OK.
So, the homepage was connected to the internet because all the news was current and all. But why had the entire internet just turned to yahoo??
I googled. Got a hit back for this page: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=880910 but my problem was with IE7, not firefox3 or ubantu. Plus, the fix seems really technical and I was convinced there had to be an easier way.
Futzed around a bit, installed firefox to see if maybe it was an internet explorer problem. Nope, did the same in firefox. Checked all my internet settings, ran CCleaner. Nada.
Now I’m digging through Start>Accessories>System Tools >System Information>Internet Settings>Connectivity
(Because, I figure, I ain’t connecting to the whole wide internet!)
Turns out, whatever ganky internet the client had used on vacation required setting a AutoConfigURL and ProxyServer to…wait for it….Yahoo.com!
I still don’t know what either of those settings really mean aside from seeming to tell the laptop Yahoo.com was the only url in it’s laptop world. Unacceptable.
The fix: In IE Tools>Internet Options > Connections >LAN Settings Uncheck “Use automatic configuration script” and uncheck “Use a proxy server for your LAN….”
Viola! The internet was back.
]]>I googled for…like a month and it’s hard to find answers when your’e not sure how to word the question.
How to reset Dreamweaver tools
Enable AP Div
Highlight AP Div
Can’t Draw AP Div
AP Divs gone
Search exhausted, I decided it was time to suck it up and post to the adobe help forum (it’s not just men who refuse to ask direction!). Another round of searching yeilded on of those vague “Help! AP div problem” posts… wouldn’t you know it, there was my problem and more importantly, the solution!
View > Style Rendering > Display Styles
Hope that helps someone else.
]]>Well, I picked up a paying gig through Craigslist, which, while great for my bank account, did eat up time from site building. Sure I eeked out a bit of work here and there but not nearly as much as I wanted. Still, I’ve made decent progress with a few of the sites and even the tricklings of revenue~!
The Big Site: Pretty much kicked ass on my “keep adding new content” plan. I’m on track for another $100 + month here (Joomla + Adsense). Much improved from my low point of $40 this summer, still way off from the $200/mo this site pulled in last winter. Slowly by…
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While using the ADD/Remove panel is an accepted method for getting rid of the Yahoo Toolbar, for me, it totally destabilized my install of IE6. I’d used the tool bars own built-in uninstall function to remove it from Firefox with no problems. I’d recommend you do the same to remove Yahoo Toolbar from Internet Explorer.
There are two ways to uninstall the Yahoo! Toolbar for Internet Explorer.
Option 1: Via the toolbar
- Select “Uninstall” from the Pencil button (Toolbar Settings).
- Click “Uninstall” on the uninstall page.
- Close any open IE windows.
When you restart Internet Explorer, Yahoo! Toolbar will no longer be present.
Option 2: Via the Control Panel
- Click the Windows “Start” button.
- Select “Control Panel” from the “Settings” menu.
- Double-click on “Add/Remove Programs”.
- Scroll down and click on the “Yahoo! Toolbar” entry.
- Click on “Change/Remove.”
- Close any open IE windows.
Yahoo! Toolbar is now uninstalled. Please start IE again after closing all your open IE browser windows and it will no longer be present.
Hindsight is 20/20 and still, I had a messed up browser to repair.
My specs: Windows XP SP2
My Symptoms:
Because I don’t use IE6 everyday, I discovered my problem through the symptoms.
First noticed that none of my Adobe Help screens worked and related, that none of my “preview in Internet Explorer” options worked. I’d get a blank screen with only the blue header bar showing.
Odd, but not too out of the norm for explorer, probably a glitch, yes.
Next, I had issues with Outlook Express not working. In particular, this error message:
“There was a problem switching folders, possibly because the folder was busy. Please wait
a moment and try again.” followed by “There was an error opening
this message. There is not enough memory.” on attempting to open outlook express mail.
Uh, oh….this might be a real problem, better System Restore!’
