I’ve been fairly busy coding and haven’t updated here and I wanted to take the opportunity to both thank and recommend a service that certainly made it painless for me and seems to be going from excellent and moving beyond.

First up.  Some stat’s.

The above score is for all sites, given they all run off of a WordPress MU installation (source is a once a month emailed report that is sent to me automatically from WebCEO.com who monitor the site).  The difference between the figures above and all previous hosting arrangments is significant.  Previous hosting (both shared, VPS and Dedicated) ranked 3-4 out of 10, whereas you can see above the score is now 7/10.  The DNS lookup in particular is excellent.  Connect time is great, hosting ping and download time could be improved on (I’m working on that), but reasonable given it all comes of off one single (though dedicated) MySQL database.  A pure HTML site would probably score higher and I’m pretty sure the site detects the tool WebCEO uses to test as a bot, and so never serves cached pages to it – which means the human site visitor will often experience faster load time.

Note – the site uses no control panel.  So there’s no behemoth idling away the CPU cycles and pinging the database server, just WordPress and the SMTP server (POP email is hosted using GoogleApps, which is working out extremely well so far).

Some of the things I’m looking to do is run the WordPress MU “sites” on their own databases (mutli-database), which takes a bit of fiddling.  If the Aussie dollar returns to sane levels (it dipped this last two weeks by 10 cents and is fluctuating like a compass that can’t find North) I may host those databases on a separate slice.

The recommendation I want to make?  The VPS Bible. (note – not a "paid or affiliate link").  For those who are not afraid of the command line there’s step by step tutorials that can’t be beaten.  Those are my recommendation.  For those feeling less adventurous (and believe me you’re missing out if you don’t at least have a play at setting up the good old manual way) he’s produced the first two of a series of automated scripts that, apart from a few edits to variables, will set the whole shebang up for you (only just added last week).

If you’re looking to setup a lean, mean, website on a VPS and don’t want the resource pain of what is otherwise a superfluous control panel then get over to the VPS Bible for the best $15 investment you’ll make this year.  Tell “The_Guv” Scott sent you.

Next post I'm going to discuss how all this has affected SEO – and why micro ISV's should care (hint – Google's telling Pork Pies on server response speed vs SEO and Matt Cutts has admitted it).

Scott Kane

“May as well be here we are as where we are.”

-Australian Aboriginal saying

This post is the first one for this blog running under SliceHost.  It’s been quite a month.  I’m fed up – frankly – with webhosts!!

Now, it’s no secret that shared hosting is a busted ass for anybody getting more than 5 visitors a week and a couple of HTML pages.  But it seems to have gotten worse.  Indeed I’d argue at this point that the vast majority of the hosting industry is an enormous joke perpetrated in a manner to create endless sign-ups of new fodder – but not designed for anybody to stick around.  So….

But we added “unlimited storage!!”  

Hmmm.  On those new fangled unlimited hard drives nobody has invented yet I suppose?

If somebody offers you a VPS without root access R-U-N!!   Because you can bet you're not the only customer hosted on the image.

Dedicated – note to whom-ever.  GD’s (you can work out the host from the initials, right?) dedicated aren’t what you’d expect paying for a dedicated server.  See – they store your passwords and access them.  They use them to enter the site, on the pretext of looking for naughty things – and turn off things like – hmmm – XCache and other PHP optimizers because “they are a security risk”.  Oh – and reboot you without asking permission, forgetting to make sure the reboot is clean and not hung.  Oh yes!

VPS’ – again – with “burstable” RAM.  Sounds like a plan – huh?  Sure.  Until you work out how much RAM you’re really getting.  CPU’s that are so fragmented with stacked images pulling on them you’re lucky if you can get Apache to deliver an empty text file, let alone a web page.

Some years back now Patrick McKenzie  waxed lyrical about SliceHost.  So did a bunch of other dev’s.  Of course, I took one look at the “setup instructions” and tutorials and thought – bloody hell!  And ran the other way – being endowed with, clearly, smarter smarts, I figured I’d let others (hosts) do the hard yards for me.

Well – I was wrong – Pat And Others Were Right.

After a certain host switched off PHP optimization, turned off the firewall and “forgot to turn it back on” (no harm done – but bugger that!) and a rather unpleasant, internal, political campaign that targeted not only myself (on that score I couldn’t and don’t give a damn – Elton was wrong – Saturday’s nights aren’t made for fighting, every night is), to some extent family and without question my business I needed to find a reliable host outside of Australia because of the fallout with that.

