I got an early christmas present. It's a URL. I think that makes me a techie (certainly a happy techie!).
http://www.pethatchery.co.uk
My little pet hatchery appears to be taking off, to the extent that it used up unacceptable amounts of my test server bandwidth. This despite the fact it is still in testing.
So now there is my little test version behind a wall for me to work on, and this one live, publicly available and incubating nicely.
This also means I need to fix things for robustness, get the RSS egg feeds up and running, and have a lot of work to do before christmas. It's nice to be busy!
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Smashwords project
A fairly major project now is Smashwords. I couldn't find an API or RSS that supplied what I wanted for a widget, so I haven't yet got to the widget bits. Instead I ended up building a supporting package - three types of XML file and a lightweight PHP library to expose the data in a convenient array.
This is all still in testing, so there may be minor changes, but it is working well enough to support flat html widgets and php-generated banners.
While Smashwords offers general banners for the site, I'm working on ones specific to authors, individual books and searches.
Once I'm confident I'm not dumping broken code out there, I'll throw it open for anyone else who wants to promote their books or Smashwords in general. The RSS and PHP libraries are also going to be publicly available, since there seem to be a few people I know trying to build for them.
If you want the link, leave a comment here.
This is all still in testing, so there may be minor changes, but it is working well enough to support flat html widgets and php-generated banners.
While Smashwords offers general banners for the site, I'm working on ones specific to authors, individual books and searches.
Once I'm confident I'm not dumping broken code out there, I'll throw it open for anyone else who wants to promote their books or Smashwords in general. The RSS and PHP libraries are also going to be publicly available, since there seem to be a few people I know trying to build for them.
If you want the link, leave a comment here.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Christmas changes and teddy bears
It seems to be the week that web companies annoy me enough to do things I should have done ages ago.
The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.
I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.
The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).
And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.
On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...
The Regretsy debacle finally got me closing my Paypal account. There's been nothing in it since someone sent me money by mistake and Paypal charged me the money I'd saved in it to return the transaction to the legal owner.
I've advised a couple of businesses to look at Amazon checkout as an alternative now it's available in the UK, and I think that is now going to be a long-term policy change for me. The paypal-only accounts have been thrown in with a local business who handle transactions and disbursements.
The only good thing? Paypal just caved and gave the Regretsy charity money across (see here).
And now Gmail's new look, which is unfortunately unreadable (half the mail message disappears off the edge of my screen on a 17" monitor, and I can't tell where the mail message ends and the ads begin) has driven me to get a personal account against my own domain name - something I've planned for the last six months and never quite got round to.
On a bright note, heres a new lens. Nick Davis, former White Dwarf writer, has come out with a children's book, A Teddy Bear Tale. It is Tristan the Teddy's last night guarding his child from the monsters under the bed before the boy grows up. Unfortunately the monsters know this too and tonight they have big plans...
Wednesday, 7 December 2011
A new lens: Indie Firsts
Another new lens, this one about an Indie Magazine. Indie Firsts offers first chapters from books by indie (small press and self-published) authors.
Published by an imprint of Bards and Sages publishing, this is a good place to find new authors among the huge tide of ebooks and print books coming out.
Published by an imprint of Bards and Sages publishing, this is a good place to find new authors among the huge tide of ebooks and print books coming out.
Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Loveblinks.com - a backlinks site
No, I haven't gone soft and fluffy on my readers despite the name. This is a very useful site.Would it make things clearer if I said Loveblincks is short for Love Backlinks?
With shetoldme going commercial, many of the major sites now being nofollow, and link directories being deprecated by search engines, Loveblinks fills a very useful gap. It's free, it is dofollow, and it is easy to use. That said, they are very new, so I don't know how much traffic they get.
LoveBlinks works by allowing users to write articles along a theme which include a number of their links. This extra unique content makes the links more valuable to search engines.
Here's my first blink, 4 Famous Steam Engines which links to four of my squidoo lenses.
There is an affiliate scheme, but as I only signed up yesterday I don't know much about that yet.
On top of all this, it also allows revenue sharing through google Adsense, so it can produce funds in its own right. About the only thing you can't do is link directly to products, so no affiliate link stuffing, but if you are just after backlinks it looks like this might be a very useful site.
Have a look at loveblinks below:
With shetoldme going commercial, many of the major sites now being nofollow, and link directories being deprecated by search engines, Loveblinks fills a very useful gap. It's free, it is dofollow, and it is easy to use. That said, they are very new, so I don't know how much traffic they get.
LoveBlinks works by allowing users to write articles along a theme which include a number of their links. This extra unique content makes the links more valuable to search engines.
Here's my first blink, 4 Famous Steam Engines which links to four of my squidoo lenses.
There is an affiliate scheme, but as I only signed up yesterday I don't know much about that yet.
On top of all this, it also allows revenue sharing through google Adsense, so it can produce funds in its own right. About the only thing you can't do is link directly to products, so no affiliate link stuffing, but if you are just after backlinks it looks like this might be a very useful site.
Have a look at loveblinks below:
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