Take More Risks

I’ve stopped blogging here because I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about when it comes to making money online.

I have instead dedicated my time trying to learn how to do it myself.

I may well update the blog sometime in the future on a regular basis once I’ve found my way. Until then expect nothing but the odd rant and god knows what else.

I’ve stopped reading all of the usual blogs on the circuit as they aren’t helpful. They just seem to attract a cult of people who are setting up shitty blogs with regurgitated material based very closely on the original stuff.

I’m trying my own things out now and making my own mistakes. It’s great fun.

The impossible has happened. I’ve finally moved permanently to developing websites on Ubuntu. For years I’ve been sceptical over using Linux as a development platform but now thanks to SSHFS,  GEDIT’s ability to double up as a capable Development IDE and Linux’s native SSH support, I’ve changed my mind.

SSHFS

SSHFS is a fantastic tool. It allows you to mount your remote server as part of your own local filesystem. In the screenshot below I have opened up the public_html folder for Take More Risks in a normal Explorer like window. This means that I can drag files over from my desktop into this folder and it’ll upload to that specific directory on my file system.

It doesn’t end here. I can open any file on my web server and it’ll open locally within the program associated with that file type. Need to edit the Wordpress wp-config.php file in a hurry?  Then simply double-click on the file and it’ll open automatically in your preferred application. You can now work on the file and any changes you make to it locally will be reflected remotely as well.

In the screenshot below wp-config.php is opened up with gedit which is one of Ubuntu’s default text editors which can double-up as an excellent code editor too. I’ve explained this in more depth below.

For easy access I’ve added in a shortcut on my Ubuntu taskbar that links to a script that mounts the root directory of my web server to the /server/ folder in my filesystem and then opens that folder up.

The script itself is quite simple. It checks to see if the server has been mounted to the local filesystem and if it hasn’t, it gets mounted, if not it does not. Then the folder is opened within nautilus file explorer.

#!/bin/bash
START=/server/
if [ $(ls -l $START | wc -l) = 1 ]; then
sshfs root@64.131.71.145:/ $START
fi
nautilus $START

GEdit

One of the main reasons why I never migrated to Linux for Web Development was that I could never find something that naturally replaced Dreamweaver.  Whilst many suggested that I should run Dreamweaver using the Windows Emulator (Wine), I couldn’t see the logic of this. Why not just stick with Windows and save myself a lot of hassle?

This all changed when I read this amazing article by Micah Carrick on how to customise gedit as a Web Development IDE.  It takes you step-by-step through everything you need to do to enable the functionality within gedit to make it a great IDE. Other developers like Adam Heckler and &PHP have managed to start using gedit with a deal of success too.

I’ll admit, it’s not perfect.  I miss the function name and parameters flashing up onscreen in Dreamweaver when I’ve started typing out the function reference. However this is my only real complaint, particularly since I no longer use Design View in WYSIWYG editors.  If you’re a web designer interested in moving to Ubuntu with a preference for WYSIWYG editors you should check out the related articles here,  here and here.

But yeah I think GEdit is a great IDE and I love the Oblivion skin!

Will It Last?

I’ve been developing in Ubuntu more and more over the last few months and since the discovery of SSHFS and GEdit a move back to Windows is almost inconceivable now. The final nail in the coffin was my discovery of Linux’s native support for SSH. In the past I’ve used PUTTY as my main SSH client on the Windows platform, so naturally when I first migrated to Linux I checked to see if there was a version for it.

After locating and installing PUTTY for Linux it took me another 2 months to realise that I could SSH into my server by typing ssh takemorerisks.com -l username.  Head meet hand.

It seems stupid now but it’s easy to miss these things when you’re relatively new to the platform.

Anyway at the minute I’m enjoying developing with Ubuntu. It’d be great to hear about your own experiences with development on the platform.

I’ve finally got around to upgrading Take More Risks to Wordpress 2.7.  Previously I was using Wordpress 2.3 I think! I was forced into the update as I changed the theme of the blog. Really getting tired of the old one so I thought I’d freshen things up a bit.

A screenshot of the new blog layout. Beats the old piece of shit!

First impressions…..wow! It’s improved so much over a short period of time. The Dashboard is well laid out. The ‘Add New Post’ screen is uncluttered and good to use. I’ll toy about with it more later and report on what else I find.

It’s great having shell access to my server, especially when I’m using Ubuntu. I love how I can just use the wget command to download the Wordpress installation file directly to my host. Before I would have had to download the installation file to my PC and then upload it with an FTP client. Waaayyy before I had shell access if I wanted to update I’d have to upload the extracted installation folders and it would take forever because there were so many god damn files.