That’s when Mike Wilson  gave me the push I needed.  I mean, seriously – if a POM can do this – hell!  So can I. 

(aside – Mike’s a friend of mine and “POM” is a jest – before the PC varmints swarm the comment section).

So I paid for a slice, rolled up my sleeves and – hate to admit it – had a ball!

It’s like taking a time trip back to the 1980’s on the command line in DOS, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it (the command line, not DOS).  There’s a bunch of cool tools I’m going to post about to assist, an yeah – the obvious reference to stuff like putty – but also some nice graphical tools for those of us chained to Windows, too.

OK.  So that’s the gist of it. 

Enter NGinX, a replacement for Apache.  It’s lean, it’s mean, it’s fast.  Takes a little getting used to (do not install from the binaries, compile the source and save mega pain later with updates and if you’re following any of the many tutorials to get things going for the first time then your paths are going to match the tutorials and that’s one less issue to fuss with).

Of course, not to be outdone here in the “config the rig” stakes I’ve opted to install WordPress MU using sub domains and then mapping fully qualified domains to those.  That means one WordPress install for 19 sites.  Right now only the core site (with an offline page running presently), a couple of redundant domains I had laying around – for testing purposes – and this blog of course, are hosted here.  Tomorrow, and the coming days I’ll be upping the stakes and moving the other domains across.   

WordPress MU is a nice piece of kit.  In the next month or so WordPress 3.0 will be released and the merge of the standard edition and MU will be public.  That’s going to upset a lot of shared hosts who don’t allow people to run MU (a growing number) as users discover they can host “sites” on one installation without a $20 a month control panel.  Expect some refugees…

OK.  I can see ‘nix commands when I close my eyes, so I’m going to end it here, will update over the coming days as sites come online here.

Oh – and the new Doctor Who series.  What a bloody disappointment! 

Scott Kane

“Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.”
(Sam Ewing)

It is the only analogy my tired mind could think up tonight, so you’re stuck with it, and being stuck by Vegemite is extremely icky, so don’t try it at home. 

For the record I’m still coding MixAction.  It’s been an incredibly long time but the team of beta testers, now 50 in number, will soon be pulling it apart.  Between this, our three other products (two released and one also in development), politics, family issues, server security issues (China, Russia, Romania, ROC, South Korea, Indonesia – all blocked now – reducing traffic by around 3/4) I’m also seriously looking at relocating my place of residence and office, one or both.

Whinge, whine over – for now…

A highly recommended read for start-ups from 37 Signals,  the people who brought us Basecamp and Ruby.  Called “Getting Real”.  The links on this article BTW contain no affiliate codes.  You can read the book online free or order it as a paperback:  Click Here

I did both, read it for free and then ordered a copy which came a few weeks ago.

Personally I found it to be refreshing.   It’s written in a style that reflects the way 37 Signals run their business.  Clean and simple, just the facts, nothing wordy, some of it in stark contrast to many similar and/or conventional start-up books.

Conclusion.  A must read.  Personally I think it’s gold.  Your mileage may vary but if it contains one thing that assists you then buy the paperback.  Encourage them to write more.  The industry needs open and honest, if not at times “arrogant” tomes.

The “arrogance” BTW is relative.  To my mind they are merely using the same technique in their writing style as they use in building their software and their business.  Or to paraphrase from the book – “because it doesn’t matter”.

<Updated>  Reason for blocking countries above is the incredible amount of hack attempts coming from those regions recently.  Don’t know what the trigger was.  Side benefit – spam on website and blog comment sections reduced to a trickle.

Scott Kane

“Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.”

Those of you who’ve been marketing on the Internet since the 1990’s will remember the hazy far off days when “meta descriptions” where SEO magic, the biggest news on the news sites was somebody called Monica and a mysterious Presidential stain on her dress, and Linux was going to take over the desktop within 12 to 18 months.

In 2010 things are different, right?  Meta descriptions are out, nobody remembers Monica – or her dress,  and Linux has taken over the desktop.

Actually, that last line is complete bollocks.  It should read nobody cares about Monica, her dress or that President and Linux-ists are still predicting the takeover of the desktop in – just another couple of years (they are lovable idiots).

