Site 25 – 28 Site Challenge

It is the last day of the challenge and I am not going to meet my goal for the month of 28 sites. Here is the site I have been working on today:

www.wealthypeopledating.com. I just bought the script for it today and it seems to work great. I am trying to customize the template, so it is not looking very presentable at the moment.

This challenge has been pretty tiring and one that I don’t want to repeat in a hurry. Having to do something everyday even on weekends has been difficult.

Many of the sites don’t look like much now, but I am hoping to do some more work on them in the coming months. One thing I have to stop doing is buying so many domains.

I didn’t get all of the sites up, but I got close enough – especially since I felt like giving up around the second day.

The good news is that I am going to spend a little less time at my computer and start to get ready for my trip which I leave for on the 11th of March. I am starting to count down the days now.

Site 24 – 28 Site Challenge

Site 24 is up today. It is a property site for Latin America. I thought that it was a good domain when I registered it and was surprised that it wasn’t already taken.

Like any new site, doing some marketing to get people to use the site is the next biggest challenge.

10 things to do after installing Joomla on a new site

1. Change the Metadata. Site -> Metadata and change the site description and keywords to something appropriate to your site.

2. Turn on Search Engine Friendly URLs. Site -> SEO. Make sure you rename the file htaccess.txt to .htaccess which is located in the base install of your Joomla site.

3. Turn on Log Search Strings. Site -> Statistics. This data is invaluable to find out what your users are interested in and cannot find on your site.

4. Turn off the WYSIWYG Editor. Site -> Site. The HTML that the editor creates is not very clean.

5. Delete any of the default Joomla articles and newsflashes and replace them with your own content.

6. Change the text on the links page to something more original. Site -> Language Manager -> Site Languages. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see the links text you will want to edit. In fact, you can edit all the language files here.

7. Install Community Builder. If you are planning on creating a community driven site, this component is a must.

8. Install the Joomla OpenSEF component. This component makes your URLs more search engine friendly.

9. Turn off the unnecessary fields on the Contact form. I usually turn off everything except for the email form. Components -> Contacts -> Manage Contacts.

10. Unpublish any unnecessary Modules, like Banners and Polls. Modules -> Site Modules.

Any other suggestions?

Site 23 – 28 Site Challenge

Here is today’s site: www.chianmaihostels.com. This is the last of my hostel/hotel sites and I don’t plan on creating any more.

I am thinking of installing Joomla onto the site. I will be going up to Chiang Mai next month, so I am going to have more opportunity to take some pictures and add more general tourist information to the site.

I am wondering if I can get the site looking good enough I might be able to get some free accomodation.

I was planning on trying to work on at least two or three sites today, but Dreamhost has been having problems with sites connecting to databases. I still have another two days to go, so I might be able to get close.

Dreamhost are having some problems

Dreamhost are having problems after their scheduled power outage last night. This site is working ok, but my Joomla sites are still having trouble. It is pretty annoying because the problems have been going on from last night (Australia time).

Site 22 – 28 Site Challenge

I am in the process of installing the component Virtuemart for my next site.

www.australiawinereviews.com

There is a fair bit to do to get the component set up, so there is no way I am going to be able to finish it today.

Site 21 – 28 Site Challenge

I am getting behind my site a day now and have to catch up.

I had an idea today to create a blog with humorous stories and info found on the net. I thought that since I spend a bit of time reading this kind of stuff, I may as well put anything interesting into a blog.

Here’s the domain I registered: www.irishfool.com.

I hope I am not offending anyone here, but I did find an article that describes an irish fool as: “Irish Fools were marginal men, who served as entertainment to the wealthy and
prosperous in exchange for food, clothes and shelter.”

On a side note

Today I am another year older! It is always interesting looking back a year ago to see how you were doing the previous year.

I have a huge problem with Google on this site as all my posts seem to go to supplemental results. Only about 5 per cent of visitors come through search engines. My blog has always been for my own benefit so I am sure that is a problem, but I think a few people keep coming back to check my progress.

For the last couple of years since I started this blog, I have set goals for myself and have basically achieved each of them.

Inspiration

I just want to send a congratulations to my online friend Jeffrey tonight from pfadvice and Saving Advice. He had a post of his dug on digg today (one of many but the first for me to see to go from 10 to currently 1500 digs). I remember when he had goals of trying to reach 200 RSS subscribers. I always read his blog, but try not to delve too much into his Saving Advice site, because I know I would never get anything else done! I had been reading his blog through my bloglines reader, but didn’t realize the attention he had been getting through digg.

Jeffrey works with a partner who does the technical side of his site, who I believe is now also working full-time. I know he has worked extremely hard to get where he has now. Working with a partner in a different geographical region I am sure is no easy task.

I believe he is an inspiration because he works at providing great content that provides high value to his readers.

Day 20 – 28 Site Challenge

Day 20’s site is another blog:

www.bestsydney.com

At least I am in the 20s now, as I am getting pretty tired of this challenge.

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