Except, System Restore is blank. A White blank box with only the blue title bar header.
WTF!
So, I hit Google to start research and this is what I learned: Outlook Express and System Restore (along with Adobe Help screens and possibly all my application screens) rely on Internet Explorer working.
I’d be best served to fix my IE6 first instead of upgrading to IE7 because whatever was screwy in 6 would most likely carry over to 7.
Because IE6 is built into the XP operating system it’s not the standard uninstall/reinstall fix I might use for other programs. Another concern was, all the very usefull info I found was old. From the days of service pack 1 and when people got official Windows XP discs and not computer manufacturer disks or restore partitions. I had part of the fix, just had to fill in the blanks.
Before we start, we’ll need some supplies.
-Download Firefox or the non-IE browser of your choice -so you can view this page as you go through the repair (hopefully you already did this before IE6 was fried, otherwise you might try downloading the new browser install files from a different pc to a flashdrive for installing on the wonked pc.
- Download IE6 SP1 from Microsoft
http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie6sp1/finrel/6_sp1/W98NT42KMeXP/EN-US/ie6setup.exe
Copy the full install to your harddrive. Complete details and links here: http://www.compu-docs.com/ieadmininstall.htm
-Back up your important hard drive files. I didn’t lose any files but always better safe than sorry.
-Back up your IE6 bookmarks, favorites, cookies etc.
-Back up your Outlook Express messages and address book. (You can even back up your mail filters). I didn’t lose any of my messages, settings, filters or addresses but always better safe than sorry!
My fix:
1. If you happen to have the XP SP2 disk, this site offers 2 methods that just may work: http://www.theeldergeek.com/repair_ie6.htm and http://www.theeldergeek.com/repair_reinstall_ie_and_oe_6.htm
2. If you DO NOT have an XP SP2 disk, then we’re going the long way of uninstalling IE6 and Outlook Express by editing the registry keys:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/windows_xp_registry.htm This post gives a great detail on how to back up your registry.
If you are having problems only with Internet Explorer 6, proceed as follows:
[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{89820200-ECBD-11cf-8B85-00AA005B4383}
Modify/Create the Value Data Type(s) and Value Name(s) as detailed below.
Data Type: DWORD // Value Name: IsInstalled
Setting for Value Data: [Change the Value from 1 to 0]
Exit Registry
If you are having problems only with Outlook Express 6, proceed as follows:
[Start] [Run] [Regedit]
Registry Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{44BBA840-CC51-11CF-AAFA-00AA00B6015C}
Modify/Create the Value Data Type(s) and Value Name(s) as detailed below.
Data Type: DWORD // Value Name: IsInstalled
Setting for Value Data: [Change the Value from 1 to 0]
Exit Registry
If you are having problems with both Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express 6, proceed as follows:
Change the values in both of the registry keys as outlined above.
Exit Registry
At this point, I rebooted my machine. On start up Windows recognized that I’d uninstalled the programs via the registry and asked if I wanted to remove the remnants of IE and Outlook. I opted to totally remove all the IE personal settings. Outlook, I kept my settings.
After reboot was finished, I tried to install the IE6 SP1 setup file I downloaded from Microsoft and got this error:
” Setup has detected a newer version of Internet Explorer already installed on this system. Setup cannot continue.”
I fiddled with the add/remove panel but in the end, had no clue what this message was refering to, so, I used a command line prompt to bypass the error and install IE6 from the copy of set up I’d saved to my hard drive : http://www.compu-docs.com/ieadmininstall.htm
IE6 installed itself then rebooted and here my heart stopped because Windows wouldn’t restart. I got 3 errors, basically saying I was missing some DLL files and login couldn’t load. I pulled out the Acer restore disk. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it.
I shut down and restarted, hitting F8 which gave me a choice of booting with the last known good configuration. And that worked.