A preamble on SEO Black/Grey/Blue/White.  If you read this, or any other site with similar content, looking for clues on how to game the system AND STUFF THINGS UP FOR ALL OF US then I am hoping the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits and your chooks (chickens) turn into Emus and peck your dunny (toilet) down.

But Meta Descriptions?

They’re back, in a sense.  So are meta keywords too. Not in the same way we used them in the 1990’s, but more subtle and much, much more powerful for ISV websites.

Meta Descriptions are those snippets of text you see in search results beneath a site link.  Some time back Google said they didn’t use them as a ranking factor and nobody seemed to bother anymore – except me, well, almost.  Meta Keywords are tags embedded in HTML and designed to give a search engine an anchor on which to determine what a site is about.

Search engines evolved, Google in particular, and their methods of parsing text for relevancy evolved right along with them.  It was only natural that as the SEO spammers abused Meta Descriptions and more often Meta Keywords that they’d be relegated to the scrapheap along with pure HTML websites and the “Dancing Baby”.

However a couple of things have changed of late.  Google has started Personalized Search, basically using cookies to show you content you searched and clicked last time, and CMS software such as Joomla and in particular WordPress (there are other platforms of course, but for brevity we’ll call them all CMS).

These two factors turn the table on both of these meta tools.

First – search engine results.  A page that returns a relevant, logical synopsis – genuine sizzle and not fake stuffing – via it’s Meta Description is more likely to be clicked on than those sites who don’t bother or shove a bunch of keywords in there -which mean nothing logical to humans.

Second – CMS software uses the concept of tags and categories.  Both of these, due to “pretty” or “SEO friendly” page naming are rich follows for the search engine IF the content they contain is relevant.  Robots love content and rich links.  Be nice to them, don’t abuse them and they can and do look after you in turn.

Frequently CMS software allows these pages to easily have Meta Descriptions based on their content either auto inserted from the content (best) or entered by the site owner (don’t be tempted to scam here – you’ll loose).

Tags, using plug-ins in a CMS package can be turned into Meta Keywords.  Two years of experimenting with this has paid off.  The formula is simple:

• The Page Link accurately describes the page content.

• The Meta Description accurately describes or summarizes the page content.
• The Meta Tags provide links to other relevant pages and perform a minor role as Meta Tags (requires automation for best results).  The reason here, as far as I can tell, is purely reinforcement.  On their own the Meta Tags are useless – almost.  But combined they seem to have an effect.  Valuable if inserted automaticaly from content.

You’ll notice from the above the word “relevant” is used in each bullet point.  That’s because, at the end of the day, relevancy, hard work and honesty increasingly count more in SEO – though they have always counted for something – than ever before.

In fact, these items probably make up most of the value of content rich websites to the engines.  All of my tags and meta keywords on my sites, and of course meta descriptions, are inserted automatically.  The tags, unless I specify otherwise, are checked via automation with Yahoo and scored on what people are searching for.  Often some odd ball tags/meta keywords are inserted.  But you’d be surprised at the combinations people use when searching.

Keep in mind – at all times though – that irrelevant traffic is irrelevant.  Try and constrain yourself to the people you are trying to market to.  Nobody needs bandwidth soaks from streams of disinterested clicks.

Scott Kane

——————————–

Q. What do you call an xhtml document with a spade in it’s head?
A. <head>a spade</head>

1. Google Local Search

If you sell local specifically this is critical.  Not going to be helpful for those targeting internationally though.

2 Webpage Load Time

There have been some hints from Google’s Matt Cutts that how fast a website takes to load may affect its ranking.  In other words the faster a site loads the better the chance of getting a decent rank for your niche keywords.  Some things about Google really get my goat.  For small companies server load time can be extremely hard to manage.  Mostly because the majority of small ISV’s are on either VPS’ on overloaded networks, shared hosting or a little dedicated box hidden in the water closet of a datacenter somewhere in downtown Dallas.

However them’s the breaks.  Looks like this could get important with the theory being concocted that fast loading websites are delivered by a “reputable web host and fast internet connection.”  Which says quite a bit about the hosting industry. 

3. Social Media

As the world grapples with the social and moral implications of “social media” you don’t need to be Nostrildamus <misspelling intentional> to see it’s the new shiny thing for 2010, as it was in 2009.  In theory social media has become an essential tool to reach out, communicate, build trust and build relationships with consumers.  It’s also a phenomenal time sink waiting to suck in the unwary into futile exchanges.  Use it carefully – but use it.  Facebook and Twitter in particular are proving so far to be worthwhile sources for secondary results in the engines.  Buzz words emerging = “Micro Targeting” and “Personalization”.

