Finaly got everything sorted ready for switching accross to my PC, whilst doing so, it made me realise just how much you rely on stored details.
I was surprised to find I have hosting in 8 different places, I have 5 affiliate accounts set up, are a member of at least 8 forums, have 2 google accounts, an Istockphoto account plus numerous other sites that I have to log in to.
Many of these I have set up to automatically sign me in, and this made me realise that if I had just switched this system off and started my new one I would never have got in to some places or even be able to FTP to some sites.
With this in mind, I went to all places that require me to sign in and updated all my details (some were still with email addresses that no longer exist) and made a note of all URL’s, log in names, and passwords.
I also updated all my FTP and email details and made a note of these too. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am so glad this PC started playing up rather than just dying on me.

After the problems with my PC yesterday I have been using it a bit today in Safe Mode only. It’s when you do things like this that you appreciate what you have more.
In safe mode my screen resolution is fixed at 800 x 600, my desktop is all messed up. but worst of all I can’t run dual monitors.
It reminds me of the time I had to go and do a bit of work for someone who was still on dial-up, after being on 3k broadband for 12 months. I found it absolutely impossible to do anything using their dial-up.
I am finding it the same with only having 1 monitor, after having 2 for a couple of years reverting back to 1 makes me wonder how I ever managed like that.
I was toying with the idea of having 3 with my new system, but as my other system only has 2 I think it is probably a bad idea, as I would have soon got used to having 3 meaning I would be stuck with never wanting to revert back to 2.
Maybe when I get more room at my other office and have enough room to have 3 at both offices I will upgrade then.

For the past month my PC has been playing up more and more and getting slower and slower to start and open slower to open some programs.
A couple of weeks ago I couldn’t get Windows to start, but could get in to safe mode and with a lot of tinkering I eventually got it sorted. I had the same thing happen today, which got me concerned as to what would happen if I had a major problem and lost all files.
With this in mind I have spent the last few hours operating in safe mode and FTP’ing all important folders to some spare webspace I have got and also transferring them on to my laptop and to a back up PC I just use for storage.
In a way I am glad this PC is playing up, it gave me a reminder about backing up and at least it has given me a warning rather than just dieing on me completely.

Have been playing around with my cars site again today with the intention of first setting up a page for dealers in each county and then setting up a manufacturers section and then setting up a model section.
It was whilst doing this that I realised just how many different models of car there are, I have 300+ so far and that is just the more common models.
It’s made me re-think how I am going to do everything, so have decided to put off building any new pages and just to concentrate on the database development with theintention of setting it up so that it effectively does the work for me. and will also allow others to imput the data.

I posted last week about keeping an eye on websites, after spotting that 3 of my sites were offline due to my hosting expiring.
One of the sites had been ranking in the top 10 for Induction Loops but because it had gone offline was now nowhere to be found.
I quickly set some hosting up elsewhere, loaded the site up, decided it was a mess so re-vamped it.
Checking the serps tonight for induction loops I was pleased to see it had come back in at number 4, which is probably as high as it ever has been.
I still don’t know how long it was actually offline for, but it is reassuring to see that it came back so quick after being dropped.

After yesterdays task of setting up my UKSBD blog, today I decided to have a look at my Used Car Dealers in Surrey page.
My used cars pages date back to my old Sim64 site which had a used cars section on it in 2004/2005. At the time I was experimenting with a few ideas, but as with a lot of things I never really got time to finishing it of.
When Sim64 got hit, I deleted all the cars content, moved it accross to my directory site and for a short period was using a 3rd party feed. This never really worked out and for the past 18 months the car pages have just been sat there with no content on them.
I decided to just do the one county page initially (Surrey), and as the page was such a mess decided to just start again using a combination of my new blogs set up and my Podline site.
I used the podline template, added the blogs content area and sidebar system, changed the colour scheme and added some small images from istockphoto. I also set up a drop box option navigation system and a CSS navigation to other counties. Not all the links are live yet, but if the page does well, that will be the next stage.

A question was asked in the forum yesterday about what to do with a blog when it has run its course.
This was the inspiration to do something that I had been meaning to do for a long time, hack my UKSBD wordpress blog about to make it more of a stand alone site rather than a blog.
I made the suggestion to the person who asked the question, but didn’t have my blog set up good enough to use it as a demo or to be able to use it show clearly what I meant.
With this in mind I stripped it all down this afternoon and have hacked it and skinned it to get it set up as I want it.
The big mistake most people who use blogging systems make is just using it how it comes. Most blogs have headers, sidebars and footers which are used throughout the whole site.
The first thing I did was to decide on structure, WordPress effectively does this for us with 5 or 6 main pages; index, category, page, single post, search
Now rather than using the same header, sidebar, footer for these 5 pages, what I do is create a header, sidebar, footer for each.
I then create the categories for the category page and ensure that each category has a minimum of one post in it. After that I create the Pages for page; About, Contact, Privacy (I don’t bother with a resources or sitemap page at this stage, as this can be added to the foter at a later date)
With this done I edit all the sidebars to suit the content of the page they are used on. I tend to use the sidebar with the most info on the index, slightly less info on the category and page pages and when I get to the single post pages the sidebar is at a minimum.
I do the same with the header, rather than just using a standard header as most people appear to, I edit the headers to match the pages they are on.
Next comes the content, again I strip this right down to the minimum;
content, link to the post, link to the category. I do away with all comments, edits, dates of entry, author, etc. leaving a very basic page like this example
Anyone in the know, will see I haven’t set friendly URL’s up, but this is primarily due to the Windows hosting.

I’ve always used statcounter on my sites initialy for counting visitors, then as I found out how to use it better, for tracking visitor sources, entry pages, targetted keywords, etc.
I now also use it to specifically track visitors to monitor what people are doing and which pages they are visiting.
It can be amazing just what you can find out and I can now even pinpoint individual people from tagging their IP numbers and building up a bit of user profile on them.
It is by doing this that I know who all the people are who are abusing the data in my directory and have now got it set up so well, that as soon as somebody rings one of my honeypot listings I can sometimes tell who they are before I even answer the phone.
I doubt the casual internet user knows that things like this are possible and if they did how they could cover their tracks better anyway.
With this in mind, I have a privacy policy that clearly provides information about how we and 3rd parties monitor visitor behaviour.

I’ve never been one to moan or fuss too much, I know when problems occur sometimes it is just one of those things.
About 6:00 this evening my hosting went down, 4 sites and all emails associated with them. I was having my tea at the time and felt it would be unfair to get on to my host, as he probably would be too.
I eventualy emailed him about 8:20 as I was just on my way out, and was pleased when I got back in about an hour a go to find everything back up.
Checking my emails I had an apology from him and saying I should just ring if anything major like this happens again (first time since being with him)
I know I won’t ring him unless it happens between 9 and 5, and will just send an email, but should I?
I don’t pay a lot for hosting and have had great service (and help) from him since setting it up, but should I expect him to be on call for me when problems occur or have I got it about right?