Other posts related to tweaking

Tweaking Under The Hood

Lincoln Adams | September 8, 2008 @ 6:46 pm

Got bored last weekend, so I’ve been making some tweaks here and there to improve the speed and performance of my site.  The biggest change was dropping the ad server that’s been serving my ads, and hard coding it into my blog instead.  No matter what, I could never get it to execute fast enough, which I’m guessing is partly a limitation of using a shared hosting account.  If I ever go dedicated though, I’ll probably give it another shot, but that might be a while (a dedicated account would cost me almost $200 a month!)

If you’re wondering what the flip I’m talking about, using an ad server basically allows me carte blanche control over how ads are served, so if someone outside my current ad networks wanted to book an ad, I could easily set up an account for them and then temporarily disable the ads that were already running.  Unfortunately now I won’t be able to do this, but I don’t think it will be an issue until I get far more traffic to my site, at which point I should have enough of a budget to get an ad server running again.

And what’s a dedicated account you ask?  Well right now I’m using a shared account at $10 a month, which means I’m sharing a server with a bazillion other users, and thus am only alloted a fraction of the server’s power.  If I get a dedicated account however, I’ll have a server all to myself to do as I please, which means a LOT more computing power and significantly better performance for my site as well.  It may be another year though before I can afford such a solution, if ever.  If you want to help me achieve this goal though, spread the word and link to my blog, dangit.  Bunch of stingy freeloaders, y’all.  :tongue:

Anyhoo, I also darkened the background a little and dropped the MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog widgets.  Seriously, I’m fed up with both services.  It’s like I’m advertising their networks on my blog and in return I’m getting, well, nothing.  It’s nice that my blog is registered in their directories so people can find me, but I could count on one hand how much traffic I’ve gotten from either network as a result.  Not enough to justify the 1-2 second lag they were adding to my blog’s load times.   And besides, both networks are getting bogged down in spam too.  I can’t tell you how many contacts I have now that live in China.  Evidently I’m a pretty popular guy over there.  :blink:

But most disappointedly, I was hoping surfing these networks would help me find like-minded hot babes that I could play love snuggles with.  Sad to say though, I find that I am such a unique individual that it is yea nigh impossible to find someone who thinks just like me.  :shaking:

But anyways, do me a favor and let me know if you’ve noticed any improvement in load times and performance.  I’ve definitely noticed a difference, but I want to make sure others are seeing it as well.  :shades:



I Hate Web Design

Lincoln Adams | November 7, 2007 @ 12:58 am

I just spent the last few days squashing some of the remaining bugs on my site, and I’m telling ya, these were cyber cockroaches from hell. I stomp one bug, and another one shows up, stomp that one, then another shows up. :wall:

It’s the kind of thing that could suck up whole days of my life if I’m not careful. I see a problem and I think “ohh, let me just tweak this one lil’ thing, shouldn’t take more than a few seconds…” Next thing I know it’s Wednesday, and I had started tweaking that lil’ thing on Sunday. :blink: Whether it’s some coding error with a plugin, a flickering bug in IE6, or the layout being a few pixels off in browsers like Safari, I was just resolved to fix every remaining issue on my site so I could finally put it behind me and delve into my real passion, which had always been writing (blogging).

As for web design and all that that entails, it was a good learning experience but man, I have just about had enough of this crap. Next time I want my blog redesigned, I’m hiring a super web guru from Silicon Valley to do it for me. :tongue: I of course expect to be making some money off my blog by that time, so I should be able to afford it when the time comes.

I hope. :pray:



Holding Nothing Back: The quest to make blogging a permanent part of my daily routine

Lincoln Adams | September 6, 2007 @ 8:00 am

A guest blogger at JohnChow.com challenged the audience in commiting to writing at least one blogging post a day for 20 days. Apparently if you make something a part of your daily routine for about three weeks, it will eventually become a habit and thus a routine that will be easier to stick to.

I decided to answer the challenge as well, since one of the big problems I’ve had in getting this blog going was my history of erratic posting frequency. I have to admit I was actually afraid to link to Chow’s blog because he’s currently in the Google doghouse for engaging in controversial link building. I thought if Google saw that I linked to his site, they would think that I was another evil fan of his and then blacklist me from their search index for all eternity, forever doomed to the dark pits of internet obscurity.

I think I worry too much.

As for what’s holding me back, I think the main reason is TIME. I’m spending a lot of time working at my job, catching up on my news feeds, tweaking my site, reading up on affiliate marketing, learning about microstock photography, gaming, watching TV, staring into empty space, just about everything EXCEPT blogging. I make no time for it at all, and it shows.

There’s another reason for this though: I have nothing to write about. Well nothing that I think will at least interest anybody. I think my writing sucks monkey’s balls too. No matter how good an idea I have for a blogging post, it never seems to translate well on “paper.” Somewhere in the blogging process things get jammed up and the end result is mindless crap. Maybe as I attempt to blog more often things will get better. Maybe not.

Maybe I need a life. Maybe I need a woman too. :D