4. Mobile Users

Mobile communications is a still growing market that’s already significant.  Despite Apple’s marketing destroying the definition of the industries abbreviation “App” for application – I’m already meeting consumers correcting me in conversations for saying I’m writing an “app” – “For the iPhone!!”, they shout enthused.  When  I answer “no , for the PC”  they declare “…if it’s not  for an iPhone it’s not an “app”".  Grrrrrrr!

You are going to have to make sure your site loads cleanly at 800×600.  Just as 22” widescreen becomes almost entry level some ning nong shrinks our real estate again.  Some folks seem to be opting for a compromise here and getting and using a sub domain like mobile.xyz.com and sticking something friendly in there.  If you’re running an RSS driven site this is easy – but be careful of duplicate data lest the Google Police get on your case.

5 Analytically

I’m not a fan of Google Analytics as such – mostly because I cringe at the idea of Google having my data and the EULA they wrote to accompany it.  But Google isn’t the only player in town and if you’re like me and hate external data collection of your logs then you can take a look at PIWIK   – Click Here to investigate – It’s free, open source and it runs on your own server.  Adds a load to your MySQL databases and CPU but if you’ve got the resources available it’s quite a good tool (I run it in conjunction with standard Apache logs and some WordPress stats programs).

The idea of analytic tools is to answer the “how” as opposed to the “why”.  What that means is you can see how many and who visited a page on your site but it won’t necessarily tell you why they didn’t actually buy anything.  Don’t hold your breath while waiting for the latter tool. 

Dissecting your data is however, jokes aside, a powerful way of understanding visitor reactions to websites and pages.  Things such as trends, stickiness of a site and geo-location to name but a few can go a long way towards helping us understand our customers.  From this we can improve and test – or rinse and repeat if you like – and improve the visitors experience and with diligence increase sales.

6  www vs. http

Here’s an odd one from the people who brought you “WordPress”.  WordPress MU doesn’t support “www”.  It will redirect you to “http” without the “www” every time.  Sure you can hack the PHP but next update it’ll change back again as your hacks are overwritten.  This doesn’t seem to have surfaced in the single site/blog edition of standard WordPress yet – but as the code is now merged it’s probably only a matter of time.

Why?  Security?  Big Internet wide bug?  Nope.  Because “www” is unnecessary according the FOS Unix-head developers at Automatic.  I love WordPress, don’t get me wrong and have a lot of respect for the team who produce it – but come on!  Why redefine a web convention for the hell of it.  Because it’s “unnecessary” is not a reason.  It’s dunderheaded and bubble headed and an instance of the worst kind of geeky arrogance.

The point of raising this is that if it becomes mainstream in CMS’ such as WordPress it’s going to mess your Google XML sitemaps up as Google gets narky about addresses that redirect.  That means telling Google for every site you run that the site “name” has changed.  For one site it’s not a big deal if you generate your XML sitemap automatically.  It’s a bloody nightmare if you do them by hand or run many sites.

7. Organic Search

Some folks are tipping organic search will become less important as some of the item points above – which only scratch the surface of “emerging” things to watch and do.  Personally I disagree.  Given there are indications of Google, Bing and Yahoo using bits of meta tags in pages again – not like the 90’s, but not ignoring them either, as they told us they were not that long ago – and the proclivity for consumers to gradually become inured to advertising due to seeing Google ads at every other site they visit, it’d be nutty to ignore organic search, in fact, it might just be an edge for some folks.

8. Download Sites

If you’re still trying to use these to “optimize” the engines for your product and, as most do, slack off on the SEO and social networking then you’re going to be overtaken in many instances by those who don’t bother with the download sites and have moved on.  Get over it – the engines recognize these sites for what they are – it’s time we all did too.

Scott Kane

————————-

“A man was running late for  the office one day, so he was exceeding the speed limit along the freeway.

The next thing he knows his wife rings up & says that she’s just seen on the TV that there’s a maniac speeding down the wrong side of the freeway.

The man replies:

“It’s not just one, it’s all of them!!”

————————-

One of the things I love about Australia is our unique wildlife.  One of the things I hate about Australia are mega venomous spiders – and Bull Ants!!

