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A Pipe and a Keyboard

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The end of something special

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on July 6, 2009 by RichardJuly 6, 2009

Many years ago, back in the ‘90s I started a website.

Actually, it started as a Netscape Bookmark File which had little or no formatting.

version1

The original concept of the site was to provide myself, and anyone else with an interest, with a list of researched links.

At the time, I had no idea where it was leading, and if I had been granted foresight, I might have abandoned it there and then.

My bookmark file grew and grew, and soon it became apparent that it needed a multi-page setup.  Not only that, but it needed a name (and domain name).  And so Irish Lynx was born.

Irish Lynx went through quite a few redesigns as the site became larger and larger.  You must appreciate that at this time, there were very few directories on the Web, and soon Irish Lynx became one of the foremost directory sites out there.

version2

At its peak, it was receiving substantial traffic, mostly from America.  It contained somewhere in the region of 30,000 links.  Updating became a nightmare.

This was in the days prior to server side technology, so I developed an Excel Database with a background macro.  Any time a link was added to the database, the macro would regenerate all the relevant pages with interconnecting links, and the new files would then be uploaded to the server.  It was tedious, but it worked.

version3

Irish Lynx was eventually sold, and was taken off the Internet.  However, I retained the links and the data was eventually put back up but this time in proper MySQL format.

Sadly, I never had the time or resources to keep the directory updated and it lapsed into its own little time warp.

Out of a sense of sentiment and loyalty, I left it there.  It still got regular hits but of course the traffic died off with the advent of Google and the like.

Today I took the site down.

I am sad to see it go.  It was my first web site, and the steep learning curve eventually led me to running a successful web design business.

I owe that site a lot.

May it rest in peace.

Posted in Tech stuff | 5 Replies

Blacklists and Spamhause

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on June 25, 2009 by RichardJune 25, 2009

I see Himself has been having a side swipe at my clients.

Maybe not the best of business ideas, but I doubt that they read his rants, so hopefully no damage will be done.

There have been a number of complaints from clients who have been unable to send mails from their accounts.  As they share a mail server with others who have no problems, this led to some investigations.

All these clients complained of the same symptoms – they were able to receive mail, but were unable to send any except via the web interface.  In each case, their mail client configuration was correct.  If I set myself up an account on their domains I was able to send with no problems.  So what was the cause?

I did some sleuthing and found the problem.

In each case, their local IP had ended up on a spam blacklist, Spamhause seem to be one of the major ‘offenders’ here.  The latter seem to be very enthusiastic in their efforts which is fair enough but it does lead to problems.

One client in particular consistently fails to send mails. 

His IP address is listed on Spamhause who claim his PC contains malicious software.  We checked the PC rigorously and found it to be clean.  His is the only device using that connection.

As his ISP provides dynamic addressing, I checked the other IP addresses in the block.  All were blacklisted on Spamhause, therefore reconnecting to obtain a different IP wasn’t going to work.

I contacted the ISP and explained the situation.  They claimed it was the mail server that was blocked.  I told them it was my server and assured them that not only was it clean but that it did not appear on any blacklist.  They finally conceded that it was their addresses that were at fault.  They maintained that it was up to my client to contact Spamhause.

Now, we have a bit of a conundrum here.

If my client gets his IP cleared, his connection is going to fail the next time he gets a new address. 

The ISP maintain they can’t clear the addresses, as they cannot give any guarantee that the equipment using those addresses is clean.

Presumably the cause of this mess is that one of the ISP’s clients has an infected machine and each time he is allocated a new address, Spamhause blocks it, until all the IP addresses in the range are blacklisted.

It is one of the lesser known side effects of viruses and spam and it is damned irritating.

Posted in Tech stuff | 3 Replies

Alexa ranking

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on May 20, 2009 by RichardMay 20, 2009

Alexa ranking is a very strange thing.