Now that I’m unemployed I’m gonna spend some time improving my knowledge of the shell. I’ve got a decent grasp on it at the moment but you can never know enough about these things. Fortunately I have the Linux Administration Handbook with me right here!

Anyway Wordpress 2.7 seems to rule the school. I’ll update later on in the week with some more thoughts on it.

Reviving a dying static website isn’t as hard as it might initally seem. In fact the hardest part is often just encouraging the search engine spiders to come back and re-index the site. The best way to do this quickly is to write a piece of compelling link-bait and submit it to the social bookmarking websites. If successful the search robots will begin to re-index your website on a more regular basis.

The key now is to continue to update the website regularly. Failing that you might want to target more SEO keywords on each of your pages to generate additional traffic to your website. You can use a tool like the Wordtracker Free Keywords facility for such a purpose. By targetting additional SEO terms you are likely to encourage more unique visitors to your website and subsequently increase the chances that someone will link to your site.

Just because you have not updated a website in a while is not an excuse to leave it to die. In fact during the period of inactivity the site may have gained additional link authority from the search engines. On the flip side, other sites may have started removing their links to your site. If this is the case you can simply emailing the site owners and inform them that your pages are back on the internet.

I’m gonna be merging this website in with my portfolio in the next few months so stay tuned for some proper updates!

God.

If I read another article about how to write “the perfect title” I’ll cry. Honestly.

Fuck me.

I think it’s important to know the exact reason behind building a website during the design process. This is especially important if you’re building low-quality niche websites that don’t have a purpose other than to serve as Made For Adsense (MFA) pages.

For example I built Jesus Illusion during the summer of 2007 for seemingly no reason at all. My initial intention was to monetize it through Adsense, but due to the risque nature of the content I was unable to do so. In the end, I’m left with a site that’s basically worthless and I’ve no real intention of updating it.

So from now on I’m gonna put a bit more thought into planning the site’s purpose before even registering a domain. I feel quite ashamed at the amount of money I’ve wasted by buying silly names. At one point it was almost an addiction! Nowadays I’m much more restrained. I’ve went full circle and become very conservative about business as the negatives have been outweighing the positives. I’m determined to keep at it though and to maybe even try to post here again a wee bit more regularly!

I’m gonna let all of these domains expire…….Tragic.

I’ve really missed blogging to be honest. I’ve missed all of this stuff! I’ve just been so busy with college it’s unreal!

I don’t know what I was thinking when I bought most of the names in my Dynadot account. Was I high? Who knows.

Anyway registering them proved to be a great waste of money. I didn’t have an end user in mind for any of the names which is why I didn’t sell any of them (except json.info). Nowadays I’m a lot more conservative with domaining. I only buy names after thinking about what I’m gonna do with it for a while.

I really shouldn’t have spent the $2000 I earnt from the Fart Noises website in such a stupid way. Everything started to fall apart just after that. I quickly developed a serious addiction to the Xbox 360 I bought, which was effectively cured by my nephew who snapped the DVD tray right off of it!

But yeah, I should have invested that $2000 into my sites. I’ve learnt that lesson the hard way. But now I’ve moved on and I’m ready to do it right this time.

Before making any investments on the web it’s important to sit down and consider the alternatives. It isn’t wise to use all of your money to finance one idea (unless it’s a really good one of course).  Nor is it smart to buy the first website you see. You need to develop a plan for that website before you make an offer. If you can’t imagine what you’ll do with it then it likely has no future in your hands and you should look elsewhere. The same thing applies with domain names. There’s no use in thinking that a name is good unless there is a potential buyer.

Question and Answers time!

Q : What took you so long to update the blog?

A : I couldn’t be bothered really. I lost all interest in blogging and making money on the net. This isn’t new news!

Q : Is it true you tried to sell this site?

A : Yes it’s true, but thankfully the bidder pulled out!

Q : How much for?

A : For a shockingly low amount considering how much love and hate I’ve put into creating these posts.

Q : So really why are you back?

A : I’m back to reclaim this blog as my own. I’m not a whoru (remember I can’t say THAT word!) and I don’t want to be. I set this site up to start with to keep tabs on how I was progressing with money making. Somewhere along the line I lost myself.

Q : Rumours are circulating around the Internet that you became an alcoholic, is this true?

A : I’m from Belfast, of course I’m an alcoholic.

But yeah, here we are again.