What you want to do is pick a word you can remember, then add some numbers (in the middle) and capitalisations to it. Something like “R4nD0M612″. Pick numbers that are special to you, but not special enough for anyone to pick, such as (not) your birth date so you can remember it, then type it up a few times so you will remember it with your fingers as well, so you won’t have to keep copying because you can’t remember it.

Hide your email address like it was your passport

For sites that are very popular, and the most likely to get hacked, such as Facebook, use a separate email address that you will not be using for any other purpose than this. If you are a domain owner, this should be an easy task for you as you can just add an email address that will forward stuff to your real account if needed, but if not, try something like http://sneakemail.com/to create an additional email addresses for this use. This way it will be harder for a hacker to find out your email address you used to sign up, and makes it that much harder for him to get to your profile – and with so many easier options out there will probably leave your account alone – unless he takes it as a challenge, which I doubt, with so many more tempting targets out there…

When you change an email address to your profile, remember to remove the email address you previously had in use, as all emails stored with your account can be used as logins. Facebook will nag to you about adding an additional email, so do the same with another email – have two complete oddity emails (such as 82ldh03@yourdomain.com.) Also, then remember to hide it from others, including your friends, because you don’t want to get email to that account anyway. You might be tempted to add another “spam account” type of email to show to your friends, but don’t, since this will function as a login to your account and you don’t want a spam-account as your login email if you want to keep your profile safe.

Then you simply have to remember which email you used to sign up and log in. You can make your computer to remember your login information, unless you use a public computer, in which case you definitely should not.

Why would anyone want to hack my Facebook account?

In addition to identity theft, which might actually be in the minority of reasons to hack someone’s account, there are other reasons for it, for example an annoyed or jealous ex… If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a couple of crazy ones in your past. School bullies use this sort of tactic a lot, and if you’re a parent, I wouldn’t rule out possible bullies using your account to torture your kid. (Imagine the horrible things they could make you say to your kid if they could use your account!) Some people enjoy simply creating a mayhem amongst people so having the login information of someone… ANYONE with a bunch of friends, could be a fantastic source of entertainment – at your expense.

Applications

Applications on Facebook are a security risk, as every time you add one, you grant an access to all your data. What is worse, a lot of the applications can access your data if your FRIEND has added an application and you haven’t told Facebook not to allow access to third party applications. I learned this the hard way: Someone of my friends added themselves to a mailing list of some product specials, and apparently gave access to my information as well. Now I get spammed continuously about products I don’t want in a country I don’t live in. (Hiding your email will also hide it from applications.)

To make sure you’re allowing your friends to give out as little information as possible, go to this address to tweak your third party application privacy settings on Facebook.

Last of all, keep the number of installed applications as low as possible, using only those that are of absolute importance to you, or applications you trust. Use applications from well known developers, and avoid things like gift apps and personality tests and all those dodgy things. While most of these are harmless, it only takes that one…

I hope you will find some peace of mind knowing you’ve done your best to close the doors on your Facebook account.

If you know some more good tips about keeping your account safe, please add into the comments!

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The computer engineer Barbie makes the web buzz

Sebastyne — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:45:51 +0000

As a collector, I of course follow the keyword “Barbie” on Twitter. The last few weeks it’s been all about the freshly released Computer Engineer Barbie. Naturally, as the web is full of geeks, they are impressed by the new release, but at the same time hesitant to believe it would have any significant impact on children’s minds. Their concern makes me smile.

A friend of mine had the Astronault Barbie of 1985. We thought she was the most beautiful Barbie ever made, but I don’t think she ever got to the space. My fashion model Barbie, officially named Magic Moves Barbie from the same year did one session of modelling straight out of the box in Christmas ‘85, but that was the last of it. After that, she did a lot more camping than modelling. I loved that doll, but not for what was written on her box.

