As of this evening, brianshah.us is no longer active. This change was made to avoid posting my personal information in the “WhoIs” database, which becomes available for public use on January 25, 2006. So, my new Web address will be brianshah.net. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Category Archives: About this site
New domain address: brianshah.net
I recently received information regarding my Web domain and learned that the National Telecommunications and Information Agency was going to make public the information attached to .us domains. The last thing I really want is to be inundated with companies trying to sell me services that I really don’t want. So I decided to purchase a .net domain. For the next month or so, I will continue to have both in production, but the .us domain will be replaced by the .net. I will spend the next month reviewing my site and cleaning up any references to the new address.
Since I’m in the process of making these changes, I also plan on testing a dynamic blog. This may require another site redesign.
In the meantime, if you’ve already bookmarked my site, please change it to brianshah.net.
To learn more about .us domains, please read the following article. I’ll admit that it is a little extreme, but its basic point is evident.
Dropping the Google Ads
I was not happy with the ads that posted to my home page. I also noticed that the ads were not generating any revenue. So I decided to remove them. I guess I’ll just have to continue to eat the costs of maintaining the site.
New Google Ads
You may consider it selling out, but I’ve added Google ads to my site as a way to see if this site can become self sustaining. I’ll give it a try on the home page and Tech-know pages for now, and I may eventually add them to the blog pages. But even I have limits to advertising, and I won’t add them to my bio or scrapbook pages. I’ve also copied a new version of the Google search script into my online search. I chose to go with text only, seeing how I dislike flashing pictures on other sites. Hopefully the ads will provide some useful links for further research.
And in case you’re wondering, I don’t have much control over the ads. They search each page’s contents and determine which ads to display. Therefore, even though some questionnable ads may show up on my site, I do not condone them or have any control over them.
Number one on Google again
Slowly moving back onto Google
I realized that my web site is back on the first page of Google’s web site. However, it is number three on the list, and the link leads to the second quarter 2001 blog page. Nonetheless, it’s back under a vanity search. Further investigation shows that Google has crawled much of my site, so I’ve added a Google search feature again. I’m still thinking about adding an RSS feed, but I haven’t had much time to learn about PHP or MySQL.
On the plus side, I’m still number one on Yahoo… and number three, and I have special mention on number four (from when I worked at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation).
Web site navigation buttons
I’ve been trying to figure out why my site has not been crawled lately. I found an interesting article online from Metamorphosis Studio Design that explains it. My site uses a Server Side Include (SSI) for the navigation bar that you find on the left. Using this makes it easy for me to make changes to the navigation menu in one spot instead of on every single page. FrontPage handled this differently in a proprietary manner, so I never needed to know about SSI until recently. One of the goals of the new site was to use open standards so future migration would not become a major issue (such as moving from FrontPage to Dreamweaver). Unfortunately, using SSI for navigation buttons makes it difficult for web spiders to crawl a site.
The solution to my web crawling issue requires me to use static hyperlinks instead of an SSI for the home page navigation bar. So, I’ve made that change, which wasn’t too difficult. If this method works, then I might be able to place the Google search function back on the search page (although I might need to come up with an internal search function when I start using PHP).
Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to look at PHP or MySQL. I’m trying to learn the basics of Microsoft Project and Visio, as well as general database design and such. I think I have an idea of how to structure my database when I create it on MySQL, but that’s just a basic conceptualization right now.
My search on hold
I hate to admit it, but Google has not crawled my site since I published the new design. I cannot keep it as a search on my site if it is ineffective. So I suggest using Yahoo Search and typing “site: http://brianshah.net” after your search term or terms. I plan on adding a built-in search, but that will take some reorganizing and additional programming. And since I’m not a programmer, I will need to learn the things I need to learn to make this site a little more dynamic (namely PHP, MySQL, and XML). And since I’ve got a lot of other things on my plate, it will be a while (although I did manage to buy about half of a paycheck’s worth of books on the subject lately). Wish me luck!
Wisconsin Action Man – follow up
Glen Loyd was able to find my blog about honoring him. He sent me a note thanking me for the mention. It feels good when the person that you’re complimenting finds out about it. He found my site by using alltheweb.com, which he stated he uses all the time. Like Yahoo!, this search engine managed to find and crawl my site. So what’s going on with Google (why isn’t it finding my site)?
New blog and RSS coming
I started looking into creating an actual blog and RSS feed for my site. I realized that it is going to take more time for me to add to the site. That means that I’ll have to modify the site again. On its face, you probably will notice some minor differences, but the design will remain the same. Behind the scenes, though, I have to program a database and set it up. Since I’ve never done that before, it’s going to take me some time to learn about this before revising the site and add the blog and RSS feed.
I know I could’ve used something like Blogger or TypePad if I wanted a simple blog. But I already have a full-fledged web site (well, more or less), and I’ve already invested the time and money into Dreamweaver. I’ll continue to work on this as time allows (if time allows). I can’t determine when it’ll go live, though, but I’m definitely going to move forward.