Windows booted, gave me some info screens as it finished the IE6 and Outlook install and -everything was fixed! My emails were still there, all my settings, all my IE favorites and most importantly, System Restore was back. Except, it only had restore points for today and yesterday. No thanks.
Windows soon prompted me to install SP2 (because my reinstall was for SP1, Microsoft doesn’t offer a SP2 version of IE6, instead it pushes you to IE7)
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Also made a second sale on Amazon. Goal for this week is to post a solid inventory of items. The Amazon Seller account is a bit like the random lottery.
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I’m an occasional eBay seller. Last month I decided to clear out some old stuff from my closets and figured auctioning would be the least painful way to do it. The revamp was that I created and used a a nice auction page template. Designed it up in photoshop then saved the graphics to photobucket. Coded the html in ebay and wow! Everything sold and at prices I could very much live with! I think I can pull off two of these blowout sales a month. Yes, I know the economy sucks and yes, I know eBay is going down the tubes -But! I’ve seen the money and will keep going.
Also had great success as an Amazon seller. It was pretty simple to set up the account, no copy writing or photography on my end. I posted two DVD’s. Apparently one was kinda’ rare and it sold within a week for an outrageous amount. The second is just a plain old DVD and is still waiting for a buyer. I’m doing a listing for a friend and have decided to try to push his books and CD’s through Amazon first -instead of eBay. Amazon totally charges more fees than eBay, but…. would I rather sell something for $10 or have an auction that stalls at .99 cents?
I’d half heartedly done some affiliate linking in the past. This month really dug into Commission Junction. I’ve had a fair amount of click thrus but no sales so far. I’m pretty sure I’d have more success if I did some pre-selling.
]]>Well that’s the subject of today’s post.
If you go back through some of my older entries you’ll recall that I own a ton (to me) of domain names. I buy them ’cause they sound cool or because at some point I had a great content idea for it. Total tally is:
25 Domain names
2 Domains managed for others -2 of which have revenue potential.
Since last update, my goal had been to develop the sites that, so far, had just been laying dormant. TheFreshMonkey was one of those -bought it ’cause it sounded cool -using it now for my development blog -Yayz. That opened up Greenteafrog to really capitalize on it’s name. So now, it’s a big ol PLR article repository. The bonus is, I do dig tea a lot, so content generation should be pretty easy.
Another domain name also went the PLR content route -this domain is even more closely connected to my real life work so writing content, again, not a big deal.
Two of the managed domains got an adsense lift. Both are radio related and, while I ran adsense, I wasn’t all that -in your face- about it. For both I switched from the 120×240 text/image unit to a small square. I’d love to get the 300×250 square but so not up to tweaking the page layouts to accommodate. I also added a relevant Commission Junction affiliate link. No leading or presale on the page, but since both of these are intended to be passive earning pages, I’m hoping the relevence of the affiliate partner will translate to leads/sales on it’s own.
The final, and I think most useful change was switching to the new google search modules. Both of these sites are joomla based and previously I’d used an extension to display google search. Today I switched them to the mod_php extension. This actually gave me more flexibility because my search layout was all google code, without the previous module’s styling. Search on both pages had been buried down in the navigation bar, so I moved both to “where you’d normally look for a search box, duh!” To date, I’ve been eeking out -maybe- a buck a month Adsense from both sites. Based on the sites’ traffic and subject matter, I’m looking, in October, to ramp that up to $1/day.
The Gay Wedding site went up mid September and I was plesantly surprised to discover I’m getting a trickling of traffic sans any promotion on my part. No Adsense revenue yet, but, It’s still a site in progress. I’d like to have it up and fully populated with content and a few back links by the end of the month. The Fresh Monkey isn’t gay, but she is a Bravo TV Fan and she’s planned a few weddings, so it’s an easy fit. Currently running Adsense and CJ links. Eventually I’d like to get into offering reworked PLR ebooks for sale, but that can hold off until after the site’s hard launch.
