Glen More

So today I distracted myself by thinking about the design of this website, browsed iStock and thought about layout. The more I did this, the more I heard the voice of my officemate Joel, complaining bitterly about not reading my blog because the text clashed with the background and the menus were not visible and that young people don’t like colour because it is a tool of capitalist oppression…disheartened by my imaginary conversation, sometimes referred to as mild schitzophrenia, I decided to solve some other problems while I waited for creative geneous to strike, or imaginary Joel to realize he is wrong about everything…both equally unlikely, so I move on to ‘Google Webmaster Tools’.

After logging in to the tools I realized that my site had finally been indexed by Google. This opened up many of the options previously locked to me. Now I was ready to do the Master’s bidding…I mean…optimize for Google.

The first item I noticed in the overview was that I had not submitted a site map. I did install a WordPress add-in that generated the sitemap.xml file, and assumed it also submitted directly to Google for their close inspection, but this was not the case. Remedying that was easy enough: I entered the URL of my sitemap (http://www.moreglen.com/sitemap.xml) and off Google goes, happy in my compliance. Here is a definition of what this process is for:

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

After successfully adding this information and having Google process the sitemap (took about 30 minutes) the tool once again indicates to me my ignorance. When setting up my webmaster tools I entered my site as glenmore.com, when I should have entered www.glenmore.com. Apparently this is similar to a criminal offence. None of my sitemap could be read and Google was decrying my error as heresy. The only way to fix it is to add another developer tools website entry entirely, verify, lather rinse repeat…

The last easy step to complete to appease the Google gods was to create a robots.txt file. The purpose of this file is defined here:

Web site owners use the /robots.txt file to give instructions about their site to web robots; this is called The Robots Exclusion Protocol. It works like this: a robot wants to vists a Web site URL, say http://www.example.com/welcome.html. Before it does so, it firsts checks for http://www.example.com/robots.txt

Luckily the Webmaster Tools handles creation of this file for me also. Since I wanted everything to be visited by the search engine bots I took the default implementation. I save the file to my computer and uploaded the file to my server.

There is a ton of other features of the Google Webmaster Tools but I think that is enough nerd for one night. Tomorrow, maybe I will look at some RSS tools…

So WordPress loudly and persistently announced yesterday that it’s 2 day old install was now out of date. Being a hep-cat, I decided I would upgrade. What could go wrong? Well the simple 5 minute instruction led me to 2 hours of troubleshooting. After sacrificing a live chicken and contacting Xenu I was able to once again get it working. I am not concerned except that I will have to keep careful watch on what parts of WP I edit.

I also discovered the wonders of Google Analytics and the disappointment of Google Developer Tools. Unfortunately Google won’t spider my site (or list it even).  The Google Developer Tools would not tell me anything other than the fact that I wasn’t listed and a link to a troubleshooting guide. After wasting a good chunk of my life trying to solve my ‘problem’  one of my co-nerds tells me that it sometimes takes months to get listed for the first time. I will wait, but I am keeping an eye on you Google.

Then I played around in Google Analytics. If you have a website and don’t have it, you should. It has some pretty graphs. I only have a limited number of hits, for obvious reasons, but I can see the potential. I will have to make a complete post on ‘target goals’ you can set etc. It will help me track the success of my ‘plan’.

So here are some of the first steps in this endeavour:
- I bought a hosting package. Through 1and1.com. I know alot of people who like dealing with small companies and saving some cash…I am not that person. I want a reliable server capable of doing what I need with a good administration panel. No BS.
- I chose a domain. I didn’t think hard. One of my co-workers suggested it. I am still mad that the guy won’t sell me glenmore.ca. When next in BC I will fight them…physically.
- I chose a blog. I looked at a comparison chart of features of the major ones. My only condition was that it be PHP. WordPress is one of the most popular, so I went with that.
- I installed WordPress and the following plugins: Google Analytics and SEO Optimization and a Twitter widget. To go with this I had to sign up for a google account and had to check the Google developer tools to verify that I was creating a Google optimized site map.
- Then I played Fallout 3. That really doesn’t further my goals but this can get tedious after a while

As I first post I should enter a little about myself and the goals of this blog. If anything it will give me something to laugh at later when I fail at everything. I am a web developer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I have an eclectic resume as a web designer, developer, application programmer, CRM specialist, and accounting software developer. Most of my history is in VB/SQL in it’s various iterations but I have learned PHP and mySQL along the way.

I have lofty goals for this blog, both personal and intrinsic:
1) I want to create an SEO friendly site
2) BUT I want to make the majority of it in Flash. To make it harder I want to use Flash CS4
3) Hack up one of the most popular blogs to represent a personal homepage that includes a resume and frequently updated information
4) Learn to use Google APIs (Analytics etc.) and Socal Networking tools like Twitter to enhance the content. I talk about it all day, but I secretly know nothing about SEO.
5) Present an attractive, usable interface limited to the esentials in an effective way.

Success will be measured by a few things:
1) Readership (yeah right, well I can dream that people are interested in what I do)
2) SEO ranking.
3) Ablity to sell a blog centric site to a legitmate business interested in promotion.