I think, in that regard, the Computer Engineer Barbie has a lot more chances to actually get to practise her occupation than many of her earlier name sakes did. I doubt it very much that the Presidential Candidate Barbie was campaigning much in kids plays, or that Becky the Para Olympian Barbie stayed in her wheelchair for much longer than five minutes at a time. Computer Engineering doesn’t have to take away from the play, it can actually add to it. Even though the focus of the play might be dating and doing exciting stuff, I can easily see the Computer Engineer actually popping in for some work while she’s busy with the other parts of her life. The reason being, that a lot of kids have computer engineer -parents, so they know what the heck it is about!

I don’t know about you, but I love this doll, and I’m so getting one as soon as I can get my hands on one. Even though I am 33 now, and have been obsessed with Barbie my whole life, this one is the closest to being my kind of a girl – right out of the box.

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RSS Blogroll -plugin for WordPress

Sebastyne — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:35:47 +0000

This is great stuff people! If you’re running a self hosted WordPress blog, this one is a must replacement for your boring old static blogroll. As you’ve probably noticed, the blogroll links are not really that enticing in terms of clicking on them, unless someone is really hungry for reading, or know your blogroll is likely to contain very targeted blogs, there’s not much of a chance someone clicking on them. Sure, giving a blogroll link to someone is a favour in terms of link love, but there’s more you can do for the blogs you love!

Blogrolls are also a bit stupid because they require maintenance and you need to periodically check your links are actually up to date. As I was installing RSS Blogroll for my “thinking blog” My Dear Hard Drive, I noticed a lot of them were either completely broken, pointing in a wrong place or the blogger had updated some time last year saying they’re quitting blogging. Even though I visited some of the blogs anyway, I didn’t remember to update the blogroll when they stopped blogging. RSS Blogroll is going to fix that problem for you!

RSS Blogroll is a plugin that updates your favourite blogs feeds instead just the name of the blog and the link. It will give links to the latest articles written on your favourite blogs, and if your blogger friends are not updating – no problem, as their blogs will simply disappear from your list! Check out my RSS Blogroll on the sidebar for reference. Don’t you just love it?

Personal Blogs and Websites

Sebastyne — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:31:55 +0000

I love personal websites (even more than personal blogs). To me they are the cream of the Internet, the very best of things. Sadly, they’ve got the worst reputation of all sites I think, because they’re often thought of as personal journals, more or less equally as interesting as reading someone’s shopping list of the day. Some are like that, of course, but when you find a good personal blog or a website… Wow!

The great thing about them is that they can reflect their owner freely, without topical restrictions, concern about SEO, marketability or anything of the sort. Sure, they’re hard to promote, and if you like a lot of people reading your stuff, you are bound to find it harder than with any other type of blog or website you may have. Unfortunately, the difficulty in promoting them is the reason why many of the bloggers quit or redefine their topic into something less personal.

In ten years, I haven’t even found a good term to describe different kind of personal sites, which can be anything from a politicians blah-blah about his individual thoughts within his party, to a house wife’s musings about what to cook today or how much poop did the little one produce today. In between, there are a multitude of different ways to write a personal blog, and they should have sub categories! Let’s have a think about it, shall we? (Please feel free to add your thoughts about the matter in the comments.)

Personal Blog or Website

Artist’s blog -showcasing a person’s works of art and describing the process to create them.
Politician’s blog – collection of thoughts, opinions and suggestions by a politician.
Mommy blog – Actually probably the only type of a personal blog that has a clearly defined sub category.
Online Journal – The other fairly well known type of personal blog, but with a lot of confusion. Reports of the daily antics of the blogger. (The original type of blog.)
“A Thinking blog” – A collection of person’s thoughts of various matters, written in creative non-fiction, without the intent to showcase the writing as art, political view or philosophy, per say, but with the intent to stir thoughts, make a point and/or simply entertain.

For a writer, having a personal blog, the thinking blog -type, is just a must. This will help you to identify the topics and things you keep thinking about, and that will give you further help in finding the topics that will sustain your interest enough for an individual blog or maybe a full book! Even if nobody read it, it’s good to have. (My thinking blog is at http://www.sebastyne.net .)