Two new domains – I went a bit www.GoDaddy.com crazy and bought two new domains last month. Both of these are “virtual services” sites. I jumped on the domains because I couldn’t believe they were still free. I’m still mullying over the best way to develop them. One has a skeleton Zen Cart set up, the second is laying fallow.
Variation of a portfolio site #1: Dude -don’t ask why I have so many domains for myself. Ego? Anyway, One site was converted to a straight up HTML 1 page advertisement for me site. Basically a reworking of the previously branded url. Eventually will cross link this page with the rest of my portfolio pages. Also manually set up all the variations of the tld to point to the same page.
Variation of a portfolio site #2: This is a variation of the domain name I use for my video production portfolio. Previously this domain sat fallow. This week I threw up a film design, linked it to my webdesign portfolio wrote a few DVD reviews and added a neat widget. Content for this will be film pre and reviews. And it’s adsensed up.
Variation of a portfolio site #3: I was on a roll with getting domains active and online! This site, like the two managed sites, deals with my radio interests with content coming from new album reviews I’m already writing anyway.
Variation of a portfolio site #4: A sweet domain name for a project I’m no longer doing. Fallow 
Variation of a portfolio site #5: The Web Design portfolio and services site. It’s adequate. Does need to be updated with new projects. heh, and prolly a new design that I didn’t throw together in Dreamweaver.
Variation of a portfolio site #6: The Video production portfolio. Just needs my new clips added.
Variation of a portfolio site #7: LOL! my personal domain name. Fallow!
Established Sites
The Big Site is still percolating along -next post will update my September stats as compared to September goals. I haz happiness with this one.
The Smaller Fansite is also bubbling along. My actor has some projects coming up next year and I’m looking forward to seeing this site grow.
The Television Blog needs more updating! For reals -I’m still watching everyday, just slacking on writing (content content content mantra)
The Fandom Fiction site is currently just a landing page. This is an over 10 year old domain with a ton of backlinks. I pulled the site content a few years back because there was a change in the fiction writing climate. Lately been thinking about relaunching it as a single author archive though.
]]>Googlewise, I had a mini, premature celebration. I thought the site had moved up in the search results -turns out, Google adjusts my search results based on my browsing history (I am generally logged into Google services all the time). When I took a look at the unenhanced results, The Big Site is still in the same spot. S’ok. Adsense has seen an improvement. I’m still tweaking the formats and layouts. I discovered the link units work very well for me. I got a nice increase in click thrus when I switch a few of the text/image ads to link units -BUT- I lost a lot of clicks from my forum when I switched. Went back to the old layout but have yet to regain the performance I had before I messed with it.
Luckily, I’ve still increased my daily revenue 3 fold over August. Joomla updates, I was very high on that sh404SEF component last time I posted. Turns out I started having view permission errors on two of the three sites, in paticular the sites with heavy front-end content submission. I’m still using the SEF com on The Big Site because I’m the only updater, had to unpublish it on the other two. (NOTE: I could solve the errors by flushing and rebuilding the URLs, but who wants to do that manually every time someone repots a problem?).
The Smaller fansite- My actor is actually working again! Managed to update with some fresh content. Revised goal for this site is to keep adding content and shoot for a big push of links/rankings/viral promotion a month or so before his new film is released (Next Spring). With no work on my part though, I’ve managed $1 of adsense.
Finally, in my totally bassakwads method of tying to make money from the ‘net, I bought another new domain. This one I have a clear idea for content and a killer domain name -introducing The Gay Wedding Site. More discussion to come later on this. For now, I’ve got the design up, adsense, a good chunk of content to start and some feelers out on Commission Junction. Yayz!
Content Content Content
This time skip over anything you may have read already. I finally came up with a more exact mission statement of sorts for what I’m doing with The Big Site and that is: reviving a stagnant site while optimizing it for increased revenue (Adsense and Amazon Associates). My mission for the other sites are all slightly different and I’ll work on verbalizing those as I get to those projects.