I wrote about efforts to improve the ranking of this site a few weeks ago.  So far I have been marginally successful in that the ranking has risen from 1,627,533 to 1,275,521.  It’s not much, but it’s in the right direction.

What is surprising about the above figures is that traffic has not increased at all in the period between then and now.  In fact, it shows a downward trend.

In contrast, traffic to the other site has remained remarkably constant over the same period, yet its ranking has dropped from 195,510 to 203,289.

I am aware that Alexa is not the best yardstick for the measurement of site traffic, as it depends on the viewer having the plugin installed, but I find the above figures somewhat bemusing.

The one unfortunate thing about Alexa though is that it tends to be used by advertising companies to determine a site’s popularity.  As advertising is contained in both sites, Alexa ranking is fairly important to me.

The only thing I can think of is that this site tend to have more technical content, and therefore is more likely to be visited by people with the plugin.

Posted in Tech stuff | 1 Reply

Gimme Dat

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on April 27, 2009 by RichardApril 27, 2009

I often come across strange things on the Internet.

I found a site today that I hadn’t seen before.  It’s quite a nice site and takes an interesting approach to site listings –

http://www.gimmedat.ie/

What really intrigues me about it is their ‘Top 5 Sites this Week’.

There, right at the top is Head Rambles!

And what is intriguing about that?

Well, I don’t think Head Rambles was ever submitted to that directory.

They don’t seem to list blogs.

If you do a search within the site, Head Rambles isn’t to be found.

And finally, where did they get the little logo?  I never made it.

I’m not complaining.  In fact I like the logo and am flattered.

I’d like to know how it came about though…

Posted in Tech stuff | Leave a reply

Improving site traffic

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on April 26, 2009 by RichardApril 26, 2009

Two of the most ofetn asked questions in the blogging world are “how to I start a blog” and “how do I get people to read it”.

The latter is one question I would like to experiment with.

This site has been ticking over since the beginning of last December. As an eperiment, I would like to see if I can improve its performance from the point of view of visitors and ranking.

Determining a site’s popularity is not easy. Some people go by the number of visitors within a time period [say, a week or a month] while others go by page views. Another method is by ranking.

There are three generally accepted ranking figures – Technorati, Google and Alexa.

Measuring visitors to a site is not easy. On the Head Rambles site, I currently use Ice Rocket, Google Analytics, Woopra and raw log files. These all give wildly different figures for the same period, so effectively, I ignore them and use them for trending purposes only.

Ranking is a different matter.

I have just registered this site with Technorati, and it apparently has a ranking of 13. This is roughly what I would expect for a relatively new and unexciting site. Head Rambles used to have a ranking in excess of 200, but this has dropped off dramatically as the figures are recycled and existing links are discounted and only new links are measured. Head Rambles currently stands at 93.

Google Ranking is deemed to be important if you are interested in search engine ranking. Personally, I have not found this to be the case, as Head Rambles consistently shoots to the top of Google within minutes of a post being published. Head Rambles used to have a ranking of 5 with Google, which was excellent. However that dropped to 3, presumably when they discovered I was advertising with a non-Google affiliate? Ranking for this site is currently 4, which I think is pretty good.

Alexa ranking is a strange one. It is widely used as a benchmark for advertising sales, yet is notoriously difficult to predict as it seems to result from counting the number of visits from people who have the Alexa plug-in installed on their browser. If this is the case [and Alexa is not that popular as a plug-in] then it is an extremely bad method of quantifying a site’s value. However, this is the metric chosen by the industry, and who am I to argue?

The Alexa ranking for this site is currently 1,627,533 and it will be interesting to see if I can improve on this figure.

Over the next while, I am going to try various techniques to improve the traffic to this site. I will of course write about my efforts, and post the corresponding rise or fall in traffic.

It would indeed be nice if I could get this site’s Alexa ranking up close to that of Head Rambles which is currently at 195,510.

We shall see?

Posted in Tech stuff | 8 Replies

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