Pages that load slowly drive people away. Measuring page load speed is the first step in making sure your pages load fast.
Great online tool that let measure your site and other sites in a variety of ways, by popularity, keywords, and so forth:
The Hybrid parent theme, a well-documented WordPress framework, is what I’ve been using lately to start a couple of new blogs. It can take forever to sort through the endless selection of themes out there, free and paid. And then there are the frameworks, that have more of a learning curve, but in the end can be a lot easier to use than modifying a finished theme to your satisfaction.
Anyhow, Hybrid is looking good. I’m probably even going to join the $25/year support club. I joined the $25/year support club…and it’s already saved me tons of time that I would have otherwise spent figuring things out for myself! :) The theme itself, along with numerous child themes—premade themes based on the Hybrid parent—is GPL-licensed and absolutely free.
It is always a good idea to keep up with at least the major developments in your…field: here are two web sites that make it easy to that for WordPress:
Took the plunge with the Disqus commenting system, hooking it up on TinyFarmGear.com, letting it handle the comments on that blog. I did what I usually try not to do, but quite often do anyhow: dive in with hardly any background checking. I figure, the service is big enough—200 million people a month, they say—that it couldn’t be a total nightmare. Could it?
Disqus basically takes over the built-in WordPress comment system: instead of storing comments on your server, they all go through Disqus. If you already have comments, they get sucked up into the Disqus database, and from then on, all comments are through…Disqus.
What’s it all for? That’s actually not a simple question to answer, especially if you don’t have problems with a zillion comments that’re looking to be solved. For now, I’d say the best reason is that it makes it a lot easier for people who comment to see if someone has replied to them—conversation on your site is a BIG DEAL, anything that encourages that is GOOD. (I’ll get back to this when I’ve seen for myself!)
What if you just don’t like it? A cool feature: “All future comments will automatically sync Disqus and WordPress” That means the comments are stored both on Disqus and right at home with you. Plus, you can export your comments from Disqus at any time. And, the core service is FREE (“always will be”).
If none of this sounds remotely interesting to you, don’t give it a second thought, travel on. Else…
The entire sign-up and installation takes 10 minutes max (well, a lot longer if you read the sign-up agreement):
Now, to see what all the fuss is about. Unfortunately, TinyFarmGear isn’t very busy, so I may be waiting a while to get some action. I don’t want to dive in with my main site, TinyFarmBlog.com, just yet. So, we shall wait and see…
You just want to search! Simple wins.
It’s an easy mistake to invest way too much on unnecessary web site graphic design. Site visitors want a site that is easy to use, period. Make sure your content is easy to find and consume, and visitors will be 100% satisfied.
For a quick, low-cost, uncomplicated and effective start-up:
Starting a new web site for most people means ZERO TRAFFIC, and the first thing to do about that is to…EMBRACE IT by setting up a simple way to monitor that zero and watch it grow. That takes some sort of traffic tracker, and my first step in that direction is to install a free Sitemeter counter that easily shows me how many people are dropping by.
Site Meter is a simple service that’s been around practically since the beginning of the web (15 or so long years ago!). You put a little bit of code on your web pages, and every time a page is called by a browser somewhere, a call is sent back to the Sitemeter servers where it is logged. Easy peasy…
To install Site Meter you:
You can pick from a few different button styles. I use a simple button that (not really) magically pops up (see the bottom of the right-most sidebar on this site; click on it see the tinyfarmwp.com statistics page):
There are waaaaay more sophisticated (complicated) ways to track traffic—you may hear about Google Analytics, for example, it’s interesting and also free—but there’s no need to get caught up in all that right now (unless you really want to). Eventually, as you need it. Continue reading »
A blog about a blog that is maintained by a small-scale organic vegetable farmer is what this is! It’s my ongoing collection of how-to notes about getting stuff done on the web, at low cost, with a minimum of technical fuss and annoyance, and keeping what I think of as good karmic principles always in mind.
Who I am is a small-scale vegetable farmer for nearly the past 10 years, who kinda went wild on starting blogs that cover what I’m doing: a farm blog, a personal farming journal blog, a farm gear blog,… I’m not a hardcore web programmer or graphic artist, but I have had a fair bit of experience in the “web development” world, right from the start in the mid-90s. Mostly, I’m an end-user, happy to muck about with open source software, like the rather fantastic WordPress, on my dedicated server, and to explore web editorial, promotion and, recently, advertising.
This particular blog, tinyfarmwp.com, is about all that blogging! Since it’s pretty much like my other blogs, I’ll use it to document what I’m doing on all fronts right from the beginning, as far as keeping it running smooth and secure, writing for it, and even earning some cash through it. It’s not a geek blog, it’s a non-technical, “for the rest of us” effort, helping out by sharing what I’m learning, in plain language. Giving back to the open source community, perhaps. Whatever—you decide!
And sooooo, what does FARMING have to do with it? Well, simple. Taking a tiny farm through the season involves thousands of little decisions, tons of details to be considered, lots of choices to be made, and great deal of uncertainty despite your best efforts (that’s called…the weather). To keep things simple and clear and fun and economically operational on the tiny farm, you have to remain practical, not get caught up, and for the most part, let common sense rule. This is all pretty much what it’s like and what it takes to be…online, without driving yourself crazy. So you could say, I’m applying the lessons of tiny farming to the web!
Anyhow, you can check out the very first steps of this blog.
Questions, comments, criticisms, suggestions—they are all welcomed and encouraged!
And so, off we go…