Now, I mentioned a few design changes to The Big Site in my last post. Today I’ll try touch on those. In my niche most of my competition builds on the cutenews platform. I tried cutenews once and totally didn’t get it. My site was originally straight up HTML files, then I got hep to CSS and iframes and thhhhen, I started working with the Joomla CMS. Whatever works, I say. Some people detest Joomla but I find it’s pretty flexible for what I need. The code is easy enough to manipulate and the online community of extensions, plugins and templates make it easy to find just about everything I need.
Joomla comes with two templates pre installed. I you’re reading this because you’re just getting started with Joomla, I highly recommend making your own changes to the rhuk solarflare template. CSS and sizing tweaks go a long way owards personalizing this popular theme. There are many nice free and commercial templates out there too. I used a free design from Joomlashack.com then tweaked it for The Big Site. The changes this week were minor. I added a background color to my main content header divs, to help them stand out better against the page and I got the added bonus of the site overall looking a bit slicker. I also adjusted my link color to better match my new divs.
The final changes involved moving a few modules around. All in all, about an hour of work that I think paid off in freshening up the look of the site. Adsense wise, that crappy image banner was back -hates! so i switched it to a link unit ad and am done with it (for now).
]]>Priority wise “The Big Site” in the pass proved itself a decent adsense revenue maker. I’m convinced that was because:
1. My site was the ‘expert’ site in it’s niche
2. I updated the heck out of the site. Flash forward 5 years later, I don’t have as much time to update the heck out of it and the site still has a solid base of quality content.
My multi pronged attack:
Search Engine Optimize the site -Main page still ranks at #6 on Google. I’ve had the #1 spot before. Wiki may outmuscle me but I think I’ve got enough to reclaim the #2 spot.
Get back into a weekly update pattern. -The Big Site is entertainment based so updates involve writing content/producing graphical sets and the occasional flash or java game.
Get some links – I’m 90% search engine and direct traffic, my primary link exchange is with the other ‘expert’ sites in my narrow niche. Biggest link opportunities will come from high quality sites in the larger niche.
All that laid out, let me tell you about my SEO progress. I regenerated my sitemap last time using the Joomla Xmap extension (I’m using Joomla 1.0.15) and submitted to Google. Check! This week I installed sh404SEF I first tried this component this summer on an e-commerce site hosted on GoDaddy and ran into some issues that I’m 99.99% sure were GoDaddy server issues. Still It was all promising enough that I tried it again on The Big Site on a Bluehost account. Easy install and nearly perfect URLs.
Next up, giving my meta tags some attention. In the past I was very hit and miss on adding keywords and descriptions to my content. I didn’t have to start from scratch, that was good, but I had a lot of content needing tags. Enter another extension, iJoomla MetaTag Generator . The pros – easy to install and configure. con -I wasn’t blown away by the generated keywords. The descriptions were nice, keywords a bit wacky. I have a love/hate for joomla extensions that require too much tinkering under the hood by me, but at some point I’ll have to tinker with this (charset is my problem I think) to clear up the wacky keywords. That aside, The metatag generator was close enough, and more important, saved me from manually updating 1,000+ articles.
So after all that, I regenerated a fresh site map, checked it against google webmaster tools and called it a day. Well, a day on SEO work, still more work to do this week. Back to Adsense: I took a few minutes to clean up my channels lists. Had a lot of junk channels in there from my adsense start days. I id’d the channels that relate to The Big Site, renamed a few for future clarity and did some freshening up of my link units (new color, new placement on one). I switched back to text links and images. I’d noticed this summer one particularly tacky image link that kept showing up on my site. Switched to text only because of it. That image banner is still floating around but, in the interest of trying to optimize, I switched back. Also added adsense for search. This surprised me because I thought I’d already set it up for The Big Site but alas, no. I’m curious to see if I get a jump in search revenue. The last thing I did was tweak the layout. Some CSS changes, content position changes etc. That’s a post of it’s own.
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