My Writings. My Thoughts.
Australian Webmaster Update
// August 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com
One of my objectives of this blog is to track my progress of my various projects.
I was just looking at the statistics for australianwebmaster.com when I realized that last week the site received it’s highest amount of traffic since I began using Google Analytics on the site!
The forum has now got 3,990 threads, 22,293 posts and 5,578 members.
Back in January the site had 3,584 members. Works out to be about 10 new members a day over the past 7 months.
It still gets spammed every day however it’s still rewarding to see the place growing, even if it is slower than I’d like.
I still haven’t applied the vBulletin update which I’m concerned about because of how many releases behind I am however I’m dreading the effort required – and the potential issues I may face.
In the past week I’ve added an Australian Web Hosting specific section to the site – need to try to find a way of promoting it to hosting companies.
MM Forms, WordPress Form Plugin
// January 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Webmaster tips
There are an abundance of WordPress plugins for Contact Forms.
I’ve used a couple of different ones however the one I’ve settled on is one called MM Forms.
My main decision in selecting MM Forms was the requirement to automatically acknowledge the contact e-mail via an e-mail message. At the time I couldn’t find other contact form plug-ins that had this option.
I also believe it’s popular for saving form results in a CSV file – obviously something handy if you wanted to collate a lot of responses.
It’s quite powerful however relatively easy to use – I suggest checking it out.
I did experience a problem with it recently where the form hung on submit however I upgraded to the latest release and the problem was resolved. The only issue I still have is that the date format for date fields (with calendar control) is MM/DD/YYYY – for now I just used text fields.
Weekly review – 11/Jan
// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // webmasterblog.com.au
Last week I concentrated on my www.webmasterblog.com.au site. I am aiming for three posts per week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Last week I posted Top 2009 AU Domain Name Sales, How much is your site worth?, and Does Hosting in Australia Help your SEO?. Earlier today I published a post comparing AU Domain Name Prices.
Traffic is still very low. As part of my monthly Australian Webmaster Forum newsletter I mentioned the site had launched but the response wasn’t great. (The forum is also below normal so I am suspect/hoping people are just still on holidays)
I have set up a link exchange between the site and an Australian domain name forum which has resulted in some traffic.
My next step is to target Australian hosting companies offering them free promotion of any specials they offer. My intention is to publish a “Deals of The Month” post at the beginning of each month. This would get the site’s name out there, support the local Australian hosting market and provide visitors with a source of Australia’s best hosting deals.
A fresh look
// January 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // Webmaster tips
What better way to start the new year but with a fresh look!
I have just loaded up the free WooTheme called Irresistible.
I will probably need to do some minor tweaking in the coming weeks. For example, one thing that I found weird was that with the default styling hyperlinks weren’t standing out at all unless you rolled over them. I presume this was to make Post headings look cleaner but not having links highlighted I felt was a bigger issue. In any case I was easily able to add the following quick custom style and they are now underlined.
a, a:link, a:visited { color: #fff; text-decoration: underline; }
The other thing I noticed and have found in most other WordPress themes is that the heading sizes are out of whack – Heading 1 within a post will be dramatically larger than the post heading itself. Is it just me or don’t most people use the heading styles?
Anyway, it’s handy that WooThemes have an extra custom.css file where you can put any custom styling without editing the default styles. Means you can easily switch between your styles and the defaults.
Welcome to 2010
// January 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Personal Goals
Here we go again for another year, and a decade for matter (it’s amazing to think what’s happened in my life over the past 10 years!).
Towards the end of last year I lost focus for a while as is also evident from the lack of posts here at jono.me.
After having a holiday in October for a couple of weeks I never really got back in to my online projects. The Christmas rush came, work was busy, etc, etc.
Like a lot of people the new year becomes an opportunity to refocus and reset your goals.
For me it’s back to reviewing my various projects and prioritising my time… At this stage it seems that webmasterblog.com.au and australianwebmaster.com will be my focus. Will keep you informed! 
Webmaster Blog
// September 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // webmasterblog.com.au
I’ve gone live with another site, www.webmasterblog.com.au, a Webmaster Blog specifically for the Australian market.
Not sure how often I will be able to post to it but I’ve had the domain for a while so I may as well use it.
I wanted to launch with more content however I had researched a list of Australian Web Directories and wanted to get the list out there rather than have it as a draft for god knows how long.
The idea of this site is to give me something to promote which can then publicize the forum. Should be interesting to see how it (and I) goes.
Whoops I did it again
// September 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // webmasterincome.net
You know how I complain about my lack of focus on projects… I bought another web site! For US$30 it seemed too good to pass up.
The site is webmasterincome.net and is based on how to make money online information. Although it’s a fairly new site it contains a decent amount of content, including an eBook on Yahoo Answers which was promoted on Digital Point.
It obviously needs periodic posts however I am hoping that it will it will attract traffic through search engines and build up over time. At this stage it’s getting NO search engine traffic so I will send it some links and see what happens.
Hosting in Australia
// September 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Webmaster tips
In the last couple of weeks or so I have moved all my sites from a US based VPS to one located in Australia.
I am going to be hosting an e-commerce site and since it was targeting the Australian market I wanted to be confident that it is going to be as fast as possible for Australian visitors.
When my sites were in the US there was no real noticeable delay browsing the sites but now the server is in Australia you can really see the difference – the response times are great.
You can really tell a difference when FTPing files. A 300MB file took over an hour to download from the US VPS, now it takes less than 10 minutes.
The problem is that the cost of this additional performance is costing about an extra AU$70/month – I was previously paying US$45 (about AU$54), now I am paying AU$125. The specifications of the Australian server (disk space and traffic) is also much less too!
However when you are investing $1000s of dollars on an e-commerce venture the $70/month is insignificant price to pay.
To me the most important aspect was responsive and qualified support. After doing my research I’m confident I’ve found it and so far I am very happy with the move. Wish I wasn’t paying more for it but as I said, is it really worth the risk?
“Make Money Blogging” ebook
// August 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Webmaster tips
6-figure/year earner Daniel Scocco of www.dailyblogtips.com has released a free “Make Money Blogging” ebook on his blog.
In the 54 pages Daniel covers 5 main areas. They are:
- Content,
- Design and Usability,
- Networking,
- Promotion, and
- Monetization.
Its a great read and is packed full on helpful tips on blogging.
I will personally be going through and trying out a few things, particularly in the area of networking and promotion. The book isn’t too heavy however it still manages to cover the whole process from deciding a niche all the way through to how to make money from the site once it’s established.
I thought the idea of creating “killer articles” mixed in with normal posts was a great suggestion. It gives me some great ideas for a blog site I am planning on starting.
To get your copy, go to http://www.dailyblogtips.com/make-money-blogging/.
australianwebmaster.com update
// August 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com
Australian Webmaster continues to be my main focus and has had a great past week – my traffic has been consistently higher than normal which is really great to see.
The monthly newsletters seem to be doing the trick of reminding people about the site. I’ve also proceeded with the “Site Of The Month” competition.
These two things have probably caused the recent traffic spike but hopefully it will continue!
I’ve put on two additional moderators however they aren’t big contributors unfortunately, but they can approve moderated posts in those times I can’t which is great.
I still need to get the word out about the site and at this stage I can only see this happening by getting out there and getting involved in other forums and blogs. It’s a catch-22 though, if I’m out marketing the site activity can drop off and then the people that my marketing does attract see a site with little activity!
I think I have to do something though to take it to the next level.