I mean – check out the sucker on the left – the ant, not the guy holding the slide – I grew up with these sods.  I learnt very early on that you don’t stick fire crackers down Bull Ant nests for a laugh.  It’s painful and terrifying as these guys are rated as one of the biggest, most primitive, dumbest, most  aggressive species on the planet!  In fact – if you see one – go immediately the other way.  Of course, if it sees you, expect to be chased by it.  It lives to bite.  After a Wildfire, and all the other forest creatures are deceased, bank on the Bull Ants to survive.  In the extreme survivalist stakes Bull Ants have one over cockroaches – an intact standing army!

The “Fight or Flight” mechanism exists in most Earth creatures.

Except Bull Ants.  When they took the course on behavioural science they only got as far as “Fight!” – and then flunked out of school.

In a moment I’ll get to the Social Media Bull Ant syndrome, but here’s a breif explanation on what a Bull Ant actually is.

Bull ants are large with long, straight, powerful jaws and a potent venom-loaded sting. Many species of bull ants have bright red or orange colours on the head or abdomen. There are about 90 species of bull ants in Australia with diverse behaviours and life cycles. Nine bull ant species have been recorded in Sydney, but there may be more as yet undiscovered.

As far as I know there is only one species locally in Melbourne, where I am, to be truly terrified of.  The big bugger illustrated to the left.  Probably has a scientific name of BiteYourAss MegaPainfulless.  I can personally attest to the pain issue.  On our 3/4 of an acre block there are numerous nests.

These ants can deliver painful stings and are aggressive. An ice pack or commercially available spray may be used to relieve the pain of the sting.

Enough With The Wildlife Doco – What’s A Social Media Bull Ant?

These days we live in a world of Social Media.  Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.  It goes on.  Social media has it’s own native fauna that run around, with out the “flight” mechanism, with large pincers to grip their prey, carrying venom sacks with which to inject us with.  Like the Australian Bull Ant this is a primitive species that first appeared millions of bytes ago – on UseNet.  While primitive it’s an adaptable survivor.  It’s survived the age of the NTTP server, the Dot Bomb Ice Age and is thriving deep in this modern inter-web era of RSS.

It’s a ferocious consumer that will “follow” you and attack if you get to near or if it sees you first.  Dropping a firecracker in a nest of them is devastating – to you! Attempting to squash them underfoot will result in a painful bite that may need more than an ice pack.  There is no commercially available spray for treatment.

Negative comments, ad hominem attacks just for the sake of it.  Welcome to Bull Ant 2.0!

All is not lost however.  Just like in the Australian bush (or my backyard) a lot can be done to avoid these encounters for both ourselves, our families and our software businesses.

1. Try To Avoid Negative People And Don’t Encourage Them.

To often we find ourselves obsessed with what is said about us or to us online.  Too many people don’t “unsubscribe” either the negative person or the service in extreme cases simply because they “gotta see”.  This is akin to walking up to a Bull Ant nest and poking a stick in.  Out they swarm – right on queue – ready to bite your butt.

2. Don’t Talk Religion

With the possible exception of Priests, Nuns, Rabbis, Imams and other career professionals who are generally more robust and better able to take idiotic insults from the Web 2.0 Bull Ant. Take it from an ex UseNet moderator of three Big 8 newsgroups with over a decades experience .

1. People will not change their beliefs no matter how well or logically you argued your point.
2. Don’t assume others around you hold the same beliefs as you do.
3. Religion includes debates on Creation vs. Evolution with both sides being capable of being zealots.
4. Keep in mind that people KILL over religious issues.

3. Don’t Talk Politics

With the caveat of “unless you are directly involved in politics.”

I do this – but I am directly involved and like it or not Social Media = Political Campaigning now.

But for the average Jack and Jill – and most software companies – it’s an absolute EPIC FAIL almost on the level of point 2 above.

Most people don’t truly understand politics.  Those that think they do are often the worst Web 2.0 Bull Ants.  Take for example Australia’s Preferential Voting system.  Try and get the average person on the street to understand how a rank outsider can get elected on preferences alone – and not primary votes.  Don’t get me started on the Australian media’s trend of covering elections like Presidential elections USA style – people think they are voting for the Prime Minister, but they’re not – it’s the party at the end of the day, parties elect Prime Ministers – and replace them, regularly.  We have the West Minister system here and the only similarity to the USA is in the name alone of “Senate” rather than “House Of Lords” as in the United Kingdom (that and we’ve always elected Senators, it’s not a birthright like the House of Lords used to be).

