A Pipe and a Keyboard

For some time now, I have been playing around with WordPress 3, and I must confess I am disappointed.

I have nothing against WordPress itself, but I expected something pretty radical with the advent of a major release, and for the general user there is very little there.

Of course, one of the main features is the integration of WP with WPMU, but I wonder just how many use WPMU in the first place?

For the ordinary user, one of the major changes has been the departure from some of the default settings on installation.  From the security standpoint, this is a good thing.  No longer is Admin the default user, and the prefix to the database tables is now customisable, but the problem here is that it affects new installations only.  An upgrade from V2 to V3 is going to leave the old defaults intact, and to avail of the new settings one would have to scrap the old site and do a fresh install.  Even then, importing the old database into the new is going to be difficult, as all the table names will have changed.

Apart from the above, there are very few things that stand out.  A new default theme?  The ability to bulk update plugins?  As I said, I expected more from a primary upgrade.

I still love WordPress as a package, but this isn’t something I would queue all night for.

Filed under: Blogging, Tech stuff on May 6th, 2010 | 7 Comments »

Dedicated followers of this site (i.e. Me) will have noticed that I have a passing interest in Alexa and its ranking methods.

My main reason for this interest is because Alexa seems to be the benchmark of choice in advertising.  I suppose they have to chose some method of ranking sites, but the choice of Alexa is a little baffling.

I have been charting the progress of several sites over the weeks, to see if I can spot a relationship between traffic an ranking.  So far, the relationship has eluded me.  For example, one of the sites has daily visitor numbers in the single figures, while another has daily visits of around 150, yet the two sites are running neck and neck in the rankings, and in fact the latter site is trailing the former, which is completely illogical.

Some weeks ago, I set up a test site.  It is self hosted, with its own domain, but as yet its existence has not been advertised.  As far as I am aware, there are only two people on the planet who know of its existence.  About three weeks ago, I decided to add it to my Alexa monitoring list.

When I started monitoring it, it had a ranking of 1,341,686, which struck me as being quite high for a site that essentially doesn’t exist.  Over the weeks, it has been climbing the ranks at an alarming rate, and now stands at 620,853.  I have seen quite popular sites that are still ranked in the millions.  What the hell is going on here?

One possible theory is that I am skewing the figures, simply by visiting the site to read the stats.  If that is the case, then I would contend that it’s like judging newspaper circulation by counting the number of times that paper is bought in one particular shop.  If one person is a representative sample of internet usage, then what value are the statistics?

My advice?  Unless you are an advertiser, forget Alexa.

The Philippines accounts for about 0.4% of traffic!!

Filed under: Tech stuff on May 5th, 2010 | No Comments »

I think the look of a site is important.

First and foremost, it should be pleasing to the eye.  It should also reflect the general content of the site, so that a simple glance at the screen should give an idea of the type of site it is.

Customising a theme can be simple or difficult, depending on how far you want to go.  My philosophy is to take a theme that is as close as possible to my final desire, and then to make the minimum of changes.  Head Rambles, for example has been through a couple of modifications.  It is now heavily customised to the point where the original theme is almost unrecognisable.

As I said before, I wasn’t too happy with the theme here.  I felt it was time for a radical overhaul of the entire site, both in look and name.

Why chose “A Pipe and a Keyboard”?  Mainly because it sums up my necessities for writing.  It is a personal site, with quite a bit of technical stuff, so the pipe represents the personal, and the keyboard represents the technical. 

I chose the design for its simplicity.  I like the simple layout, which doesn’t detract from the content, and apart from a few minor tweaks to the font, the only big change I have made (so far) is to substitute the banner image.  There are a few changes to be made yet, of a minor nature, such as additional navigation and tweaks like that.  I’m not too sure about the image, as yet.  I know the pipe looks a little unusual, but it is the pipe I generally smoke, so it deserves its place on the Internet. 

Filed under: Blogging, General on May 3rd, 2010 | 7 Comments »