Does this make sense or ring true to you? Do you think the personal blogs should have more status? Have you noticed how hard it is to even find a category suited for something like a thinking blog when submitting it to blog directories? Any other type you think should be on the list?

Emoticons on your Forum

Sebastyne — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:24:08 +0000

I love emoticons. A lot of people do, and if you’re running a forum, spending a bit of time for finding great emoticons does pay off. The default sets on most forum software are simply boring and ugly. The good news is that you can find awesome emoticons for free. The bad news is that it takes a little bit of time, and again, the good news is that you probably only need one site to find them on. Then you need a bit of time to set them up for your forum, but do save them on the computer in case you’re a serial forum admin, because you can reuse the same set you have – and maybe add some topic specific in there if you want. Remember to find replacements for the most commonly used at least; those in the picture.

During the years I’ve been working with forums, I always get positive feedback about the emoticons, and when I’m talking to the people on some other site, they often refer to the forum emoticons by typing a description of it in the message like: *the cute hugging smiley* or similar. Doesn’t that tell you how much people love them?

Okay, so here’s a link to my favorite place to find emoticons – Deviant Art, naturally. (Oh there’s some new cute ones, I wanna get a few, too…)

Facebook apps and games etiquette

Sebastyne — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:59:37 +0000

Even though Facebook has a lot of fun little apps and games, you might want to restrict the use of them when you’re involving others. A lot of people are using Facebook in business purposes, and it’s simply not cool having friends constantly send you “cute gifts” or “nice things” or bug me to take in a lost pet or keep you updated on their latest Bejewelled Blitz score. While most people get this, there can be just a couple of people who keep doing this, sometimes several times a day – or an hour! And quite often, you don’t even know these people well enough to tell them to please stop doing it.

Gifts

Yes, you can block applications, but you’ll have to do that separately to each application. I WISH I could just block all gift apps at once! I am a Barbie collector, and you can bet I get Facebook Barbie gifts a lot, from more than one app and from more than one friend. I love Barbies, but I still blocked all Barbie gift -apps, because I like them in flesh and… sorry, in plastic and vinyl instead of pixels on the screen. So if I block a gift app of things I love, how do you think I feel getting a bunch of other “gifts” that just take up the space from the stuff I really like to see – my friends actual updates and their photos. (Yes you can select which type of feed you want to see, but if all these gifts are posted on your wall and you want to see if someone has actually sent you something worth while, you’ll have 3 pages full of gifts… ARGH!)

Games

There are few games I love on Facebook and that I play a lot… Too much in fact. Every time I get a personal high score, the game asks me if I want to post it on my profile. I select “no” 99% of the time. I post it if I score MASSIVE, which happens maybe once a month. I also played a game, Vampire Wars, which required some wall posts to work well, so I created a separate account for it, so I could only add people who also play Vampire Wars and wouldn’t be annoyed by the constant updates. Other games that can be annoying as hell: Farm games, the zoo games, pet games, Mafia, pretty much anything that does repeated public updates. Either don’t play them, only post sparingly or start a separate gaming profile and only add fellow gamers. (There’s Facebook groups where you can find strangers to play with so you don’t have to bug your co workers with it.)

Quizzes and “personality tests”

Most of these are so dodgy that I don’t know why you’d like to fill them. They may be entertaining for a few times but seriously? If you take the quizzes, consider if the response has enough entertainment value to be posted on your wall.

Let’s just say that if you’re over 15 years of age, and your friend is over 15, lay off the entertainment apps and only post them to people who you know very well or who you know enjoys that stuff!

Signing up for newsletters on Facebook

DO NOT DO THIS. Some of them not only add you, but your friends as well, so please, please don’t do this through Facebook! (You know how the app asks you to give a permission to access Yours and YOUR FRIENDS information through your profile?) I’ve been starting to receive a lot of “offers” to my email through Facebook, and there’s not a snow balls chance in hell I would have signed up for those, especially as they come from Finland and I don’t live there anymore!