With the basics obfuscated it’s small wonder people get narky debating politics.  Stay clear.  From a distance carefully watch the political types (and politicians) screw up on Social networking sites.  Believe me – you aint seen anything yet!

4. Don’t Collect “Followers” Like “Beanie Babies”.

So many people collect “followers” as some kind of competition.  Totally in opposition to the core concept of social networking.  Be selective, follow or be followed by people who are on the same wave length as you, interested in the same topic as you.  Try to apply the same rules to Social Media and networking as you’d apply in real life.  A sane person who believes in religion doesn’t walk into a university paleoanthropology class and argue the origins of man.  Likewise a person subscribing to evolution doesn’t walk into a church service and do the same.  If you hate Lego and think Meccano sets ROCK then concentrate on people who like Meccano – and so on.

5. This blogs comments section is a classic example of what not to do!

Yep.  I have a small cabal of angry Usenet users, all developers, who for a variety of reasons took umbrage to being moderated.  Some are from the Business Of Software forums.  Some are simply people who crawl out from under rocks around the Internet.  While there are some great people who comment here I see a lot of negative numbskulls who post meaningless, unsupported negativity frequently.  That kind of person is a Social Media Bull Ant 2.0.   Most bloggers delete these kind of comments, but I’m fascinated by human psychology and let many of them through.

A final point.  Companies – and probably customers – are using social networking to “check you out”.  What will they find?  A decent citizen or a Social Networking Bull Ant?

————————————————————————-

Thanks to the Australian Museum for the Bull Ant quotes.

————————————————————————

Scott Kane

It began with good intentions.  An application to finish that was six months overdue and the core of my start-up.  By years end I’d made less progress than in the last six months of 2008.  Go figure that, I can’t…

It began with the bush-fires, a month of interruption in itself.  The first anniversary of those fires is this Sunday 7th.  You’d not believe me if I stated the state government here had done virtually nothing at all to address the core reasons for those fires and that they’ve proven, yet again, that preferences from other parties and latte environmentalists in the inner city are a greater concern to them.

Without dragging out the interruptions in too much detail a damaged shoulder followed, then a hand in plaster after an operation, frequent interruptions in respect of my involvement in politics  it would be fair to say I lost at least four solid months, punctuated by two month intervals of getting anything done at all.

So yeah. Glad to see the back of 2009.  We did incorporate, that was a positive, and two applications were released that I mentioned here at the time.

2010 did start a bit rocky when I managed to give myself second degree burns on my left hand, three weeks later still bandaged. < Note to self.  Lawn Mowers get hot after use, they bite when lifted by carburettor. >

Then the development machine monitor died. Exactly one month to the day out of warranty.  Repair price?  Twice retail price paid.  I now buy wholesale so for $20 more than the price of a 22″ I bought a 24″.  No room on desk now for two monitor setup I was planning.  New desk first. 

So am getting prepped now to get serious again.

Across on his blog, Steph has some really positive things to say about 2009 and his business.  So if I’ve managed to depress you get on over to Follow Steph and a dose of good news.

Updating CMS

As you probably guess this blog runs on WordPress.  In fact so do most of my product sites.  My first “roll your sleeves up, mate” exercise this year has been to begin moving the whole lot from WordPress to WordPress MU – the multi-site edition.  This is actually pretty cool.  One installation of the software on an account on the server delivering multiple websites.  There are a few tricks to pull this off and in the next few days I’m going to document them in an article here should others decide in the future to do the same.

It’s not hard, rather it just needs to be done in the right order and tracking down the doc’s to do it can be tedious.  It might save somebody some time, beyond just being interesting in general.

Progress So Far

To date this blog – www.davidscottkane.com , which you’re reading now, www.mixactionmultimedia.com.au the company site (needing lots of data added to it, not written that yet), www.MixingPress.com – our audio related “magazine” style site and www.kliknmix.com one of our product sites have all been transferred to the WordPress MU installation and are settling in.  The rest will follow.

Note – there is no limit in WordPress MU as to how many sites you run off a single install – but your physical hosting account may well set some limits.  I’ll also include some info on basic requirements and some info on how I structure the server.

The benefit of doing this is multi-fold.

• First one install of the software means lower use of server resources.  CMS software is hungry and does use more resources than a basic HTML site of similar traffic levels.
• Secondly when an upgrade or security fix comes through for WordPress MU, or a plug-in, all sites get the update because they all use the instance of the software.
• Finally – WordPress.com runs thousands of sites off single instances of WordPress MU so it’s been pretty thoroughly road tested.

Next post I’ll document the process.

Scott Kane

==========================================================

An Australian ventriloquist visiting New Zealand walks into a
small town and sees a local sitting on his porch patting his
dog. He figures he’ll have a little fun.
Ventriloquist: Hey, good looking dog, mate. Mind if I speak to
him?
New Zealander: The dog doesn’t talk, you stupid Aussie.
Ventriloquist: Hey dog, how’s it going old mate?
Dog: Doin’ alright.
The New Zealander is shocked!
Ventriloquist: Is this Kiwi your owner? (Pointing at the New
Zealander?
Dog: Yep.
Ventriloquist: How does he treat you?
Dog: Real good. He walks me twice a day, feeds me great food,
and takes me to the lake once a week to play.
The New Zealander can’t believe his ears!
Ventriloquist: Mind if I talk to your horse?
New Zealander: Horse doesn’t talk either.
Ventriloquist: Hey horse, how’s it going?
Horse: No worries.
The New Zealander’s mouth is agape.
Ventriloquist: Is this your owner? (Pointing at the New
Zealander?)
Horse: Yep.
Ventriloquist: How’s he treat you?
Horse: Pretty good, thanks for asking. He rides me regularly,
brushes me down often, and keeps me in the barn to
protect me from the elements.
The New Zealander is TOTALLY amazed!
Ventriloquist: Mind if I talk to your sheep?
New Zealander: The sheep’s a liar.

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<With apologies to any Kiwi readers!    >

A number of things have changed these last few months.  I somehow ended up elected a State Executive member of the Australian Democrats and a National Deputy President of the party as well.  There’s some pre-selection things going on there I won’t go into presently in respect of the next Federal Election – which is going to be anywhere between March and November next year, with a decided possibility of middle of August – unless the Conservatives (Liberals) and the Socialists (Labor) magically come to some kind of agreement over climate change legislation.  That the Greens are playing “my way or the highway” is pretty sad.  Negotiate?  Yer doin’ it wrong!

MixAction is still being coded.  Ironically I released another application a few weeks ago that would have taken a little over a quarter of the time allocated to write MixAction last year in the June 30 day stint.  More on that, which relates to the topic of this post, in a moment.

At the end of last month we bit the bullet and moved from sole trader status and incorporated.  We have a nice shiny new company called “MixAction Software And Audio Pty Ltd”.  For readers not from Australia that’s the approximate equivalent to an LLC.

There are distinct advantages and distinct disadvantages to this move.  I won’t go into those here right now.

BoomerApp And Klik ‘n Mix

Klik n’ Mix is a little “party” mixing package aimed squarely at the non “disco” and “dance” crowd.  It’s a B2C application, which goes against my own business principles quite a bit.  It retails at two price points.  The dreaded $29.99 that I’ve maligned so frequently and $49.99, an upsell that adds a range of audio tools.  I wrote it because I was asked to write it by a person who does entertainment at parties and functions.  This particular person is more entertainer than “DJ” and from experience there’s quite a few of those out there.  It doesn’t beat mix and that’s reflected directly by the price.  I’m saving my beat mixing algorithm for later – and a higer price point. 

Once written I figured I might as well market it and created the brand name and product site accordingly.  You can visit the product site here:  http://www.kliknmix.com

I’m pretty sure it’s currently the only party music mixing package to feature the Microsoft Fluent UI – AKA “The Ribbon”.  I suspect that particular differentiation is short lived. 

As I said, I’ve been pretty full on time wise, so I’ve done very little marketing of the application.  A few weeks ago however a new service was launched from the people who brought the world Bits du Jour.  That service is BoomerApp.  While Bits du Jour hands out full licences daily BoomerApp is instead a rebate system where-by the customer purchases in the normal way and recieves a rebate form which they return to FastSpring Ecommerce or a local representive.

FastSpring have a blog article on BoomerApp here:

Customers pay the retail price up-front, and then print out the special rebate form to claim their discount.  The site’s model is based on the fact that a certain percentage of customers will not redeem their rebate despite that we make it easy to do so and that a certain percentage will accept an alternate offer in lieu of redeeming their rebate.

Take a look at BoomerApp.com and contact them if you’d like to be considered for a promotion (not all products will fit the offer profile, but mention you’re a FastSpring client and they will review your product right away for a potential promotion).

The developer sets the rate of rebate for the offer.  Given some interesting data on rebate return rates, which I will discuss later, the application is live right now and therefore probably best not to advertise business data to passing clients, I decided to go with the full 100% rebate.  That is the client pays the full price and then can send in the rebate form to recieve the whole lot back.  By my calculations I have little to lose by treating this as a promotional exercise and getting the application “out there”.

It’ll be interesting to see how it goes – and I will report back on it at the end of the promotion – it runs seven days, from today.  The report I give will probably be percentage based and not dollar based – we’ll see… 

Cheers!

Scott Kane

Rather we’re talking about the logo to the left of this article.

Andy writes:

“Am I the only one being totally bombarded with ‘Give your application the green light’ and related emails from Microsoft and its minions? I must have had at least 30 so far. I took a few minutes to list my product in the Windows 7 compatibility guide (beware, cheesy audio). But that is all I intend to do.“

First I can answer Andy directly.  Yes, I started receiving marcom (marketing communications) from Microsoft well before the Windows 7 launch and long before the RTM was released to MSDN subscribers.

However…

I have made use of the logo, but more importantly I’ve made use of the press release too, for a couple of reasons that I view as important.  Your mileage may vary.

1. The logo is a massive improvement over Microsoft’s previous logos.  It’s not to bad at all.
2. The press release that is a requirement to show the logo contains lots of juicy keywords.  Perfect material for blogs – and all of my product sites have blogs thirsty for keyword rich material.  At no time did I or do I expect the press to snap to attention on the reciept of one of these press releases and say “By George!  MixAction Software And Audio Pty Ltd products are fully Windows 7 compatible – STOP THE PRESSES!”  
3. I’m weary of writing two sets of code for multimedia support between XP and Vista/Windows 7.  If only a handfull of people viewing my sites get the twitch to upgrade to Windows 7 it’ll make my life a hell of a lot easier.  For that reason I’m content to assist Microsoft in their marketing.

So each of our products have a Windows 7 Compatible logo and accompanying press release.  After release of the press release I saw – and still see – poeple searching and coming into the sites with keywords related to the products but specifying “Windows 7″.  That was my intent.  It’s worked.  It’s not a huge number mind – but it’s probably more than my competitors are getting because they aren’t talking about Windows 7 at all!

At the end of the day – as Micro ISV’s – even a handfull of visitors for the ten minutes it took to rework Microsoft’s press release template are worth coaxing.

Will post soon on new product releases and a restructure of our company.

Scott Kane

It doesn’t state anything we haven’t heard many times before, as developers, but it is an opening gambit, in the public political sense, of mine on this issue.  The objective is to raise awareness overtime and hopefully nip in the bud certain subversive influences I’m aware of, in the political scene here in Australia, in relation to this issue.

It would be fair to say that the average person, not producing work covered by copyright, would love to see copyright law fall by the wayside.  Certain politically motivated elements certainly would as it suits their socialist agendas.

So, the article introduces the concept to the casual reader, makes mention of the usual semantic arguments we all love to hate when discussing the topic and acknowledges the role organized crime plays in producing cracks, serials and keygens targetted at piracy.

I won’t reprint the article here beyond a quote.  You can click the quote below to read the full article.

Increasingly, individuals illegally downloading content with file sharing tools like Limewire, Kazaa and torrent tools like Azureas are being detected and prosecuted in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.  It is only a matter of time before prosecutions become more common in Australia.  The stakes (and the losses) are too big for companies and individuals producing intellectual property to ignore.

An ironic benefit, to the average person, from this enforcement is that by not using tools such as these they limit their exposure to viruses, trojans and malware which literally fill the services that offer cracks, keygens, serial numbers (often written serialz) and circumvention of DRM – Digital Rights Management, all of which aid in the copyright circumvention of owned music, video and software.

It is not illegal to have these downloading tools on your computer.  They do in fact have legal and valid uses.

But it becomes illegal when they are used to access items without the permission of the copyright holder.

That many of the circumvention tools – cracks, keygens etc – are created by organized crime groups such as the Russian Business Network or RBN is also significant.

Scott Kane